AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 12/22 - 12/28 Part 2

AEW World's End 12/27/25

Jon Moxley vs Kyle Fletcher 

Jon Moxley is a bleeder.

As stars go, headliners, main eventers, champions, there's probably no one this century who's bled as often and as freely as Mox.

This? This is different though. Usually the taste of his own blood reminds him that he's alive, reminds his opponents that they're in a war.

But even a warrior, a champion only has so much blood to lose and Jon Moxley's been bleeding out for a while now. Maybe he's been bleeding out since he tapped to Darby Allin and Kyle O'Reilly. Maybe he's been bleeding out since he lost the title to Hangman Page. Maybe he's been bleeding out since Adam Copeland lost the battle but won the war, wounding him with a nail covered bat and putting fear back into his heart. Or maybe, just maybe, he's been bleeding out since he made the fateful decision to betray Bryan Danielson.

Regardless of how long it's been, he found himself face to face with one undeniable truth: he had to stop the bleeding.

The only way to stop the bleeding was to cauterize the wound. He had to put himself through a baptism of fire, one where his soldiers had to stay in their barracks, where it was just him against the very best, him against the world. He had to prove to allies and enemies both, to bystanders and to history itself, that he was everything he said he was, that there was truth underneath it all, no matter how thoroughly he'd been exposed, no matter how it felt to be the emperor with no clothes, no matter the Sword of Damocles over his head, no matter how biting winter's cold felt upon his naked flesh. 

He needed to compete in the Continental Classic, but more than that, he needed to win it.

But Kyle Fletcher needed things too.

Takeshita may have been the first member of the Don Callis Family and Okada may be its crown jewel, but Kyle Fletcher is the heart and soul of it. He's the one that makes it a family and not just a stable or faction. Callis is what he sounds to be, a callous, mercenary huckster. Fletcher is young, still developing, still in need of those to support him, not just professionally but personally as well. He believes in the idea of a family, even a family of villains, scoundrels, and rogues. He loves Takeshita like a brother and he's been coming to love Okada as well, but more than either of them individually, he loves the sum of them.

Now, after months of turmoil, Takeshita and Okada were positioned against each other in the other semi-final. One of them would beat the other. But were Kyle Fletcher to beat Jon Moxley, he'd face off against that winner. Yes, he had lost the TNT title. Yes, he had failed to defeat Hangman Page for the world title. Yes, unlike Okada, the International Champion, and Takeshita, the IWGP champion, he had no belt to his name. And yes, he constantly feels the need to prove to the world that he is the future, but more than all of that was this: no matter who won, Okada or Takeshita, were Fletcher be the one to defeat him and win the Continental Championship, then it might defuse the situation, might humble the loser, might restore peace and tranquility to his family. 

He just had to beat Jon Moxley to earn the chance to do so.

So he took this match as seriously as he'd ever taken anything in his life. According to commentary, right up until the bell, he'd been watching tape of Moxley's C2 matches, studying his opponent, looking for any possible edge. He didn't check in with his family members, didn't watch Takeshita battle Okada. Instead, he prepared. When his music hit, Fletcher went out to the ring, unaware of Okada's underhanded transgression, the use of a screwdriver hidden in the turnbuckle pad, that allowed him to defeat Takeshita and secure a spot in the finals.

Like many other C2 matches, they started with wrestling. Moxley is the progenitor of death jitsu, but Fletcher kept pace with him, countering counters for the minute or so they chain wrestled. Perhaps not surprisingly, Moxley blinked first, taking an opening and throwing a chop. That sent Fletcher right out to the floor, slowing down the pace, stalling. In the eyes of the fans, it crystalized alignments. Fletcher had gotten some support as of late, because he is that good, because he is charismatic, because he is sudden and intense, but while Moxley was chomping at the bit to engage, he was not, and that was enough to shift the crowd just a bit more behind Mox.

Fletcher didn't care, though. He meant to throw Moxley off. He had a plan. Moxley chased after him, beat him around the ring, but Fletcher caught him with a body slam on the way back in, a cheapshot. Again, the crowd turned more. Again, Fletcher didn't care (he didn't care so much that he was happy to tell them how little he cared, which just made them respond, getting behind Moxley more). And then when Moxley managed to turn things around on him, the crowd started to respond all the more.

And yet still, Fletcher didn't care. Moxley tossed him out and Fletcher scrambled to keep in it on the floor. So yes, the crowd was backing Moxley for the first real time in well over a year. And yes, it did bother Fletcher, but he didn't care because he couldn't care, because he had to win. It was that simple. And to win, he had to find the exact moment to strike, no distractions, no hesitation. Just goading Moxley in. That happened on the floor, the stairs brought into play. Moxley meant to pile drive him onto them. Fletcher knew it was coming and pulled the stairs back. Moxley's leg ended up between the ring and the stairs and Fletcher charged in to crush it. He knew Moxley's tactics. He knew Moxley's weakness, the ankle that had been bothering him for weeks, a perfect achilles heel to give Fletcher the edge.

Fletcher got down to work, using a inverted deathlock, a half crab, simply wrenching the leg over the rope. He was as unlikable as humanly possible throughout, posing and preening, but he was laser-focused nonetheless. 

But Jon Moxley knew that the best defense was a good offense. He hit a cutter out of nowhere. When Fletcher retreated back to the floor, he hobbled across the ring to dive at him. He chased Fletcher back into the ring, knowing he had to press the advantage, and just like earlier in the match, he ran into a Fletcher slam, this time a Michinoku Driver, escalation playing out before the crowd's eyes. 

The match continued along these lines. Fletcher would bully Moxley into the corner but Mox would fire out. He'd be unable to get his full weight behind his shots, the leg dragging him down on every exchange. He'd power through and score a point but be ultimately unable to capitalize. Fletcher would shrug him off the top on a ten count punch and as Mox landed on the apron on the bad leg, Fletcher would follow right behind him to drop him on his skull. Moxley would beat the count, if just barely, but even the possibility of redemption through victory was slipping through his grasp more and more with each Fletcher bomb. The blood may have been coming from his tooth of all places, but he was bleeding out nonetheless.

And all the while, the fans started to cheer for Mox more and more.

Yet all the while, one truth never changed: Fletcher needed this just as much as Moxley did. He needed it too much. He locked in a half crab again, this time pulling back with all his might. That opened him up to Moxley's bulldog choke. But he had prepared and as Moxley tried to plant his weight to really lock it in, Fletcher grasped at the ankle. He escaped the choke, but he couldn't quite get the anklelock exactly as he wanted it, exactly how his family member Josh Alexander had taught it to him. He wanted it too badly, he needed it too much. Desperate, nervous scrambling hands meant that by the time he did lock it in, they were too close to the ropes and Moxley was able to escape by the skin of his bleeding teeth.

And as he did, the crowed began to chant.

Still, Fletcher was in control and he stomped Mox in the corner, hoisted him up for his top rope Brainbuster. Moxley had wanted to lay in those ten count punches before, punches often punctuated with a rake of the back and a bite of the face. Before Fletcher had tossed him off. Now as Fletcher tried to finish him, Moxley, bloody mouth and all, gnawed upon Fletcher's head.

And the crowd roared for his effort.

Something awoke in Jon Moxley then, something that had been dormant, been pressed down by his own paranoia and hypocrisy, something that could only be tapped into when the crowd was well and truly behind him. He slipped behind Fletcher, locking in a choke up on that top rope, and then, as if he was leaping into the arms of the crowd with only faith to propel him, he tossed both of them off backwards, hitting a breathtaking, brutal avalanche cutthroat suplex. Moxley capitalized with a lariat and a stomp, but couldn't capitalize further, that effort alone sending pain up and down his leg. Fletcher recovered, hitting a superkick, a half-and-half suplex of his own, and a knee and pressing Moxley's shoulders to the mat. 

Mox kicked out at one and the crowd absolutely exploded. 

Fletcher was shaken but not thrown; he dropped Moxley with a brainbuster and Moxley kicked out once more. He lifted Moxley up to finish him and Mox, stumbling, punch drunk, put both hands up in an act of defiance as the crowd buoyed him with their screams. 

Fletcher needed this win. He needed it badly. He needed it as much as Moxley did. He didn't care how he got it. They had set up the screwdriver earlier in the day, a perfect way around the Continental Classic rules. Callis wouldn't be out there to hand it to anyone. Fletcher was doing this for himself, but he was doing this for family most of all. He knew Takeshita and Okada were facing each other. He knew they were at odds. The last thing he could have imagined however was that one brother would use the hidden screwdriver against another. So when he went to find it and it wasn't there, it wasn't just that he didn't have a weapon to put down Moxley, that the plan was failing. It was more than that. It was the tragic realization that Okada or Takeshita had to have used it against the other, that everything he was fighting for had already gone up in smoke. 

That was the moment he lost.

He ran right into Moxley's choke but was able to survive it. He even survived the Paradigm Shift AND the Death Rider that followed, but those were the last gasps of a man already dead. When Moxley locked in the sleeper, he had nothing left to give. He dropped to the mat momentarily unconscious as the ref called for the bell. Moxley rolled to his knees, pumping his fists to the unbelievable but undeniable elation of the crowd. Fletcher managed to recover enough to get one last petulant shot in after the bell, but it didn't matter.

Moxley had the wind in his sails, having found a warrior's high moral ground for the first time in so long. The pro wrestling gods now supported him, now were fully against an Okada who had broken every code to commit the same sort of fratricide and betrayal and Moxley himself had done a year before. By the end of the night, the circle would be complete once more and a triumphant Moxley would march up and down the ring, speaking passionate, humble words, having stopped the bleeding. 

But just a few days off of Christmas, and with Bryan Danielson forced to witness all of this from the commentary table, everyone watching had to wonder if there might still be ghostly Dickensian chains clanking behind Moxley, just waiting to drag him down, if redemption can truly come from effort and victory alone, or if a darker comeuppance was just around the corner.

It was a remarkable match. There was no way to know that the crowd would go for Moxley like this, that it wouldn't split heel vs heel and just chant for the match and its awesomeness. This was the same arena where Moxley ended Danielson just a little more than a year before. So much of it came down to Fletcher's early stalling, to him being the one to go after the injury, an unsportsmanlike git. Moxley's selling, the way that he showed consequence to every offensive move he hit, carried much of the rest. 

Fletcher made himself as unlikable as possible, giving the fans nothing to latch on to. Meanwhile, Moxley gave the fans everything to latch on to. As he dragged himself up again and again, he pulled the fans along with him, the most gripping thing in the world. It was pro-wrestling that moved hearts and minds, all through the in-ring action, the sort of storytelling which burned right through the black gunk of irony that's covered hearts for years. The crowd gave themselves up to the story being told and let themselves get swept along with it. 

It was beautiful pro-wrestling and especially beautiful for 2025. Just a wonderful match, with wonderful, nuanced characters telling a wonderful, nuanced story. Details still matter. Pro wrestling still works. The magic is still alive for wrestlers willing to give of themselves completely and tap into it and a crowd with no choice but to get swept along for the ride.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 12/25 - 12/31 Part 2

AEW World's End 12/30/23

Eddie Kingston vs Jon Moxley

MD: Eddie vs Claudio is mythic. Eddie vs Danielson is masterful. Eddie vs Mox just tugs at your heartstrings, though, doesn't it? Wrestling can be such a simplistic thing sometimes and yet here? Let's break it down. We know what Eddie wants. Eddie leveraged his taste of success, all that hard work, into his life's greatest gamble, the creation of an American Triple Crown. What does Mox want? He doesn't want to prove himself to anyone else. He doesn't want fame, fortune, credit. He just wants a challenge worthy of his name. He wants a fight that'll go long and hard enough to make him feel alive. He wants a thrill that he can't allow himself to get anywhere else, because he's a family man, dammit. He wants the endorphins to pop. He wants to taste his own blood intermingled with someone else's. He wants to battle back all of the dark feelings that torment mankind with his fists alone. And if he wins too, all the better, because that means there's more to come, and because deep down, it would have meant that Eddie wasn't strong enough to carry his own dream. Mox is though, strong enough to never take that fishing trip, strong enough to carry this PPV, strong enough to march until the very end of the world, one foot after another, dragging dirt and dust and grime behind him. And if Eddie wins? Well, that's ok too, because it will have meant Eddie beat him, and that would have given validity to everything Eddie's fought for. He can dig that too. That's Mox for you.

Even in 2023, maybe especially in 2023, wrestling asks more of us than almost anything else. There's nothing truly comparable. The stakes are entirely artificial, but that's true with any TV show, right? We can relate to a TV drama, be it about life or death, be it about making ends meet, be it about finding love or getting respect. A belt though? What is a belt? What is a title? We're never going to win championships like this in our life. We can't go out and compete for them tomorrow. Just like speculative fiction or something with incredibly high stakes, it comes down to making it relatable, making us care, seeing ourselves in the wrestlers and our hopes and dreams in their hopes and dreams. We understand Eddie. And despite ourselves, we understand Mox too. Sometimes we want to look away, but we can't because they burn too bright. It hurts our eyes and it hurts our souls, but we understand and we relate and because they care, we care. For some of us, it goes back to Eddie's youth and our own fandom, to remembering how it felt to see Tenryu overcome Jumbo for the first time for Kawada to finally get what he fought his whole life for. We all look to the lens of our own experience for understanding, right? What stood out from Mox's book, more than anything else, was how different his experience was to mine even though we're only a few years apart. You read that book and you see a guy who made it to the mid 2000s, if not later, with no discernible idea what the internet was. He wasn't arguing whether or not Robert Gibson was better than Lance Storm on DVDVR, let me tell you that. But still, we see clearly what he shows us, and we watch, and we know, and we believe, and we're so damn lucky to get to. This was important, to the company, to the crowd, to the wrestlers, to us.

And it felt so, so good to watch Eddie Kingston ascendent, to watch him be an ace on a night where the company needed an ace. I know how they presented them, "The Ace of the World" and the "King of the Bums", but to me, Moxley was the Warrior King upon his throne and Kingston was the ace who learned, who studied, who had prepared his whole life for this moment. He controlled the center. He was poised. He was focused. He drew Moxley to him, told him to come charging in. He wrestled, as much as possible, a perfect match against a dangerous foe. The mistake he made, and it was a large one, was not down to planning or strategy, but the limits of his own body. He had to go big to keep control and he threw a dive that cost him. It was the right move but it meant rolling the dice and his number came up.

But that was ok, because underneath it all, underneath the poise, underneath the channeling of Misasa and Kawada and Taue and Kobashi (and Akiyama and Hase and on and on and on), there is still the white hot core that is Eddie Kingston. There's still the toughness, the animosity, the grievances tearing at him, the never say die attitude. So he fought back, and once he was in a position to do so, he found his center and the ace's mentality once more. He goaded Mox into an exchange, had him charge in, and then he ducked and took him over with an exploder. Mox tried to fire up but his leg gave way, and Eddie went in for the kill. This was the Eddie I've been watching in ROH, the one who controlled the ring, the one who locked his hips and threw, the one who planted his feet and fired away. He dropped Mox.

And then that fire underneath raised its ugly head once more. Mox had defeated him once upon a time with a bulldog choke. And there was Mox lying there prone, practically defeated. And Eddie, more human than you, or me, or any of us, cracked just a little. There are temptations in life and certainly temptations in the fantastical, fictional world of pro wrestling. These are storytellers. These are mythic beings living in stories. And there is no greater hubris than a story that ends clean and neat and perfect. The second Kingston lunged down to lock in his own bulldog choke, the whole world seemed to groan. I certainly did. Mox knew this hold. He trained for it. He owned it. He had the counter. Eddie followed with the hammer and anvil elbows and even though he made them his own, he was goading himself towards disaster. It went like clockwork: Mox reversed it, locked in a tight, inescapable choke. Here, at the precipice of glory, Eddie was Eddie once again. He was about to defeat himself. Again.

The thing is, though, Eddie Kingston, at his best and his worst and his truest, is a fighter. That ball of rage and angst may drive him to disaster, but it's a hell of a sturdy vehicle empowered by that roiling, writhing engine that's unlike anything else we've ever seen. If he had not wrestled so perfect a match up til that point, if he had not been the ace throughout, if Mox wasn't beaten down, if Eddie didn't have so much to fight for, then he would have been swept under, a fitting, imperfect end to the story of Eddie Kingston. But had spent the first two thirds of the match as the ace, and that put him in a position where the engine alone could take him over the finish line. He would have never been able to overcome Jon Moxley with heart and determination alone, but when he only had to call upon that for the final stretch, having shrugged off all the trappings of the heroes that came before him?

Eddie wrestled most of this match as a perfect, poised champion. He won it as Eddie Kingston at his rawest and most vulnerable. And here, at the end of this tournament and the end of this review, I don't have the words to explain to you how the combination of the two made it absolutely perfect. But it's ok, you were there too. They care, I care, you care. And here in the heart of winter, we're all less alone for that caring.

Swerve Strickland vs Dustin Rhodes

MD: There's theory and there's execution, right? On paper, the theory behind this one was rough. The match already had the deck stacked against it due to a number of things we know and some we can assume. Here's what we most likely know: Lee vs Strickland both had a monumental build and almost no build at all. Strickland had to keep his momentum from the Continental Classic. He was going to be over (as a face) with this specific crowd almost no matter what he did. There was a PPV that needed to be planned out fairly precisely time-wise. Dustin was a logical replacement as Lee's partner. His contract is up in a few months if you believe the rumors and there's no saying what happens then, but he's a guy always treated with respect and dignity and that brings certain skills to the table that almost no one else in the company has. There are things we don't know too. For instance, we have no idea when Lee might be able to go again. We have no idea if the cinder block gimmick and the overall layout were meant for the Lee match (it makes sense that they were, but we don't know!). There were other snakebit elements about the PPV, of course. So, do you stray from the gimmick? Do you just squash Dustin? Do you have Dustin fight on after the cinder block shot but get almost no offense in, just tiny hope spots? Do you accept that it'll mean more for Swerve to win after Dustin has a full comeback? Wrestling lore has it that you put over the babyface in a situation like this, but who's even the crowd favorite here? I don't know. I personally think that either you do the cinder block post-match or you do it and then have Dustin just get some amazing hope spots in but no real control. With the post-match possibility, maybe it logically forces the idea of a suspension for Swerve more than if he does it before the match and Dustin wants to fight on anyway? I don't know. Obviously they went the way they did with this one. So that's the theory. I don't think it was entirely sound.

But the execution? That made it work. Dustin is just that good and Swerve is just that ascendant. The world doesn't revolve around our personal preferences. Swerve isn't my guy. Some of his offense is just too floaty for me. Some of the tricked out move entrances don't fit a guy at his level in my eyes. Occasionally, the match layout gets wonky for my liking. But even though Swerve isn't my guy, I don't for a second deny the fact that he is The Guy right now, and that 2024 should be his year. He brings any number of things to the table, but the most important is the most important thing anyone can possibly bring, his presence in the moment. Some of that fluidity that throws me off is also often channeled into a positive. He's just floating through the air out there, moving with a sort of grace and ease that makes it seem like most of the rest of the roster is trudging through mud. That's not just in the moves he hits and takes either. It's in his expressions, his reactions, the way he seethes and roils and portrays elation. You believe that there's something boiling underneath the surface that emerges in the most dynamic, engrossing ways (not unlike Eddie, actually). He's a star and he shines and while I don't always appreciate what he chooses to do or how he chooses to do it, I do want to see the emotion he carries and the ripples he creates through the reality of the ring despite it all. When Dustin started to come back, Swerve had the most believable look of disgust or shock or resignation or exasperation. When Swerve cut him off with a quick shot to the leg, there was smugness and satisfaction and relief. In a world where everyone rushes to the next spot, he's getting better every week at letting the moment settle in and showing the world exactly how he feels about it. And if he cares so much, the crowd cares too. That's how wrestling works. It's the absolute antithesis of the irony that occasionally gets splattered over AEW and that wasn't on this show at all.

And if course, if you give Dustin a body part to sell, you've got a match. I'm not sure I've seen anything quite so sublime in pro wrestling this month than his seated shots while on the top rope, which really is saying a lot. He built his way back from defensive body motions to desperately placed strikes to finding a way to stand tall to his big signature spots, doling out the proper amount of selling to establish the lingering consequence at each point. And then, after all that crawling and climbing back to fighting strength and getting a semblance of revenge, Swerve cut him off with the tiniest shot to the leg. So much accomplished with so little. Between circumstance, expectation, and the decision to lead with the cinder block (which might have worked perfectly in cutting Lee down to size but far less so here given hierarchy and more comparable size), this was an impossible situation. But Dustin, with all of his skills and savvy, and Swerve, so tremendous at bringing emotion to the forefront at this point in time, somehow found a way to make the impossible work.

Adam Cole

MD: I don't do this often, but what's the point of writing on a blog if you can't make use of the long form to make an open letter to the new lead heel. Look, Cole comes off like a nice guy, the nicest. I thought for certain some of the dissonance with his offense and actual personality would have been better served with him as a babyface, and we barely got to see whether it would or not given the injury (and some of his early year programs), but he's a heel again. He's not just any heel but the unveiled mastermind, the man in the shadows, the archvillain who took away the one thing the AEW audience cares about the most, friendship. He's the guy who built up Max to make him seem like he might be better, like there might be something good in this world, like there might be hope even for scumbags, and then tore it all away. He has a chance to be an actual booed, hated heel. That means, however, no storytime with Adam Cole, no Boom, no Baybee. It means denying the fans all of these things that they want. Cole claims that he's such a good heel that he can give the fans all of these things and then, once the bell rings, get them to hate him anyway. I've always had my doubts about that in practice, just from the evidence of my own two eyes. But if he really wants this to work, all of that stuff needs to go into the closet. When he brings it back in a year, imagine how much more over it'll be for its absence. MJF spent his entire year experimenting, trying new and different things, trying to pull back elements from how wrestling used to be and to push them forward to how wrestling might be. Not everything hit, but it sure as hell wasn't for lack of trying, and those things that did hit are things that might make a huge difference in the years to come. Now it's Cole's turn. He can be the same old cool heel, get mixed reactions, have the fans chanting along, lean on all of the old crutches, or he can take this opportunity, the biggest heel move possible in a company like AEW and really run with it, really get into the hearts and minds of the fanbase and figure out how to do something new to restore that old feeling of animosity. I hope he's up for the challenge.

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