AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 12/29 - 1/4/26

AEW Collision 1/3/26

Darby Allin vs Wheeler Yuta

MD: Darby Allin vs Gabe Kidd from World's End didn't hit for me. It may have hit for some people and I get that, because there was nothing wrong about the match or how it was laid out. Moreover, it had build. It had story. Kidd wanted to make a mark. His stop/start, off/on role as a Death Riders associate is a little shaky given his NJPW commitments and the fact that he only partially seems to fit the ethos (a lot of tearing down, not a lot of building up, but that maybe works well with Mox's hypocrisy). He came out of nowhere to help put Darby through a flaming table. He showed up again later to toss him down some stairs. Darby wanted revenge. It wasn't a cold match, even if it had a sputtering build due to Darby's participation in the C2 and subsequent injury. 

I don't think it hit for the crowd though. Some of that was the build, sure, and some a lack of connection to Kidd overall. Some was the way the PPV was set up. By the time the crowd got to this match, they'd already made it through the plunder-laden chaos of FTR vs Gunn/Robinson, which had at least two incredibly memorable table bumps, not to mention Babes of Wrath vs Athena/Mercedes which was a more conventional all-action spotfest. There were diminishing returns in the moment.

I think there were even more diminishing returns at play though. This is my fifth year in a row writing about Darby, albeit with some gaps. He's amazing at what he does, one of the best I've ever seen at telling an in-ring story about absorbing punishment and getting the fans to get behind him as he survives and survives and survives until he can find a way to overcome. They fans believe in him. Incredible babyface. But there's a sense like many other great babyfaces over the years, maybe he had his moment and it passed him by. He chose a different accomplishment, climbed Everest instead of climbing the AEW mountain and taking the title. And now, while Moxley is moving on to bigger and better things, he's still waging a war against the Death Riders that seems to matter less every day.

There's something compelling about that, maybe, something interesting and tragic, a World War II soldier trapped on an island of his own making, an island that exists wholly within his mind, with no one to tell him that the world had moved on without him. But I'm not sure that entirely came through in the Kidd match.

It did, however, come through a little more clearly vs Yuta, and I thought the match in general worked far better.

Some of that was situational. There are different constraints and possibilities and responsibilities to be a Collision main event on a residency show on a night where a lot of the core audience is more focused on the 1/4 Tokyo Dome show, than to try to fight for air on an overpacked AEW PPV. 

Some of it is that, unlike Kidd, Yuta is one of the most over heels in the country. People will deny it. These people are wrong. He appears on the screen or comes out from off screen to interfere as he is so apt to do and the place reacts immediately. That reaction isn't just that they want him to go away. It's that they want him to go away specifically by getting killed by a babyface. That's very different. Are they paying money to see him getting killed? Is he impacting ratings? I have no idea. But I do know that he gets a more consistent, more visceral reaction than almost anyone. 

He wrestles in a manner that ensures it too. There's nothing to latch on to. Look at the layout here. Darby took control almost immediately during the feeling out process. Yuta was smarmy and it looked like he'd get immediate comeuppance, but he hid behind Marina on the floor and got a cheapshot in. Even then, he couldn't press the matter. He went for a suplex and Darby kneed him in the skull. He charged in and Darby clowned him in the corner. It was only when Marina got involved once again that he was able to take over with another cheapshot and a brutal neckbreaker onto the apron. Then when he was on top, he preened and taunted, mocking both Darby and the crowd (and the crowd's love for Darby). He was vulnerable, upstaged, outgunned, reprehensible. Not a single cool thing about him, but laser-focused on getting a reaction the whole way through.

Yuta spent the whole match serving Darby and his gripe with PAC, serving Marina and her upcoming with Toni Storm, serving the need to end the show on a high, serving everyone but himself. He took over in the stretch only due to Marina getting tossed, Storm rushing out to brawl with her, and Garcia sneaking in to get a cheapshot. Even then, he was able to hit his finisher on the apron (another amazing Darby bump) but not capitalize. His attempt to do so was to mock Darby with a Scorpion Deathlock only to have that be his quick and decisive (two Coffin Drops and lifted up for a snap Scorpion from Darby). In being so vulnerable, in being so unlikable, Yuta finds a strength that very few wrestlers in 2025-6 are willing to find. He made this work in ways that Kidd, presented far stronger, couldn't. Situations were different, yes, but you get the sense that Yuta can be counted on to make just about anything he's asked to do work. 

One last thought on Darby: as I said, he's a natural babyface given his bumps and his resilience. Six years is a long time for anything, however. It's only in the last month or two that I've started to wonder if something needs to give. If you have a few minutes and haven't seen it yet, check out Darby Allin on Hey EW with RJ City. There's a heel there just waiting to happen, one that channels some of Darby's natural personality, and I think maybe it's time for him to explore it.

 

Shelton Benjamin vs Dante Martin

MD: This should have worked. It was a good story on paper. 

Scorpio Sky has a certain level of credibility. He's a former singles and tag champion. He's got some size, presence. But he's been snakebit and he wasn't there on that night. So Dante Martin steps up. Yes, Dante's somewhat bigger than he was a couple of years ago, but he's all about speed and agility when up against the monster that is Shelton Benjamin. Shelton was always an amazing athlete, but the world had gotten smaller around him and now he towers over his opponents, a force. 

Shelton would toss him around. Dante would use his speed to create opportunities. Shelton would give exactly as much as he should give. Dante would earn (not take but earn) moments of offense and the fans would appreciate them all the more for the effort put in. Contrast makes the world go round.

Yes, the crowd saw Benjamin as a bigger star. Yes, they wanted to see Benjamin toss Dante around. Yes, they wanted to see Benjamin hurt people. Everyone knew this was just to heat Shelton up for Mox, but Dante's a likable young man, and the match had a secret weapon in its pocket.

As they went towards the break, Dante leaped up to the top rope only to get shoved off, crashing down on the guard rail chest first, a nasty bump. The match stopped. Christopher Daniels and the doctor went to check on Dante during the commercial break. MVP walked over and cut a little promo that Dante should call it a night; there'd be no shame in it. Dante, obviously hurting, told off MVP and Shelton, and they were off to the races.

At least they should have been. It was a moment of defiance that should have worked. Yes, the crowd would still go up for Shelton, but they should have gotten into Dante's comebacks. It was a good idea on paper. 

It didn't work. Shelton honed in on the chest, and I'm just not sure Dante's selling was consummate to what was happening. Dante fired backed with forearms and either got cut off or made openings for himself, but I'm not sure the crowd bought those openings were enough. Maybe he should have been a little more opportunistic in dodging Shelton to show just how high the stakes were? Dante sold to a degree and he hit stuff, but there was never a sense that he was appealing to the crowd, that he needed them, that they should get behind him. He didn't give them enough to latch on to. Daniels is relatively new in his role as a second. Babyface mangers are tough in general, but the idea is that you slap the mat and lead the fans at the right times and get them going, right? If you had an Amira Blair or Matt Menard out there, I think this might have worked, but Daniels didn't quite hit the mark. 

If this didn't work, it's not because Shelton didn't give Dante enough or because he ate him up. Yes, he hit big stuff on him, but I almost felt like he gave Dante too much after the huge bump when before it he had made Dante work a little more. 

I'm glad they did this. I'm glad they tried it. I think the idea was sound. I think there are things to learn here, especially when you compare and contrast this with Wheeler Yuta's performance against Darby. Details matter. They have to matter. The second you surrender to the notion that they don't matter, then there's no point of doing anything. You can have the best idea in the world, the best spots, the best bumps, the most exciting action, but if you don't get the details right, then it's not going to hit nearly as well as it could have, or nearly as well as it should. When that happens, it's not a call for nihilism and permission to just give up and hit spots and try to pop a crowd by overwhelming it. To me, it's the exact opposite. No matter how much the crowd wanted to see Shelton hurt people, this not only could have worked, it should have worked. In trying to figure out why it didn't (and why Darby vs Yuta did), there things to learn that can make anything and everything work better moving forward.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 11/10 - 11/16 Part 1

AEW Dynamite 11/12/25

Death Riders (Wheeler Yuta/Daniel Garcia/Claudio Castagnoli/Jon Moxley/PAC) vs Darby Allin/Orange Cassidy/Kyle O'Reilly/Roderick Strong/Mark Briscoe [Blood & Guts] 

MD: Everything was going Jon Moxley's way. 

It was a long road, but this was where it always had to be headed. Blood and Guts. 

Yes, October and November hadn't gone to plan. He'd quit against Darby Allin at WrestleDream. He'd been on his back foot, barely surviving without quitting (twice) against Kyle O'Reilly. Roderick Strong defeated him by countout to decide the advantage.

But it didn't matter. None of it mattered.

They were in the cage and everything was going his way. 

He'd turned on his partner, his brother-in-arms, had started a reign of terror, been champion and locked away the belt. Even though he lost the belt, it could all still be worth it. He was a mad king, an emperor that had been deposed, but he could get all of it back, and even more than that, he could rain vengeance down on all of his enemies. 

Hangman wasn't there, but the rest of them? Front and center. 

And they were bleeding out. 

The advantage might have been an issue. Yuta had been sent out first, the sacrificial workhorse. He'd stalled and drawn Darby out after him, had been tossed into the cage and used it as a weapon himself. He'd been opened up by Darby's modified skateboard (after going for it himself), had been thrashed further by Darby and Cassidy when it became two-on-one. But he just had to hold out long enough for reinforcements, and he did. Garcia came out to even the odds and two-on-two with one man just a little fresher, they fought even. Until they didn't. 

When Mark Briscoe's music hit, they were wrapped around in a chain, beaten and battered. But that's when everything turned. 

Briscoe had been left laying in the back. Maybe it was the Don Callis family, maybe it wasn't. It didn't matter. Moxley didn't care. He'd take opportunity where he found it. 

Roderick Strong came out to make it 3-on-2, but the advantage time had been cut into severely. He hit a few moves but that was all he could do before Claudio's music hit back.

The plan was always Claudio, infinitely strong, infinitely reliable, always a step behind. He tossed Strong into a chair and then swung both Darby and Cassidy at once. O'Reilly came out next, but by then it was too late. Even with a 4-on-3 advantage on paper, the damage was done. This wasn't the happy-go-lucky world of the Conglomeration. It wasn't even Darby's world, one with open skies to leap and dive and crash. It was the post-apocalyptic world of the Death Riders, and they made use of every weapon, every opportunity. Here, no matter what the numerical advantage might say, the odds were always in their favor.

So instead of sending PAC out next, Moxley himself came to survey his gloriously ruined kingdom, to inflict violence and vengeance. He came in with a fork and immediately opened up O'Reilly more (for his transgressions were the worst of them all). He jabbed it into Darby's back, scraped it up and down, offered it to his newest disciple Garcia in a morbid ritual that let him join in. The women had set the stage for this earlier in their own Blood & Guts match and Moxley casually walked behind the timekeeper desk to seize all of the weapons they had left for him. He dropped broken glass in the ring and scraped a shattered mirror across O'Reilly's bloody skull opening him up more. They dropped Darby on his skull and dragged him across the glass for good measure. 

Life was good. All that he had lost? None of it mattered because he'd craft a new gospel in blood and viscera. He'd show the world that everything he'd always said was true. He would be vindicated and validated. 

And when Darby climbed to the top of the inside of the cage and dropped down upon all of them, even that didn't matter. Because that was just one last gasp of futile hope from a man not meant to climb mountains but to fall off of them and PAC was the last man in. Chaotic order was restored. The door was locked. The key was stolen. The Death Riders had a 5-on-4 advantage and could now punish their enemies to their hearts' content.

Everything was going Jon Moxley's way. 

But fate had a way of turning, bolstered by hearts that simply wouldn't quit, hearts very different than the beleaguered, hypocritical organ beating all too quickly in Jon’s own chest.

Despite being ambushed and assaulted and left for dead, Mark Briscoe arrived, wild look in his eyes and bolt cutters in hand. 

-----

Let's stop there. You know how the story ended. Briscoe turned the tide. Yuta faced him on the top of the cage and despite multiple cheapshots ended up eating a Jay Driller onto the steel. Kidd interfered and they put Darby through a flaming table. The Death Riders were ready (with a stapler of all things) for Cassidy to put his hands in his pockets only for Orange to care more than he'd ever cared before as he ripped the staples out of his own flesh. That let him save a defiant Kyle O'Reilly who was being choked out. Kyle refused to quit and in due course, with a few more twists and turns, he made Moxley tap out once more. A poetic ending to the last month and maybe, in some ways, to the last year. Questions remain: Who attacked Briscoe (the Callis family denied it)? Will this elevate Kyle to the next level? What does this mean for an increasingly out of touch Moxley and his leadership of the Death Riders?

As War Games go, modern ones always lean more towards CZW than JCP, more weapons and theatrics than wrestlers just beating the piss out of each other to solve their issues. In some ways, I thought this was a better mix than usual though of course Mox is a Cage of Death guy, so you knew what was going to happen when he got in there. I'd like to see them try the other way just once though. There are enough opportunities especially now that they're doing two of these on one show. 

That led to its own issues too, where they had to switch things up and play around with the advantage. Between Briscoe being taken out, Strong having less time to press the advantage as a substitute, and the sheer force that is Claudio, I thought they handled it remarkably well. Before and after, the characters drove things in interesting ways. One quick example. Right before Briscoe's music hit, when it was two-on-two, Garcia and Yuta had Cassidy down and were kicking him. Garcia, full of bluster and attitude, did the mocking Cassidy kicks and threw it over to Yuta but Yuta, like an animal that had been kicked too many times itself, couldn't help but kick him full-on. The match was full of little interesting character bits like that while maintaining the overarching story. 

-----

Feedback I've gotten lately is that people really like the dramatization approach to reviewing these matches, where I dig deep into the characters and emotions at play and recount the narrative as presented on screen. It feels almost like 80s PWI or something to me and I don't want to lean too hard into it all the time as opposed to a more analytical approach. 

But here's the point: I can only do it at all because the coherency, consistency, and commitment in what's being presented. If wrestlers are just doing a bunch of stuff, even if the stuff is clever or full of workrate or stiff or whatever else, you can't necessarily draw those throughlines. It's the selling, especially the emotional selling, like what Jon Moxley has been doing as of late, which lets me even find the dots to connect. 

Not every match has this. Not every conventional five star match has this. A lot of times, maybe there's some lip service towards it but it doesn't hold up under scrutiny no matter how exciting and action-packed the match might seem in the moment. You don't have to sacrifice it for "Greatness," because if done with care, it enhances it in every way. It just takes more effort and care.

Maybe that's self-evident, but I honestly don't think you can as easily do what I did up above for the Forbidden Door 2025 cage match main event in the same way. There were too many goofy tonal shifts and funny spots that were done just to pop the wrestlers involved. Specific moments stood out and popped and were impressive but it didn't come together as a narrative in the same way. 

Pro wrestling is an amazing narrative artform that can tell amazing stories almost entirely in ring, through the work alone. This Blood and Guts was built from the Foundation of the I Quit match with Darby and then the subsequent O'Reilly/Strong vs Moxley matches. It was built upon pro wrestling matches that were full of emotion and character development and great emotive performances. That's what made all of the excess here resonate and matter. 

There's a lot to be learned from all of this and I hope the people who make decisions and the wrestlers of both today and tomorrow take the right lessons and not the wrong ones.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (And Friends) 10/27 - 11/2

AEW Dynamite 10/29/25

Jon Moxley vs Kyle O'Reilly

MD: I covered their last match last week and people seemed to enjoy it. Part of me wanted to go super stylized once again. 

Kyle O'Reilly was a man who lost it all. 

After failing to defeat Jon Moxley for a world title opportunity in 2022, he underwent neck surgery. He still does not have full strength in his arm. There was a time immediately thereafter when he never knew if he'd be able to hold his newborn.

But what he lost in strength he gained in focus, redoubling his efforts to train and to let technique push him back towards victory. Along the way, he found friends and lost them again, Paragon only barely forming before Adam Cole ended up on the shelf, possibly indefinitely. But he's a man who rolls with the punches, and with a smile on his face, he found the fun-loving whimsy still within him that was necessary to be the heart and soul of the Conglomeration. 

So on and so forth. I'd write about how this time, after scoring one of the biggest victories of his career but having been robbed of an even greater one by Jon Moxley's cowardice, he marched down to the ring with a more serious expression, how he had one more chance to snatch glory long past a point that anyone thought he'd still be in contention for it. 

But then he hit the ring and Moxley, after taking a few shots from Marina to warm him up, followed him in, and I saw the match and now that's just not what I want to write. 

I think that was a great way to remind everyone of the greatness of the first match, but here, it's worth really delving in to the storytelling at play.

Look, we take it for granted. In 2025, just as often as not, maybe more often than not, the logic is flipped. Wrestlers think up big spots and then they work the match around them. They work backwards from the special effects instead of crafting a story worthy of those fireworks and then inserting them in.

This was the very opposite of that.

What I wrote above and what I wrote last week... those things aren't just fluff. They're not just stylized dramatizations. They distill characters. Characters have motivations, hopes, fears, things that drive them. In a perfect world of fiction, these things then intersect with their attributes, physical and skill both, and impacted by environment, then underpin every single action and reaction. This should be the bare minimum in any fictional narrative but all too often in wrestling, it's an afterthought at best or ignored or shoehorned completely in order to try to pop people with something cool or with endless excess.

Not here. 

You could see it from the initial exchange. Character drove the strategic approach of both wrestlers. O'Reilly rolled to try to pick a leg right from the start. Moxley backed off and then tried to bully his way into holds, combining technique with aggression. O'Reilly had an answer to everything, in part because his technique was superior and in part because Moxley was out of control. Mox would go to the eyes, to the nose, to the ear, to anything soft to try to squeeze out an advantage, but O'Reilly was ready for it. In countering those underhanded tactics, he got a little hot though, could maybe feel Moxley's desperation and he charged in with a knee in the ropes that Moxley was then able to use to heft him up and over the top, truly taking over for the first time.

You can continue to follow these threads. Moxley attacked the hand first, worried about O'Reilly's cross arm breaker. But he couldn't help rubbing it in, couldn't help grinding down, couldn't help stomping away. That gave O'Reilly an opening to snatch the leg and starting to work upon it. Moxley, panicking, went right back to the eye and then, not just wanting to win but needing to main, shifted to the neck, the same neck that had been damaged out of their match back in 2022. But O'Reilly knew he had him rattled and he met him standing with strikes getting a seeming advantage but really falling into Moxley's trap, a pile driver.

It's all right there in the text, all shaped by the context, driven by the subtext. Moxley had his back against the wall, respected his opponent, hated his opponent, wanted to stick it to the fans. He'd not just run him to the stairs to slam his head in but would carefully bring him over in a full nelson. He'd lose the advantage by focusing too much on the fans and charging shoulder first into the post, allowing O'Reilly to utilize a dragon screw leg whip. He was cruel and careful one moment and entirely erratic the next. When he was in the ankle lock this time, he was staring at Aubrey Edwards and everyone had to wonder if he'd slug her too.

And O'Reilly balanced the opportunistic counters of a level-headed practitioner with a man with so much left to prove. He occasionally overshot but never so much that he couldn't recover. Moxley would catch his foot when he tried to stand even with him and throw punches and kicks, but he'd be able to spin out and hit something else. When Moxley went for the Gotch Pile Driver, he kept a cool head and turned it into a triangle. This match was his moment, and while he never stopped knowing it, he refused to let it shake him.

Watch this again. At every moment, it was character driving the action, character informing the reactions, character creating outcomes. 

That took them all the way to the finish. This time, back in the ankle lock, Moxley doesn't attack the ref. He dives towards the ropes instead. That throws O'Reilly off but they both end up on the floor. After one or two rotations, O'Reilly locks in a floating guillotine. The count ticks up and Kyle, lost in the moment (his moment), loses sight of the bigger picture. Aubrey counts them out, Moxley survives again even in symbolic defeat, Shafir turns out to be the one to attack Aubrey, and the tension builds in a very organic way for Blood and Guts where Moxley will not be able to escape. 

It's all right there, and in truth, it shouldn't be worth me having to lean so hard into. In a perfect world, I wouldn't have to. If every match operated like this, like so much of other fiction does, then we could take this for granted. But matches aren't like this. This is an outlier. This is special, and the only reason I even could dramatize it and stylize it like I did last week is because they put so much into it. We should expect more. We should expect this. But until we get it match in and match out, we should raise this sort of pro wrestling onto the pedestal it deserves.    

Darby Allin/Orange Cassidy vs Wheeler Yuta/Daniel Garcia

MD: Just a couple of paragraphs about this since Darby is someone we write about and I really enjoyed this match. It was there to further the Death Riders vs Darby/Conglomeration story. On paper, you wouldn't necessarily want this to be a tornado tag, even if it does suit Darby, but the four way for the tag title shot was going to follow it, and the two matches needed to feel different. 

With a tornado tag you usually get a spot-first approach as mentioned above. Here, the characters were really driving it, Darby's intensity, Cassidy's mind-games, Garcia's chip on his shoulder, Yuta just being an irritating menace. Garcia's particularly great at showing (selling) how Cassidy going to the pockets gets to him, but he also got drawn in by Darby teasing with the skateboard. Character-driven spots. My favorite bit might have been when Cassidy leaped over the rail to stymie a Garcia whip only for Yuta to nail him from off-screen (both for Yuta's trademark appearance from off camera to cheapshot, and because of Garcia's reaction). That led to Darby diving onto all of them. Or it might have been how, after jamming Cassidy's skull onto the guardrail with a brainbuster, Yuta shoved Darby off the top and Garcia and Yuta both jawed with the fans, drawing real, true, honest, genuine heat in 2025 by being as obnoxious and proud and unlikable as possible. Yuta going under the ring and only finding his middle finger to piss off the crowd would be a not distant third.

They built to a big comeback (set up by Cassidy putting his hands in his pockets while the two were on the outside) and them paying off what they had set up earlier (including, literally, a table). I hadn't expected Garcia and Yuta to lean into each other like this. It felt like they were heading towards immediate dissension. Bowens/Caster and Takeshita/Okada are already in that lane though, so it can always come later though. For now, this is a (death) ride worth enjoying.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 9/29 - 10/5

AEW Collision 10/4/25

LFI (RUSH/Sammy Guevara vs Cha Cha Charlie/Shayne Stetson
Eddie Kingston vs Dralistico

MD: It's a bit odd to have both Eddie and Darby back to be honest. I was used to leaning hard on that "And Friends" parenthetical to make these run, and that meant getting to pick and choose as opposed to take what's thrown my way. There's a lot of value in the latter approach because wresting is innately interesting to write about, even when the angle of entry can be trickier. Of course Dustin is down, but that's still a two-to-one difference and probably with more frequent TV matches. Anyway, this was great, because it was two segments with my guys back to back one bleeding right into the next. 

The tag was a rout obviously. I do have a prevailing thought about Sammy. He's very comfortable in the moment now, very good at walking on water. By that I mean that in this pairing, he's less prone to doing one linked spot after the next. Instead he's just sort of living the experience that is teaming with Rush. I don't agree with every single creative decision he makes in these moments (like Charlie dancing here), but I am acutely aware that he's living in them far more than in any previous point of his career. His matches feel more alive. Maybe they feel a little weird as he works out the act with Rush, but it's some of the most interesting work I've ever seen him do, just finding his footing in a world that's so different from late 2010 indies. IF, and this is a big if, this has time to develop, Sammy could come out of this someone to watch.

Eddie's always worth watching but he's especially so in this run. It's very clear after this match what I suspected after the Bill match. He's working a Japanese hurt comeback. Again, I didn't agree with every single creative decision on how he chose to show it, but it was much more overt here. I just wish the announcers would pick up on it. Eddie would do a bit where he'd take a chop and fire back and then take another and just collapse as he tried to fire back the second time. Obviously Eddie would have never wrestled like that usually. So he's really trying to express that he's not well yet, that he's not ok yet, that he's still climbing.

And for the most part, the fans got it... sort of. I'm not sure they knew why Eddie was having so much trouble, but they were willing to stick behind him as he continued to fight and crawl and climb. They clapped him up in the corner, for instance. Of course, then Dralistico committed a cardinal sin and took the claps over for himself without being nearly heelish enough for it.

Still, Eddie kept going, kept mixing gnashing defiance with pained collapse, again and again. And once again he won on a fluke uraken. There's something here and I really do think it's just a matter of better cluing the fans in on it. 

AEW Dynamite 10/1/25

Darby Allin/Kris Statlander vs Wheeler Yuta/Marina Shafir

MD: Not that long ago, we had good reason to rewatch the Brisco Brothers vs Road Warriors Tornado Tag match from 83. While it felt organic and chaotic, both good things, it didn't feel nearly as compelling as we would have liked. Look, I'm the biggest proponent in the world of wrestling that feels alive and gripping in the moment, and most of the time, that means a balance between what's planned and what's natural and plays off the crowd (even if it's played off by calling spots that are memorized and honed through repetition). But in an environment like this, maybe you need a slightly different balance to maximize the potential.

There were a lot of moving parts here. Statlander had just had her big DDP moment, refusing the Death Riders and escaping through the crowd. Frankly, she's in a weird place overall and I can't tell you exactly what they're trying to do with her. That felt like a huge moment and they followed it up here. She obviously has the title, but instead of continuing to brush up against the Death Riders, she's moving towards Toni for the PPV. Kris vs Toni is a huge singles match for the division, but it feels a little like DDP turning down the NWO and immediately feuding with Sting instead of them. 

If that's the case, then it means this was the only chance to blow off the Yuta stuff, and I have to admit, he felt like a big deal here. There was a moment relatively early on after the immediate ambush-driven shine (where Statlander did a great job basing for Shafir climbing all over her by the way) where Darby shifted the tides of fate by crashing into a chair. More on that later, but here it let Yuta really dominate him through the break. We've seen Yuta's skin the cat (slip the cat?) sneak back in after getting tossed with the immediate go-behind into a German but here was the fist time I remember it being used by him as a heel (it's usually a babyface spot!) so effectively as a cutoff for a hope spot. 

The comeback was another one of those twist of fate moments, where Statlander first reversed a suplex out on the announcer table and then a similar one with Yuta, avoiding the thumbtacks he laid out and laying him out onto the sea of chairs they'd tossed into the ring. Look, Darby was here so this was chaotic with a bunch of huge bumps, but it was very controlled chaos, almost ritualistic. As a Tornado Tag they couldn't avoid men and women getting at it like they're usually fairly careful about but even in the sea of violence, it was kept in pocket as an escalation to set up a big moment in the finishing stretch. In that regard, I thought they got the balance just right between discipline and wildness. 

My only regret is that they're not staying with this a bit longer. Marina vs Kris would have been a sufficiently big match for WrestleDream (though with Joe vs Hangman, which will be great but maybe isn't a huge selling point), Toni vs Kris could actually main even the thing. If they needed that, fine, they can always go back to this. But as is, I'm not at all sure that Kris truly finished her redemption story and there's probably still some meat on that bone. 

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D3AN~!!! Day 3: YUTA~! MAKO~!

DEAN~!!! 3 9/6/25

Wheeler Yuta vs Matt Mako

MD: If the first Texas residency belonged to Hologram and if the Chicago residency belonged to Toni Storm, I kind of sort of thing that this Philly residency belongs to Yuta. Maybe not the clearest choice. You could argue Daniel Garcia or Mox or maybe a few others. But there was something about how the hometown crowd thoroughly hated Yuta that puts it over the top. Every time he appeared on screen, the chants started. Every time he tagged in, the boos rang out.

As such, this will end up being his signature match for the residency (there's still that ROH mixed tag with Shafir coming up, which is TK booking for me once again), because it was very good. 

If Matthews vs Starkz was about contrast, this one was about dissonance. 

Yuta is incredibly skilled. The springboard takeover into a seamless, picture perfect Cattle Mutilation was a thing of beauty. He nailed his signature rebound between the ropes to hit a German Suplex. He's a former Pure Champion. Yet the transition to offense was because Shafir got involved. Yet when pressed, he pulled off the turnbuckle pad to try to get an advantage. Yet he only won because of another Shafir distraction and him going to the eyes. 

That gap between obvious truth (Yuta's skill) and reality (Yuta's cheating), between expectation and how things actually play out creates a sort of cognitive dissonance which is the cornerstone for heel heat. It's well and good if the bad guy does something bad, but when he does it in a way that runs counter to the possibilities the fans know to be true, that's even worse. 

Of course, you might argue that Mako drove him to it by being that good. Just one tremendous, memorable, crisp piece of offense after the next. Even when Yuta did get him, like with that Cattle Mutilation, he couldn't keep him in it. Even when Shafir got in his face, like after he dropped Yuta into a chair on the outside with a sleeper, Mako was able to just shift directions and crash into Yuta with even more speed. 

But still, Yuta should be able to at least hold his own and on a card like this, he should have at least tried (not to mention the insult to injury that was his out of line behavior post match attacking one of Dean's kids). The only thing he proved here was that Mako had his number. But that doesn't matter when it comes to the record books. 

And that selfless performative embodiment of true selfishness is exactly why Yuta gets the legitimate heat that he does in a world still afflicted by ironic chants and winking cool heels. And it's why he owned his hometown residency, even in more of a secondary role.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 10/7 - 10/13 Part 1

MD: Brief programming note. We'll have Found Footage Friday up on Saturday or Sunday this week as a one time thing. It's worth the wait. We've got some fun stuff you've almost certainly never seen before. Also, thanks to everyone for the support this week (even Max.....). If you haven't seen it, I'm back up at https://x.com/mattd_sc/ now, so give me a follow.

AEW Dynamite 10/8/24

Bryan Danielson/Wheeler Yuta vs Claudio Castagnoli/PAC

MD: What put this over the top for me was the characterization at play. Let's break it down. Danielson's motivations have been all over the place in his last few matches, but believably so. He's a man haunted by betrayal, carrying the weight of destiny, knowing the Sword of Damocles is over his head, knowing that he's on borrowed time, but also knowing that paradise awaits. Instead of being conflicted, he's of singular vision. There is no conflict within him, only before him. He was detached against Nigel and frustrated but engaged against Okada. Here he was consumed by the need to punish Claudio for his transgressions. Yuta's the opposite, a six man champion at odds with his partners, split between two mentors. He chose his side but now he has to live with it and it's easier to die for someone than to live for them (and despite how I'm going to end this review, I'm not convinced he doesn't have reason to doubt his choices after having seen Danielson so blinded by rage). Claudio was cool, collected. Bryan would throw himself at him. Claudio is a constant. Eventually, Claudio would catch him, bend him, break him, soften him up for Moxley. And Yuta? Claudio is confident in his cause, comfortable with his decisions. He'll lean on Yuta until he understands. He has the luxury in a match like this. That leaves PAC: PAC just wants to see the world burn. He finally has a purpose, finally has a home, finally is surrounded by people who aren't just posing and preening, finally with people who will let him light the match. Maybe Moxley wants to burn it all down to build it back up again. Frankly, PAC doesn't care. He just want to see the glow of the embers and feel the heat on his cheeks.

It all played out in the match, with Danielson bursting forth, looking away from PAC and crashing into Claudio on the outside, with Yuta and Danielson, in matching gear, with matching dives. It made me wish we had a few more months of them together, that we could see them against FTR or in a dominant 8 minute tag against Nese/Daivari. That's not the world we live in though; this is, and here, everything is coming apart at the seams. Danielson had not been reckless against Okada, not even with a time limit counting down. He had not been reckless against Nigel, no matter how badly McGuinness deserved it. Here though, he was nothing but reckless. Yuta was poised, focused, driven, and locked PAC in the Cattle Mutilation. Claudio casually, patiently walked over and broke the hold. Danielson was incensed. He dove at Claudio once more, but this time Claudio caught him.

With Danielson Neutralized (literally) on the floor, the dynamic changed. Now Yuta had to live with his decision in the most painful of ways, as a face-in-peril with a partner who had, for all intents and purposes, taken himself out of the match. He fought valiantly, but the odds were against him. Even if Claudio wasn't actively trying to hurt him, that didn't mean he couldn't punish him, couldn't teach him a lesson, and PAC, who lately has been wielding a hug like another man might wield a battle axe, well.. he had no qualms about hurting Yuta: lesson, punishment, none of the above; it was all good to him. But Yuta fought on, even made it to the corner, made it to the corner only to find Bryan not there, not yet recovered.

It was a moment of heartbreak, a stark, symbolic reminder of what is ahead of us all. Pretty soon, Bryan will not be there. Maybe he beats Moxley, but if you watched him here, driven by rage, out of balance for the first time since the Eddie Kingston match earlier this year where he found peace in defeat... you don't get the sense that he can beat Moxley. You can't beat Jon Moxley with the World Title on the line with rage. There's not enough rage in the world for that. Maybe he's lying about his injury. He does that, right? I don't think he is. What I think is that after Wrestledream, we won't see Bryan Danielson for a good long while. We're going to reach out for that tag on a Wednesday Night in cold, dark December, like we've been able to do for the last three years, and he's not going to be there.

So Yuta crumbled, suffered. Hope started to leave him. Then he felt it, the hand come down upon his back, a tag so blind that he couldn't even have imagined its arrival. Because that's the thing, for those of us who have known the love of pro wrestling in this century, Bryan Danielson will always be there. He's part of what it means for us to love this, whether it's him helping to define a brand new style in the early 00s, him demanding the full five count from a ref, him kicking someone's head in, him bursting through glass ceilings that were supposed to be impenetrable, him goofing around (on a Saturday morning kid's show, on the JBL and Cole show as the Dazzler, or at a Dark taping in a lucha mask), or him defining his last year of pro wrestling by facing every compelling opponent imaginable, he's never going to be far from our memories of pro wrestling, and I speak for everyone reading this that we think about pro wrestling way too much.

So some day a few months from now when things seem bleak in the dead of winter, you're going to take a breath, pull up some random ECCW match on YouTube, or find the 2/3 falls Sheamus match from Extreme Rules 2011, or hop onto Honor Club and watch him against Morishima, or HOPEFULLY by that point, be able to watch the RUSH match from Dynamite on Max. And you'll feel that slap on the back, and he'll tag in, and you'll get twenty minutes where everything feels just a little bit better, because that's the power of pro wrestling, and no one who made his home primarily in this current century of ours could wield it quite like Bryan Danielson.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and friends) 9/23 - 9/29 Part 2

AEW Collision Grand Slam 9/28/24

Claudio Castagnoli/PAC/Wheeler Yuta vs Private Party/Komander

MD: I'm going to pass on Moxley vs Allin. I just have more to say about the Collision matches. It was very good. It's wrestlers pressing each other to the limit. It's exactly what we need. I'm not going to cover too much of the actual happenings in this trios match either. Obviously, Claudio was an amazing base; PAC is really finding himself in this role, is reveling in it; Kassidy, Quen, and Komander saw their opportunity and fought from underneath and showed fire with a never-say-die attitude.

But really, this was all about the interplay of Yuta with his partners. This will play into the Jarrett vs Page match as well, but balancing complex characters in pro wrestling is hard. At the end of the day, it has to transfer to the ring and has to live in front of a crowd, an opinionated, reacting crowd. You can't control these reactions except for through craft and cunning. We're in an age of instant response where people will tweet about a new episode of scripted television, but that won't affect those shows in the moment. It doesn't impact the actual art as it's happening in the same way as wrestling where the crowd is part of the overall effect.

It means that if you lead with real complexity, you could get a split crowd when you don't want that at all. But if you can actually pull it off? Well, then you get something that only a tiny fraction of all pro wrestling ever has managed to deliver upon and that has almost always been a success.

Wheeler Yuta is the most interesting character in wrestling right now. By its inherent nature, this moment can’t last. He's going to make a decision one way or another. Then, maybe he'll be a heel, one who has to live with his decision and his actions and the constant peer pressure around him. He'll be the living, breathing definition of a young man trying to justify what he had done and what he had become, likely by throwing himself entirely into the dark vision that Jon Moxley presents. He could be a heatseeker, bolstered by his betrayal, getting under everyone's skin, made all the worse because deep down, everyone knows that he's just weak. Yes, there are some parallels to Jack Perry that they'll have to navigate but it's not quite the same.

Or he can lean hard into what the fans want right now, can master his rage and frustration and emotions and stand for something. He can be the light that continues to shine after Bryan Danielson has gone off into his retirement. He can be the nucleus for a new Super Generation Army, someone to actually be elevated into a star. He could be a Kobashi who represents the fans' love of wrestling and the spirit they all want to have inside of them. Remember, AJPW didn't push Misawa and company to the moon right after Tenryu left. They held steady on with hosses like Hansen, Doc, and Gordy on top until the younger talent was built up, into 1991. That paid off for years. Yuta can be built in the same way. He can press up against PAC, Claudio, Moxley again and again, getting just a little farther each time, until he finally overcomes. Is that something AEW wants? Do they want to sacrifice part of the now, maximizing the moment, in order to truly build people, to not just give them one big feud, one big moment, and then shunt them back down onto the card because they don't fit the Dynasty dynamic?

I don't know, but right now he's Schrodinger's Wrestler, trying to control his own emotions, with all of us unsure where he’ll land. Jon Moxley has given into his emotions. Bryan Danielson has conquered his own. Yuta is in flux. He's a trained killer with a good heart. It's so essential here to have Claudio and PAC clearly coded as heels in the ring, ones that believe in something, ones with a chip on their shoulder, ones with a point, but ones that are absolutely painting a crystal clear picture. The crowd knows exactly how to respond to them. They're the grounded stability that makes this sort of complexity possible. Claudio has an almost familial expectation for Yuta, simple and direct. PAC, finally at home in a way that maybe he never was with his last set of partners, in turn has an almost bestial glee at the idea of Yuta giving into the twisted spirit and joining them. Every cut to him snarling and smiling provides the exact color this storyline needs.

And Yuta walks the line like the star he could be, believable, compelling, engaging. He's an unlikely protagonist but wrestling is an unlikely business. The fans have cautiously let him into their heart, for in so many ways he represents them in the face of what’s happened. If a TV deal is just about to be signed, there's never a better time to take a risk. It could well be time to make a leap of faith and take a gamble on Yuta for the sake of the future, no matter which way he falls. After all, there isn’t currently a better story in wrestling.

Jeff Jarrett vs Hangman Page (Lumberjack Strap Match)

MD: And Hangman Page is the second most interesting character in wrestling. I think this needs less breaking down, but I do want to note a couple of things. Hangman won the match. After doing so, he slapped the mat like he was a fired-up babyface. Then he hung a guy. Before that came a low blow and the Deadeye. Before that came him basically fighting off nine people, including someone's wife and a giant, all with straps. Talk about being all over the place narratively. Or at least, it should have been on paper. But it worked on the strength of Hangman Page and Jeff Jarrett as performers, maybe with a little of Tony commentating based on what Page had just threatened to do to him too. That's super impressive (and incredibly compelling) when you think about it.
 
What I loved most about this one, however, was how they treated the gimmick. Maybe a straight up chain/dog collar/strap match between the two would have been more visceral and gripping, but since they decided to go this route (seemingly to transition Page towards the BBG; small concern there as they're not the same sort of constants that Claudio/PAC are playing - it could get messy), the way to do it was to treat the straps held by the lumberjacks like a big deal. They built to Page getting whalloped by basically everyone and they built to it smartly. That meant him getting pushed towards the apron early on and treating it like a huge thing, something to be avoided at all costs. He took it seriously with total earnestness. There was no inkling of irony. It reminded me of how Onita would get over the exploding cage early in those matches. If you build up a gimmick as something the wrestlers are wary of, then the fans are going to care about it too.

They were laser-focused and consistent with it. When they did play things as cute, for instance when Jarrett got tossed out to his cronies and they gave him a hug and pushed him back in, they immediately turned it by Page throwing him out the other side of the ring so that the heels over there could give him some shots. Therefore, when Page finally did hit the floor, him getting whipped as a huge deal. Remember, this was a show with a Texas Tornado tag and a Saraya's Rules hardcore match. They'd seen crazier things than even Satnam whipping someone, but none of it was built to like this. Just impressive stuff overall. If Hangman can keep some of these lessons close to his heart moving forward, the sky is the limit for him. I know a lot of people think he was always great, but this little bit of discipline, this little bit more of giving himself over to believing and getting the fans to believe, well, it can take him even further, further than he's ever been.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 9/9 - 9/15

AEW Collision 9/14/24

Wheeler Yuta vs Anthony Henry

MD: There are only so many stories in the world. That's what some people think at least. You can find literary theory listing seven, for instance: 1. Overcoming the Monster; 2. Rags to Riches; 3. The Quest; 4. Voyage and Return; 5. Rebirth; 6. Comedy; 7. Tragedy. It's all about the execution though, all about the details. You can immediately see some parallels to wrestling and the stories that can be told, not just in general, but specifically in the ring. I won't try to categorize along those lines. It's more the general idea I find interesting. We've seen so much, but so much falls along a few different lines: babyface vs heel; shine, heat, comeback; who's the best?

You get different results, different manifestations, different details. Looked at in another way, it's all about something that has to be overcome: a size differential, cheating, an injury. You can watch a thousand matches and see five or six things over and over again, and that's okay because you can find appreciation in small alterations and massive ambitions.

But when you see a match that's worked differently, that plays upon one of those elements in a different way, that commits to an unusual, yet still believable and human idea, it stands out.

That's what we had here. Wheeler is a man cratered, a miserable man, a man at his lowest. We would find out he just lost a family member; moreover, his found family is forever shattered. For all the things I know and all the things I've seen, I have no idea how hard it is to actually go in a ring and wrestle, to keep track of spots or to call them, to hit things with perfect precision to protect yourself and your opponent while creating the illusion of fireworks to move and wow a crowd. I'm pretty sure it's pretty damn hard though, and to do all of it while portraying an emotional anchor dragging you down, to change every aspect of your body language without a moment's lapse? It feels akin to wrestling in a mask for the first time or wrestling underwater.

In no part of the match was Yuta not on, not feeling it, not portraying it, not channeling it. I can think of performances where someone sells the leg throughout, but Yuta was selling his soul. At one point early in the match, he managed a small comeback only to clutch at his chest, afflicted by the effects of a broken heart.

He managed it throughout the first third, and in all honesty, this might have been the most challenging of all of it. It meant working rote wristlock-based chain wrestling a half step slow, going through the motions with all the normal skill but none of the energy or passion. He'd hit a sunset flip but would linger and leave himself open. He'd get knocked through the bottom rope but be unable to shoot himself back in with his signature recovery. Those were the big things. The little things like listlessly moving through a headlock exchange were somehow far more impressive; the idea is that most can do something fast and wild but it takes a real expert to do it do it tortuously slow.

Henry pressed his advantage on the floor and changed the tenor of the match by suplexing Yuta into the guardrail. For the most part, he played his role perfectly. Henry's a guy with a chip on his shoulder, with plenty of chips actually. Let's look at the character. He's a veteran trapped beneath an artificial ceiling, and he knows how good he is. He almost lost everything due to injury earlier this year; so did Yuta, but Henry's the one pressing his opportunities now as Yuta sleepwalks through this match for emotional reasons. His partner's on the shelf so it's not like he doesn't feel his own grief. He's stuck with his an irritating (and wildly successful) second cousin by marriage in Beef so he's got a burr that Yuta can't begin to understand. Yuta's a trios champion! He's got success right before him. All he has to do is man up and embrace it. That was the emotion underpinning every one of Henry's actions here. Yuta needed contrast to push off against: a vibrant, seething energy to provide the light that let us see the shadows creeping into his every movement.

You could hear it in the crowd in the first third, an unsettled hush. You could hear them in the second third when they started to get behind Yuta. Even then, things were off. His hopespots were lackluster. The commercial break ended and he didn't start to fire back like we'd usually see in most other AEW matches. He'd hit a big move like his German Suplex but would be unable to capitalize. He'd buy space and make it to the floor only to stumble into a chair exhausted and get nailed. I'd say that the attention to detail was amazing, but like I noted, those few big ideas (like not being able to shoot himself back in) were the (relatively) easy bits; what made this work was how the depression consumed him all the way from his pre-match interview with Lexy where he noted he hoped to find himself in the ring like Bryan did, to him trudging out towards the ring to his usually rousing Punch Out theme, all the way to the very second that Henry took it too far. That was the genius in this performance, the consistent mood he created through his total commitment, not one or two clever moments of misery.

And Henry did go too far. If I could change one thing in the match, maybe I would have had him not verbally goad him with the "sad boy" comment and the comment about Bryan. It would have been enough for it to be implied probably. On the other hand, this is such a unique story that they're telling that it's better to overexplain. I think the slap itself could have been enough to awaken the fury within Yuta, but we can't be sure. Regardless, it worked. It absolutely worked. Everything Yuta had been holding within burst out of him to create suffering upon Henry's frame. He beat him around the ring, around the ringside area (even getting revenge in that selfsame chair), and then put him down with the elbows and the Mutilation. Once unleashed, it took everything he had to bottle it back up; he was seeing red.

All in all, it was as unique a performance for a television match as I've seen in ages. It could have been overwrought or over the top. Yuta could have gone out and made faces and forced it into the realm of self-parody. He played it subdued save for the one moment where his passions boiled over and Henry took it too far. This storyline feels different than everything else in the company, then everything else in 2024 wrestling. It has the potential to be something more, something that grips the hearts within our chests and refuses to let go, something that moves us in the best of ways, something that leads to triumph but only after the longest, hardest most worthwhile road, something that both transcends and glorifies pro wrestling as the unique and amazing art form that it is. What it'll take more than anything else is commitment and care. If they care, we will care. And Yuta cared so very much here. This was just a small match on a small show, but it felt like the second ripple signifying the tidal wave that may come.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 9/2 - 9/8 Part 1

AEW Collision 9/6/24

Bryan Danielson/Claudio Castagnoli/Wheeler Yuta/Pac vs. Jack Perry/Kazuchika Okada/Matthew Jackson/Nicholas Jackson

MD: Wrestling seems to be the easiest thing in the world and the hardest thing. It's creating a primal connection with people that touches the core of their humanity, denial and gratification that stimulates the endorphins in the brain. It's building imaginary towers, bigger and bigger, creating more and more emotions. Yet if you try to overcomplicate it in the wrong ways or if you don't control for extraneous bits, you lose people along the way and only end up with a ghost of what you might have otherwise built. Worst case, the entire structure collapses in upon itself. The main thing you're trying to do is build up a credible, believable reality while at the same time creating as few disruptions that hinder suspension of disbelief as possible. Wrestling isn't math, but if there was an equation, you'd have that positive element and that negative element summing up to create as much immersion and emotion as possible.

I wrote about alignment the other day and I'll double down on it a little bit here. The build for Pac vs Ospreay has been all about Pac ambushing the likable chap. Cheapshots, denying the crowd the first Ricochet vs Ospreay interaction, walking around with a chip on his shoulder. Maybe Pac has a point but the way that he's going about it is not buying him any favor with the crowd. Yet due to opportunity or circumstance, he's one third of the trios champs, with a group that he had grievances with just last year after their last attempt to team up. And here he had to be a fiery babyface. Yes, characters can be three dimensional and don't need to follow clear heel/face alignment, but they do need to be presented in consistent ways. Moreover, I have no idea what Pac thinks about his partners or how he feels about working with them. I don't have a great sense how he feels about the Elite right now. Here, it felt like a chink in the armor of the match, something that raised questions that weren't going to get answered, that took people out of the proceedings.

There were both structural positives and negatives as well. I'll get to Perry and his antics in a paragraph or two. Top of the list of positives was the denial and payoff of certain elements: Danielson getting his hands on Perry (an alchemy of its own), and certainly the giant swing, which was teased early and then cut off only to come back for the finish, denial and gratification just like it should be. Also there was a very strong face-in-peril segment on Danielson and co. with the Elite hitting a lot of interesting, dynamic, mean, credible offense in rapid succession. On the other hand, you had the big frog splash on multiple members of the babyface side at once, which probably took too long, and had things like Okada hanging on to the much stronger and not all that damaged Claudio for ages while they set it up. Another crack in the foundation. You can kind of get away with something like that if the babyfaces are doing it to the heels as part of a comeuppance laden comeback because you're expecting the babyfaces to be stronger and the heels to try to (and be unable to) wriggle away, but it doesn't work nearly as well when it's the heels doing it to try to get more heat. It's stuff that looks good on paper, maybe, but that ends up being more of a negative in the equation than the positive.  

And then there was the timing of everything breaking down only to come back together and calm down for the first ten minutes or so of Rampage. A match like this was always going to break down once or twice and probably needed to cover a few extra minutes to keep people engaged for the transition to Rampage. I'll admit that I was kind of ready for everything to go home shortly after the teased Okada dive. If they were going to go a few more minutes, just beating Okada around without major attempts to try to pin him wasn't the most engaging thing in the world. Another round of heat on someone like Yuta leading to a second hot tag and the actual finish would have reset the tension enough to get them over the finish line. I get that they had to get through the first commercial break for Rampage but the crowd was low again after the chaos of everyone hitting big moves in rapid succession and beating on Okada didn't really give them a chance to build up dramatic tension again for the finish.

Speaking of tension, let's talk about stalling. I'm still not quite over the lack of it in MJF vs Ospreay at All In, but that doesn't mean I want him to do it against Garcia at All Out. The situation is different. Vs Ospreay he was the blowhard champ and there was a real opportunity to figure out what the crowd wanted (in this case to see Ospreay do his stuff in a stadium and amass rating stars) and deny it completely while showing a cowardice and hypocrisy relative to what he'd been saying. Against Garcia, Max has a hierarchical advantage and while Garcia wants revenge, it makes sense to go a different route with layout and exactly how to heel. Perry's an interesting case. He claims to have just wanted a chance to prove himself but was benched, to be his own man and not Jungle Boy, that he was a scapegoat when he's really just a standup guy, that it wasn't his fault. But then in ring, he's been taking shortcuts and avoiding confrontation wherever possible. He'll get in when it's easy and hit the floor when it's hard. 

I never wanted stalling for the sake of stalling (I never want anything for the sake of itself!). For MJF vs Ospreay, it would have been purposeful, and I think with Perry, maybe it is as well. The heart of any heel is cognitive dissonance. Just like how comedy works by creating a gap between expectation and reality, heeling does as well. Within that contradiction, animosity can be created within the hearts of the fans. Heels can say one thing and do another and then deny that there's any difference at all. There's heat to be found there.

I think Perry's doing a pretty good job at striking the right balance. The first time he came in, the fans were happy to chant along with his catch phrase. But after he escaped Danielson kicking his head in (and that never did get fully paid off in this one; that's for the PPV), and after he popped in and out for a few cheapshots, they seemed a lot less willing to sing along and more eager to see him take a beating. Good! There's a place for all sorts of things on the card, and if he wants to lay claim to that, and if he can find the slightly shifting balance that really fits his character in different situations against different opponents, there's a real chance that Perry can find that niche after all. But like I said, while it's pure and primal, a burr in the heel of the audience that will drive them to care, it's not always easy. But often times, it's the hardest things that are most worthwhile.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 6/10 - 6/16

AEW Collision 6/15/24

Blackpool Combat Club (Castagnoli/Danielson/Moxley/Yuta) vs. TMDK (Haste/Nicholls)/Lio Rush/Rocky Romero

MD: Right before the finish, Tony Schiavone called the giant swing a work of art. He was close but not quite on the mark. The real work of art was that entire sequence, everything from Danielson's knee (and Nicholls crashing hard into the ropes in a way no one ever does as they take the move), Haste's dropkick, Yuta's sweeping Angle Slam, Rocky's Shiranui, and then finally the double leg into the swing. All of that worked in a rhythmic motion to become something greater than the sum of the parts and greater than most "everything breaks down" finishing stretches. I'm not one to wax poetic about specific visuals in wrestling. I'm a substance over style sort of guy, but the "follow the bouncing ball" wind-swooshing motion here was truly spectacular. I can't really believe it was intentional because creating the sort of visual effect that pulls your eye in exactly the right direction at exactly the right time over multiple moves while still feeling at least somewhat organic would take immense coordination between multiple wrestlers at least somewhat unfamiliar with one another, not to mention the camera crew and producers. I'd worry that any attempt to intentionally replicate the effect would create the most tragically artificial and stilted pro wrestling imaginable. Honestly, I'm not even sure if it even hit anyone else quite like it hit me, but hit me it did.

Speaking of things that are just hitting me, there seems to be an extra bit of magic to Forbidden Door season this year. Part of it is that I wasn't a big 2010s New Japan guy so a lot of these dream matches aren't that dreamy for me. What does appeal, however, is the wild WAR feel of it all in the build, the sense that there's a greater world out there, one that is only enhanced by CMLL and Stardom being in the mix this year. With that in mind, and this being a cold match, I thought they made the most of it. That meant letting Lio Rush go wild against Danielson and Yuta to start. It meant having TMDK act as a unit in almost everything they did. It meant having Danielson play face-in-peril yet again, another stellar such performance in a long line of them now. It meant having Rocky get cocky and then having his coccyx crushed by the absurd and sublime top rope inverted atomic drop. It meant Claudio as the hot tag, running through every bit of interference they tried to throw his way, and Moxley as the monster unleashed who they had antagonized throughout the match but who didn't really get to come in until it was time to end things. Add in the pro wrestling version of The Great Wave off Kanagawa that I recounted in the first paragraph and you ended up with a very fun way to kick off a Collision during Forbidden Door season. Hopefully we get at least one more of these before it's all said and done.

AEW Dynamite 6/12/24

Dustin Rhodes vs. Jack Perry

MD: I had reason to watch some 1984 Tully Blanchard lately. Now, due to the law of transitive properties (We know Perry didn't listen to SOME advice. We know SOME people didn't listen to Tully's advice. Therefore...), we can assume that Jack has probably not been watching 1984 Tully. Tully had this amazing way of starting most of his matches like he was a gentleman, wrestling by the rules, going hold for hold, breaking clean. Only after the babyface got one up on him did he break bad. It made things somehow more hypocritical and underhanded and got him loads of heat.

So, Jack doesn't do that. Dustin came in with a punch to start and Jack immediately went for the eyes. He was pulling the turnbuckle pad off just seconds letter and tossing Dustin into the stairs the first chance he could. He was pulling the padding up and going for a pile driver. Then, later, when had capitalized on the exposed buckle, he hit a DDT on the floor. After that, he nailed Dustin with a (revenge, admittedly) low blow even when he didn't have to. And you know what, I have to admit that it kind of works for me. Yes, there could be some issues with it (and Perry's promos) being out of sync with the Elite's ironic gimmick but no one needs the dripping irony in 2024 anyway. This is far more genuine and visceral. In a singles match where he can be his own thing, he should be the most direct shitheel imaginable; just straight to the point, no filter, no hesitation, not an attempt at sportsmanship or even the very notion that such a thing might be worthwhile or admirable. It kind of works. It makes him stand out. You can have shades of grey matches. You can have Piper vs Bret. You can have Punk vs Page. But more often than not, there's something to the most direct and straightforward approach, especially if no one else seems to be doing it. No one else on the roster is an unmitigated, petulant jerk like Perry (not even the guy that maybe he is listening to, Christian, who professes to be a paragon of paternity, even if it is just the thinnest of patinas).

Of course, this is Perry having Dustin Rhodes, one of the best babyfaces of this century, to play off of,. Dustin is pretty much the only guy on the roster getting the the fans to clap up for him with his selling and his hand motions alone. But still, efforts like this matter. I'm rooting for Perry to build off of it.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 6/3 - 6/9

AEW Collision 6/8/24

Dustin Rhodes vs Johnny TV

MD: As I get older and as the world becomes more jaded and ironic around me, I find myself more and more as a true believer of pro wrestling. The core tenets work. The core tenets always work. They are primal. They play upon certain facets of our brains in the best of ways. There can be holes, flaws, chinks in the armor, dodgy bits of execution, some coldness when it comes to one of the competitors, but so long as you trust in the time-tested theories, it is going to work. And no one makes it work, no one plays upon those theories, better than Dustin Rhodes. 

So there are bits here I wasn't sure about. Some of the execution seemed a little odd, like that Johnny leapfrog that Dustin slid out on, or even some of the strikes. And I can't tell you, because of the quick camera cuts. I get the purpose of quick camera cuts in an HD world, I really do, but if you're not going to trust in Dustin Rhodes to make his strikes look good, then what are you even doing, right? I can't weigh in one way or another except for in saying that the quick cuts took me out of the match far more than actually seeing Dustin's strikes, good or ill, would have. AEW's early success came in pulling back on some of the more "Sports Entertainment" tropes and production elements and now that we're this post-Dunn moment of WWE leaning away from them, AEW only exposes itself with things like that. Trust wrestling. Trust Dustin. I did love the swooping camera shot during the giant swing in the FTR tag though. Experiment but push things forward, not sideways into the land of Dunn cuts. That's my hope at least.

Anyway, the things that worked absolutely worked. Most especially here was the use of Taya. Dustin won the early mind games by sweeping out, taking Johnny's attention to let him hit the flip off the apron. Taya asserted herself almost immediately thereafter and Johnny took over on the steps. Then, during the commercial break they did the old rule of three build to a comeback, except for this time instead of running the same offensive spot over and over until it got reversed, they did the insult to injury kiss leading to the catapult by Dustin. I would have liked that to be the transition instead of the last hope spot building to the double clothesline, but that's a nitpick, and I was all for Johnny going for the dropdown Goldust punch and failing immediately thereafter. Tom and I were going back and forth on Aminata last week, as I think the way she hits makes her a natural heel and he thinks her charisma and story makes her a natural face. My problem there is that as the sort of face she would be she needs a bunch of 80s chickshit heels to run through and I was thinking only Saraya could (or would, or should, as Athena could but should not) really nail that on the roster. Taya's someone else that could probably pull it off though. 

Collision has morphed from whatever it had initially been to a really powerful way to heat up people that need to be heated up for a storyline purpose. On this show, that was the Premier Athletes for instance. They're going to get fed to Joe, Shibata, and Hook, so they needed some credibility. When I heard Dustin had to cancel an appearance at a con to come into Collision, I knew that it wasn't going to be to immediately heat someone else up. The roster is big and broad enough to have people to do that on a weekly basis. It was to set himself up for something bigger. And I think he'll be a great opponent for Perry to really get to flex his heel muscles. I'll be honest though. The Texas residency is coming and I hope there are certain elements of those shows that are constant week after week, because there’s a real opportunity for that in front of a probable repeat audience. There should be some routine and comfort and consistency and I'd hope some things that build from week to week. Maybe that's someone winning a Brass Knucks trophy in week one and defending it each week until the end (with a cash prize for whoever has it at the end). Or maybe, and here's what I was hoping and still am, it could be a multi-week celebration of Dustin's career. I'm not saying you have to do a King of the Road match or anything (though they should), but leaning on Dustin heavily throughout that run in some way meant to be special and to tug on heartstrings would be a blessing both for the booking and for me getting to write up a bunch of Dustin matches.

AEW Dynamite 6/5/24

Bryan Danielson/Jon Moxley/Wheeler Yuta/Claudio Castagnoli vs Magnus/Rudigo/Volador Jr./Esfinge

MD: I'm glad this happened. The CMLL engagement just hits differently. It's closer to my vision of what I'd like lucha to be and while these CMLL in AEW matches only go about 45% of the way stylistically and structurally, tending to be beatdowns that are confined within AEW's rules even if they have some of that old Infernales spirit, it's still somewhat familiar and nostalgic to me. This, and the four-way to start the show, were great ways to follow up from the critical success of the Casino Gauntlet from the following week and to stress the excitement (felt more this year than previous years) of Forbidden Door season. All action, all interesting action, all the sort of action that you can't get week to week anywhere else in the world. 

I don't have a lot to say about the specifics. These may not exactly be the CMLL guys I'd like to see the most, but the Depredadores worked well together and Magnus was a perfectly fine face in peril. I liked the extended BCC beatdown and especially how any of the BCC spots (at least those connected to Claudio) can work with anyone. Danielson did the Hart Attack here. Mox did the dropkick on the swing. Yuta did both on Collision. This needed to be a bit of a Yuta showcase and he shined at the end at least. I would have liked to see Volador get hit in the face a bit more, but that's just a personal thing. We've probably got more Hechicero on the way, at least, but I'm all for the Forbidden Door staying open for many months to come. 

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2023 Ongoing MOTY List: Kingston vs. Yuta

 

Eddie Kingston vs. Wheeler Yuta AEW Dynamite 8/30/23

ER: I started this out writing "I don't think I have ever Bought In on Wheeler Yuta before..." but I think I said almost the exact same thing about him in the great BCC vs. Dark Order trios from 3/15, so at this point maybe I should just say "I buy into Wheeler Yuta, especially when he is working with or against some of my all time favorite wrestlers". That is still being probably too unfair to Yuta, but it is also tough for me to determine just how good someone is when they are the opposing force to a classic Eddie Kingston Crumbling Body match. We get a lot of Bad Back Kingston and not as much Sharp Pain In My Elbow Kingston, and it is a treat. I buy into Eddie having a sore elbow, and I buy into Wheeler doing things to make it more sore, and I fully buy into Eddie doing things that would make his own sore elbow worse. 

Eddie Kingston has a relatable way of selling big or small injuries. We are all old and we all have aches and pains depending on the day. My personal day to day aches come from much less interesting things, but just the other week my right elbow was sore Just Because, and it bugged me all day. I couldn't move a computer mouse without this thing screaming out a tiny bit, and yet I had to keep using this elbow for every single thing that I did. I was not adapting to using my right handed mouse with my left hand, I was just resigned to spending the day flexing and stretching and shaking out my arm every time I got a little sting. Eddie Kingston is that relatable Dumb Man, someone who gets some dental work done and pokes and chews at his novocaine'd cheek while he can't feel anything and then deals with the consequences later once that novocaine relief is gone. King comes into the match with a big head bandage and his right elbow taped up, and after an engaging, combative lock up, Yuta wastes no time going after that arm. 

Yuta then works almost the entire match in control, in a way that clearly shows that he is always one move away from no longer being in control. Yuta does real, constant damage to Kingston, but everyone does that. That's not what made his match stand out. What made it stand out to me is a confidence that was never present in Yuta. He worked this match not like he could beat Eddie Kingston, but like he knew he was going to. I expected cool flash from him, like that sick tornado single arm DDT that looked like it popped Kingston's elbow, but I was more fascinated by little moments like the way he threw Eddie's arm bandage into the crowd after ripping it off. This was Yuta working like a man who wins fucking fights, and after the way he looked throwing that bandage I actually thought he had a real chance at winning this. Yuta was always someone who could "do the moves" but he always came off like a guy who just wanted to do those moves, not like a guy who embodied those moves. Here, I bought it. The way he would bait Kingston into using that bad arm for chops knowing that the chops would hurt, but more importantly knowing that he could absorb them to then do more damage back, driving knees into Eddie's arm and elbow and running him hard into the ringpost. 

Kingston's big comeback was great, and sudden, and clubbing One Hit that sent Yuta ass over elbow to the floor and then a tremendous emotional tope. It doesn't bring Kingston out of the woods, but he's a momentum guy, and I liked the small changes Yuta made when Kingston started being fueled by momentum. He was still going to be able to catch the arm and fire elbows into that and into Kingston's face, and he was able to pull out Classic Goofy Yuta Offense and scrape by...for awhile. I am vocal about my real hatred for rope rebound offense, but Yuta desperately dipping into his Indy Reserve Offense to swing outside of the ring by the bottom rope - very stupid - only to swing back in and juke Kingston into a German suplex, is a fine example of Yuta tricking King into thinking he's still an indy goof and using his reaction against him. King lunged forward and Yuta's rebound while Yuta was ducking that lunge into a go behind. 

I love when Kingston starts to Blunt Object an injured body part, like how he straightens out that hurt arm to blast Yuta with a corner clothesline, and how you know, Yuta knows, we all know how he's going to go for that backfist. Yuta's selling down the stretch was excellent and it totally made the finish something special. The momentum had shifted but Yuta never showed a hint of panic, and he looked like a guy who would win right up until his knees got wobbled. Kingston bounces him off his neck with a nasty suplex and rolls Yuta up directly into a backfist that bows Yuta's legs inward. Yuta knows it's over in the same exact way we've seen Kingston realize when something is over, and so Yuta stands up in Kingston's face showing him that he can take at least one, and there was still that slight chance that he was bating King one last time...but if he was baiting him, Kingston snatched that bait clean off the hook. Yuta sold the match ending backfist perfectly, dropping to his back and side with a thud, body rigid, arms tucked to his side and chin slumped to his chest, a man who has studied enough World Star street knockouts to understand how to bow to a King. 

2023 MOTY MASTER LIST

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2023 Ongoing MOTY List: Dark Order vs. Blackpool Combat Club

 

6. Stu Grayson/Evil Uno/Hangman Page vs. Jon Moxley/Claudio Castagnoli/Wheeler Yuta AEW Dynamite 3/15

ER: AEW is often at its best when it hits the level of a 4th match of the night trios from the middle of a 2003 NOAH show, and that's what this felt like to me. Everything hummed and flowed like the best NOAH trios, and almost everyone hit like they were wrestling in a NOAH trios. Evil Uno works like an old fat All Japan undercarder who's having a big night anyway, so it only makes this even better. He's like old ass Mighty Inoue or Mitsuo Momota breaking out of old man comedy and coming alive and showing everyone that he's still the guy they might have seen on a 1979 IWE show. But the big story of this very cool match is Stu Grayson. 

Stu Grayson is a guy who I haven't had an active thought about at any point of my pro wrestling fandom. It's a name I relearn every time I see a Stu Grayson match and then it just as quickly drifts away, just out of reach. Like a night's dream you're trying to recollect, the more you attempt to recall the name Stu Grayson, the farther away you feel from catching it. Except Stu Grayson exists beyond that plane of waking life, as you never once get the urge to actually recall your memory of That Time You Watched A Stu Grayson Match Because You Were Home On A Wednesday. How many Stu Grayson matches could I have actually watched. Half a dozen? A full dozen? I am no longer a religious weekly watcher of TV wrestling, while also being a person who constantly watches wrestling, including a lot of AEW and WWE. I am a pro wrestling Hardcore Viewer while simultaneously being the elusive Casual Fan that has been lusted after demographically for literal decades. And that is the reason why I have probably seen eight Stu Grayson matches. Without remembering any Stu Grayson matches. Maybe those matches were all actually John Silver or Raymond Row matches. 

But in this match, this Stu Grayson Match, I found his excellent babyface energy captivating. He really started connecting with me when he took a cool fast bump through the ropes to the floor, and the BCC did a sick group piledriver on the floor as The Thing to kick off their big heat on him. I thought the Combat Club were awesome at making quick tags so that every member could inflict their own personal constant damage, tagging in to suplex and hit and kick and uppercut Grayson. The heat was all really well done and the action was seamless, giving Grayson time to credibly sell while also believably not leaving him spaces for a comeback. When he did make a one move comeback - with a huge running knee straight into Moxley's mouth - it was a huge hot tag moment. A well built and well timed hot tag is always a thing to be celebrated, but I loved how they used the hot tag as the means to build up to another run towards the finish, not as the actual run to the finish itself. Uno had a big senton atomico and all of the quick hit car crash action perfectly cleared the ring for Moxley and Page...which was just a way to quickly settle things down into the run towards the real finish, as Yuta took out Hangman with the ring bell. 

Despite being an early-AEW supporter of Evil Uno - one of the guys who consistently made the What Worked side of that first year or so of AEW Workrate Reports - I wouldn't ever call myself a Dark Order Guy. And yet here I was, completely losing it thinking that Uno and Grayson could plausibly pin Jon Moxley. Their entire finish run, from Grayson's flip dive over the ringpost, to all of their chained together offense and double teams, all made me actually think - and be excited for -  Uno and Grayson were actually taking out Jon Moxley. The Fatality nearfall was huge, and Yuta's best moments of the match were him saving Mox from that finish and then running over to pull Uno off the apron to stop the tag and ice the momentum. Stu Grayson makes the great looking finish look like an even greater finish. It's cool seeing him hit 450s and big ranas and dives with real distance, but I love how he Athletically Eats Shit taking Claudio's pop up uppercut. This was NOAH trios perfection, and if I manage to forget about Stu Grayson again in a couple days, it is likely merely the signs of my advanced brain rot and not anything that is the fault of Stu Grayson's ability.  

2023 MOTY MASTER LIST

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 1/8 - 1/14

MD: Brief programming note. Puerto Rico should be back this week. We ended up getting our hands on a bunch of footage not on Youtube so we've been trying to make sense of it all. It will help the project overall. Way too much wrestling going on right now. I'm not going to hit everything from the last week, but I am grabbing one match from Dynamite, Rampage, and Collision each. Only one will annoy you and I apologize in advance.

AEW Rampage 1/12/24

Eddie Kingston vs. Wheeler Yuta

MD: When I call Yuta a "rat boy", I do so with the most possible affection. I hope that's apparent. It's not that he's a direct heir to Yoshinari Ogawa, because he's not, but I just see the parallels. Honestly, here, he was more of a buzzing fly, just one with the technical precision of the ROH Pure Champion.

Yuta had both nothing and everything to prove. He's already the Pure Champion (with this being one of only maybe 5 times where the Pure Champion was in a situation to win the ROH World Championship as well). He recently defeated Shibata. He's been on a run on Rampage. On the other hand, Eddie is higher in the hierarchy and he just mowed through the rest of the BCC.

Eddie came in like the ace he is, forward looking, ready to lock up in the center of the ring. Yuta dodged him, too a powder, only engaged on his terms. The idea wasn't to break Eddie, I think, not like Claudio and Danielson and Moxley tried to do. The idea was to frustrate him, to annoy him, to draw him out. Yuta wanted to isolate his hand, and then, once started to work on it, he wanted to frustrate Eddie so much that he would want to use it on Yuta's face and chest again and again and again, creating a self-defeating but entirely human and understandable wedge that would allow Yuta to stay into the match.

It worked too. Yuta made himself as annoying and punchable as possible even as he chipped away at Eddie's hand. It let him stay in the match when Eddie should have been able to get some distance on him. It let him come so close with a top rope DDT following Eddie deciding that he had absolutely no choice in life and that he had to chop Yuta instead of doing something else. That brought Yuta close, but it wasn't enough to put Eddie away and without that, the good gameplan could only be so good.

All it took, after all, was Eddie catching him once. And he did, trapping the arms and throwing him over, ducking under and hefting him. The size differential was what it was. Yuta would deviate to try to throw a bomb or two to get Eddie in a position to put him away. All he had to do was chip away enough to lock in the seatbelt, but being brash and young and human himself, Yuta lost the plot down the stretch. That's the thing about Eddie: he's pretty punchable too when he's surviving all that you have to throw at him. Eventually, the goading shots of Yuta turned into things full of actual rancor. That meant he was playing Eddie's game, and when you play the continental champ's game, you ultimately lose.

AEW Collision 1/13/24

Dustin Rhodes vs. Willie Mack

MD: Every time they heat Dustin up for one last big match, it's a gift. That they keep on doing it is a testament to just how good Dustin is. That they're doing it this time around so he can face Christian Cage on Dynamite, well, that's a gift for me personally. Thank you for the gift.

This didn't go long, but I thought every exchange was more or less what it should have been. Dustin could hold his own against Mack's strength and speed and size early but it took little flourishes like putting a hand up to ask for a second or using the handshake to create openings. Mack, however, brought so much to the table, that he was able to not just get back in it but do a little dance before controlling in the corner or the Goldust taunt before hitting a standing moonsault.

He went for too much, too soon, however, and Dustin got back into it not by overpowering Mack, but by taking advantage of a mistake, which is what you'd want between these two. The problem with the Destroyer, as much as anything else, is not that it's inherently flippy or anything like that. It's that it usually makes the wrestler taking it do something that breaks the suspension of disbelief; either they have to move in a way that they normally wouldn't in any other match or they have to stay in a position for too long. Here, it made sense that Mack might be winded in that specific way after the missed moonsault, so I didn't mind it. It set up the finishing stretch of Dustin hitting some visually impressive power stuff (set up by believable experienced, finesse counters). To say I'm looking forward to Dustin vs Christian is an understatement. I hope it gets enough time on a show with at least two other title matches even if it's probably just a stop on the road to whatever Christian will be up to next. 

AEW Dynamite 1/10/24

Hangman Adam Page vs. Claudio Castagnoli

MD: Of my many pro wrestling islands, the one that feels loneliest is my dislike of many if not most Hangman Adam Page matches. Coming into his return in October 2021, I'd never even seen an Adam Page match. I had no preconceived notions. He won the title shortly thereafter and early in the reign he was up against Danielson and Archer those left me feeling fairly positive. The more I saw though, the more I started to pick up on patterns. You see something off in one match and that could be anything. You see something in two, and you still can't be sure. There are agents. There are multiple wrestlers with inputs on every match. There are weird nights and TV constraints and all sorts of other things. But you keep seeing it again and again and it becomes pretty clear.

A few things were apparent. He was almost entirely lacking low and mid-level offense. Everything he did was a bomb. No bodyslams or standing vertical suplxes or backbreakers or side slams or even things you'd expect from his character like corner clotheslines. Because everything he did was a bomb, that meant he would be throwing bombs too early in matches and there'd be nowhere to go, nowhere to escalate to. I'm almost certain this helped him get over because it made him look better than his peers that were playing by more conventional pro wrestling rules. It's the same reason why Suplex City Brock feels like such a towering presence. He's doing stuff no one else generally does at times that almost no one does them. It's also a reason why so many of the matches are unsatisfying on a rewatch and it screws up the balance of cards and shows as a whole.

This was made all the worse in scenarios where Page was driving things and has a size or hierarchical advantage. That's when he starts throwing around death valley drivers and springboard clotheslines and the fallaway slam and his moonsault in the first few minutes. It's less noticeable and less of an issue when he's fighting from underneath against a bigger threat. While probably not ideal relative to punching up and fighting back, he can use those individual bombs as hope spots against a monster. Even better is when one is used for the actual comeback spot. However, he's not often put into that situation because of his place in the hierarchy and the overall presentation of his character. And he's been rewarded time and again by the crowd for narratively dubious pro wrestling for multiple reasons. On one level, he's probably giving a lot of them what they want, excitement and sensation and dominance. Cowboy shit. The coolest match possible. The incentives have never been there for him to adapt as opposed to just going with what got him over, even when he became champion and had different responsibilities. It's just not what I want out of pro wrestling and I don't think it's sustainable. Giving the crowd what it wants isn't the same as giving the crowd what it needs.

Despite all of this, I do like the guy behind the guy in general and I see the value to him. I like the idea of him. I like his out of character interviews. I think the whole notion of being an anxious millennial cowboy is interesting. It plays with the concept of modern masculinity in a productive way. It gives the AEW crowd someone to relate to, someone to cheer for. There's that notion that every day is a struggle which fits quite well with serialized storytelling after all. There are certain physical things that Page does that are executed well. Plenty of good stuff, plenty of tools. He can be a very strong half of a whole. He's been in a number of matches against guys who can either rein him in or that are built and presented in a way that naturally force him into better structures than what we see if he's left to his own devices. He'd be an amazing Stan Hansen opponent (which makes him a pretty darn good Jon Moxley opponent). That's the thing. If he had less going for him, he wouldn't be nearly so frustrating to watch when it's his turn to drive and he sails the car over a cliff.

And I try to watch, try to keep an open mind, but when I look at the patterns, I tend to dread his matches. Another guy who isn't dissimilar is Takeshita (slightly better post-heel turn but he's all bombs with no discernible sense of when best to place them and when not to throw them); their match together was one of my least favorite AEW matches I've ever seen. It was something that most people who watched it were over the moon on. And that's ok, but I felt like I was talking a totally different language from them, that there was no middle ground or understanding to be found (or at least it wasn't a two way street; it's not hard to understand why they liked it and it's maybe harder for me to express why I loathed it).

If you want a real simple shorthand for how much I'm going to like or dislike a Hangman match, one good rule of thumb is to look for where he positions the death valley driver. If it's within the first third of the match, I'm probably going to absolutely hate the match. If it comes later, the thing at least has a fighting chance.

Here, against Claudio, the move fit pretty well into the closest thing we have to an AEW TV house style (where you have a fairly complete initial heat and comeback with signature babyface spots heading towards an apparent finish before the heel turns it back around and they go into commercial break and a second round of heat). It was his big comeback spot after Claudio took the first third of the match. It was explosive and credible as a way to help Hangman get a flurry of offense. He'd hit the fallaway slam and a dive before Claudio was able to catch him with the amazing press slam to the ramp. Afterwards, Claudio brought things back down for the break and Hangman had to pull out bigger and bigger comeback spots against Claudio's unrelenting strength. This was one where not everything was placed exactly where I would have wanted it, but where the overall effect worked because the heel was big enough and larger than life enough to make up for the holes that are often found in Hangman's narrative toolset. If you're looking at the shorthand, take a look where the death valley driver showed up in the JD Drake match as well. I liked that one too.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 8/28 - 9/3 Part 1

AEW Dynamite 8/30

Eddie Kingston vs. Wheeler Yuta

MD: I've spent a lot of time with 1989-1991 All Japan over the last few years and let me tell you something: hierarchy makes the world go round. This goes back to the notion of contrast making the world go round, and what is hierarchy but a form of contrast, right? If you had to slot back to 1989, this would be something like Olympian era Yatsu vs Revolution era Kawada. Of course, you rarely get a straight singles match like that in AJPW, but we're more apt to get BCC tags and trios anyway too. Still, we rarely get a chance to really see it play out in a situation like this. I do kind of wish Eddie would spend more of his time thinking about and manifesting this sort of thing than other aspects of the style, but that's part of why I liked this one so much.

Anyway, with hierarchy like this (where, let's say a 1b is wrestling a 2b, not to quantify it), a couple of rules apply. First, for the lower wrestler to stay in it, he needs some sort of wedge (see Hansen clotheslining the post). Here that wedge was Eddie's damaged arm and Yuta's merciless assault upon it. Second is that the higher level wrestler can come back at almost any point. The lower wrestler can do damage but it'll mostly be containing the higher wrestler unless they can come up with some way to actually put them away, easier said than done, rarely done, almost never done, actually. What this means is that while Yuta could hit an early single arm DDT to open Eddie up or smack the Uraken away or drive a dozen elbows into the arm to force Eddie down, he would have to come up with something else to put him away, and in going away from it to do so, the moment constantly threatened to slip away. All it took was the tiniest bit of hubris (something Wheeler had in droves) for Eddie to turn things around and start firing back. One shot knocked Yuta off the top to the floor. One duck led to an exploder. It didn't take much. 

Yuta pressed every advantage that he had and it earned him a match more competitive than it should have been otherwise and the sort of lasting glory that comes from forcing himself up from one of Kingston's Urakens so that he could eat a second with a defiant look upon his face. When Eddie walks the road towards balance and not excess, everything is good and right in this world of ours.

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