AEW Five Fingers of Death 8/31 - 9/6

AEW Dynamite 9/2/26

Darby Allin vs Mark Davis

MD: I was going to write about this anyway. The gimmick is that I write about all Darby Allin matches. I didn't come up with the gimmick. I inherited it. I don't always follow it. I thought Athena (second generation 5 Finger of Death) vs Isla Dawn was very good, with a unique dynamic given that Athena was a hometown hero, and I could write about that too, but I'm skipping that one. Maybe I could find something interesting to say about the New Level match (I'd really just want to talk about Nana's reactions to everything and how much they feed off one another). Maybe I could write about Priest vs Angels or the Mistico/Dorada tag from ROH (both were very good). Maybe I could write about Bucks vs Doyle/Cage (that wouldn't make anyone happy, trust me; I have thoughts there). 

But I was always going to write about this. Why? Because it was Darby vs a monster, because it had a really unique structure, covering two commercial breaks, because I skipped the Knight match to write about Mercedes vs Willow instead. Lots of reasons that I'll get to soon. 

But it also evoked two of my favorite Darby matches ever, the 2022 and 2024 Rampage matches against the Butcher. Darby's great against guys his size, against guys where he can push them instead of being pushed by them. He has one of the best Ospreay AEW matches. His title run earlier this year was full of interesting stuff. But obviously I want to see him against monsters.

And Butcher was a monster, no matter how much of a sweetheart he apparently (forget that; obviously, we've seen the receipts in the last day) was in real life. He was so good at portraying a brick wall, a mountain to be climbed, the guy you would not want to meet in a dark alley and that you definitely didn't want to meet in a light alley, because then you could actually see him. He looked the part. He acted the part. He defined the part. 

I covered the 22 match here and the 24 match here. The world is a less interesting and vibrant place with Andy Williams no longer in it.

So I was going to cover the match anyway, but I feel like I especially have to now, because it evoked those two matches for me, Darby up against a hulking behemoth, a heavyweight's heavyweight, just trying to survive.

No names named, as they'll never see it anyway, but a superheavyweight who was big on the indie scene in the 00s complained about the match's structure, about the finish (spoilers I suppose, but after taking so, so much punishment in the match, Darby hits one last dive from the top to the floor, they both beat the count, and Darby hits two opportunistic coffin drops to win). And on the one hand, it's endearing. There's this Sid shoot interview where he spends half of it complaining about doing jobs to Benoit and how small guys were great, sure, but they should never beat big guys, and it's endearing. I get it. You're a superheavyweight. You have to protect the natural order of the universe.

But it's not about order. It's not about logic. It's not about what would really happen. It's about what people are willing to believe in. And belief comes through repetition, through what they see with their own two eyes, and through careful execution of a plan.

This was a tough match. It had to carry two commercial breaks on a show coming off of All In, after the New Level's TV debut in a hot match, after you had all of the big iconic tag teams talking. Two commercial breaks in 2026 is never an easy thing. Davis is naturally impressive, a big dude with tons of intensity, and he had Callis with him to bring a little more heat, plus he had a surprise title win earlier in the year, but I don't think anyone thought the outcome was really in doubt. The post-match also had to set up Steven Borden's debut the following week. Lots of weight, lots of parts. 

And they were very smart about it. It's a match that maybe went sixteen minutes, not counting the post match. They got right to it with the great visual of Davis knocking Darby off the skateboard on the way down. Then the first six minutes, through an early commercial break were all outside the ring before the bell even rang. It's a trick they can't get away with every week, but that they can do once in a while. You do it too much, it raises too many questions. Here, it worked. 

It worked, in part, because Davis made it work, creating a totally chaotic, but still engaged and interactive feel. He tossed Darby over the announce desk. he hit giant swings back and forth into the rail. He put a chair over him and stepped on it. That was the other side of it. He was posing. He was making faces. He was rushing towards the crowd. He wasn't just hitting spots but he was relishing in them and that gave the crowd not just the violence to bounce off of but the character too.
 
He went for a power bomb and Darby fought out of it. That was the other side of the equation. Darby takes so much damage, but he never gives up, never quits, always fights back. That's why the fans believe in him. He looks like skin and bones and sinew and just enough muscle, but he's tough as an overcooked steak. He's a walking skeleton and you just can't kill him with conventional means. As long as he's consistent, as long he keeps driving forward, the fans believe.

They came back from the first commercial break with him hitting a dive off a balcony, because of course they did, and then things finally moved towards the ring so the bell could sound. Davis would quickly take back over. All it took was one cutoff punch or lariat out of nowhere. Most believable thing in the world given his size and intensity. 

There was a great image of Darby using the tag rope to pull himself off that paid off with a hope spot later, as he was able to tie Davis' hand to it. Davis, once again, cut him off, however. That took them through a second commercial break, with Darby on the floor getting stomped by Callis, with hope spots and cutoffs and power moves. 

Back from break, they went into the stretch, picking up the pace. Darby ducked an enziguiri but got lawn darted into the sky as he went for his first attempt at the code red. He hit the second one and it was beautifully ugly, hitting from all the wrong angles. With both men down, they tried to hype the rest of the show and the upcoming Collision. That was a mistake for just as they were talking about the second match, Darby was throwing himself to the floor at Davis like a missile. That set up the finish, noted above, and from there stemmed the post-match angle with RPG Vice coming down and Borden making the save, losing his shirt, ending up on TikTok, and hitting a huge dropkick. 

And I get that wrestler's complaint, I do. But Darby is the exception. His gimmick is that he's a ragdoll skeleton guy who can take damage, who needs to be bounced around and bouncing around to feel alive. So long as he never stops fighting, so long as he always keeps crawling towards the light, consistency over time will bridge the gap between monster and man. The fans see him really, truly, honestly crash and burn again and again and again, and he still gets up and struggles through his signature moves. And if he's able to capitalize on a moment of opportunity and get a banana peel win on a giant (by hitting his finisher twice in a row! We believe in finishers too so long as they're protected and treated as important, no matter what they are), well, this crowd 100% bought into it. 

Pro wrestling is not about making things seem true for the sake of fooling people, not anymore, maybe not ever. It's about giving people enough rope so that they climb past their own suspension of disbelief so that they can let go and buy into what they're seeing as fiction worth believing in for a few minutes, putting their worries about life aside. Through his look and his work and his portrayed personality, the Butcher was great that. Mark Davis is too. And Darby's as good as anyone going. 

And if that's not the point in 2026, I don't know what is.

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FOUND FOOTAGE FRIDAY: OMNI 7/3/83

7/3/83 Full Show 

Bill Irwin vs. Brett Wayne

ER: Great combo of guys, a weird size mismatch but not a wrestling mismatch. We're both big Irwin and Sawyer fans, two more men who've had their career cases bolstered by all this Omni footage. Irwin is this great wrestling weird guy, a stumblier Terry Gordy, big and lunging and always off balance a bit. He's a stomping lummox and Brett Wayne is a strong underdog who connects with the Omni setting. He's great at fighting to his feet, he's great at taking offense with real expression. The way he rag dolls on a big backbreaker is just one good example of his emotive selling. Irwin mostly in control, but that off balance gait makes him feel less in control. 

Irwin builds to his biggest offense, and it's all powerful stuff. His gutwrench and vertical suplexes land heavy, and I loved his Bruiser Brody kneedrop. Fresh off an All Japan tour where he worked exclusively as Brody's partner, he does a pitch perfect impression of Brody's bodyslam and King Kong kneedrop, only Irwin's kneedrop looked better. Everyone in the Omni and my house thought Irwin was missing that kneedrop when he was setting it up. It hits square and Brett already has his foot on the ropes. I wish it had missed so it didn't lead directly to Brett fighting back with babyface fire. 

The count out finish is excellent, as Irwin tosses Sawyer to the floor and Brett gets his whole leg hung up over the guardrail as he lands. The guardrail isn't even especially close to the ring, a whole commentary table and more away, he just flew. He takes another, different kind of great tumble over the rail when Irwin boots him from the ring. Great rail work. Buzz Sawyer saunters out as this is happening, and there's a great bit where he keeps half heartedly talking Bill out of jumping off the top buckle to the floor as Brett is struggling.

MD: Loved this. Great way to get the crowd going. There was a massive size difference but they milked it as far as they could. In the first exchange on the mat, Wayne scrambling free got a massive pop because they made a big deal out of it. Then Irwin complained about him being greased up. The first few minutes were bit after bit, Irwin missing an elbow or running into a boot or getting twisted around while trying to control the arm. Celebratory babyface shine stuff made better by the connection Wayne had with the crowd, the size difference, Irwin's willingness to stooge. 

He did take over and there weren't really hope spots or comebacks so much as big kickouts from Wayne, starting with a kickout at one. Because it started the sequence, it had a completely different effect than a late match nearfall that was about fighting spirit. It was a bit of defiance before Irwin had beaten him down as much. At one point he managed a kick out and the place went nuts and Irwin slapped the mat in frustration. Then Irwin hit the knee but Wayne's leg bounced up on the rope for a great visual. He got mad at that (instead of making faces) and tossed Wayne out. Wayne took this amazing pinball bump over the rail, and then when knocked off the apron as he was trying to come back went sailing over it again. Great stuff leading to a countout. Post match, Irwin menaced him like he'd come off over the top but officials stopped him. He still got over for the sheer threat of it given his size.

Bob Sweetan vs. Killer Brooks 

ER: I love Killer Brooks' look as a wrestler so much, a total dirtbag who looked like Ricky Jay without success. He has the look of a man to be looked at with scorn, and the Omni all feels that scorn. This is a man to avoid as he's buying his beer and Twinkies at the store. Brooks is so hateable on sight that the Omni is excited to see noted huge piece of shit Bob Sweetan punch the hell out of him. That's what this is, a big fat piece of shit punching a scum bag around the ring while the scum bag begs off and takes funny bumps. Killer Brooks is one of the more underwhelming wrestlers I've come across in our 20 years of 80s projects, but he's great at getting punched around by Sweetan. Sweetan had a great bit where he kept badly hiding headlock punches from ref Nick Patrick, but the crowd disliked Brooks so much that they kept siding with Sweetan and saying he did nothing wrong. The time limit draw finish is unsatisfying, but Brooks' scramble at the finish was the coolest part of the match. Mr. Piledriver finally sets up the piledriver, and Brooks, panicking, floats his leg out to the ropes while dragging Sweetan down with a double leg. It looked more spry and agile than anything I've ever seen Killer Brooks do, so it's possible it was all an accident. 

MD: I'd say this overachieved. Same idea as the first match in some ways but this time Sweetan was more the aggressor and able to push Brooks around. Fans went up for every punch, especially the ones in a headlock that he hid from the ref. Brooks took over with a cheapshot or two and kept laying in punches (big stomp ones). Sweetan hulked up with a "Now you've done it" look that got a pop fromt he crowd and Brooks did take a draping face first bump into the corner. They kept brawling to the bell for a time limit draw. Pretty minimalist overall but you can't really say it didn't work. I do think Brooks needed something extra during his control whether it was working the crowd more or a little more variety in offense, but the fans still went up big for Sweetan's comeback. I would have rather a double DQ for too much punching than the draw maybe too.

Tully Blanchard vs. Pez Whatley

MD: Ah, this is why they didn't do the DQ in the previous match. After cutting Pez off on a comeback, Tully got DQed here for pounding on him in the corner. Then they had a post match of Tully running into a bunch of punches before he got the upper hand and more or less kept his heat on the way out in the Tully way. Match itself was a lot of fun. First few seconds were beautiful as Tully turned a handshake into a slap and then ran like hell. Of course he got clowned shortly thereafter. Then he reached over the ref to hit a cheapshot in the corner and was off to the races. What a jerk. What a pro. Little odd to see him in this setting but he was going to get over as a heel anywhere and he clearly did here.  

ER: I could have watched Tully go after Pez for a half hour without getting restless. Tully is both for this, born to move as despicably as possible. I think I love this match structure, where Tully beats Whatley's ass by being an underhanded but tough asshole for 5 minutes then Pez beats Tully's ass for a couple minutes after the DQ. Tully's movement should be studied. It's dickhead Baryshnikov, strutting around on his tiptoes after cheapshots and violent outbursts. That short elbow he shoots into Pistol's jaw, before violently pulling him by his trunks through the ropes to the floor? That's what I want. I want that trunk pull, that sudden jolt to the waist that sends Whatley's head and shoulders folding to the apron. The crowd hates Tully's shit pants smug strut after. Pistol's punches after the bell were hot fire, and Tully takes two big spills for him. He drops like lead from a missed middle buckle elbow, and flies fast through the ropes to the concrete to put over Pistol's atomic drop. If I could be guaranteed a Tully match like this on every indy card, I'd ho home happy with wrestling every time. 

Ronnie Garvin vs. Iron Sheik

MD: Weird card so far. This was a deal where the title was on the line for the first ten minutes only but it didn't matter because it was a non-match. Garvin choked him with the towel and kept choking him with the towel and the ref just threw it out. He said he was going to give everyone a July 4th gift and get Sheik out of the country and then really didn't do that. They did leave the fans with a happy memory as Garvin atomic dropped Ellering into Sheik on the floor. Still, this had to feel a bit like a rip off. And actually, that's maybe not the best idea in general, because Ellering was in the next match and it was built at least a little about deferring punishment to him. This card is kind of all over the place even if specific bits are okay in isolation.

ER: This was hot, smoking hot. Garvin is an animal and Sheik is great at being overwhelmed by this haircut of a man. The timing and scrap of it all was tremendous. It was a great Paul Ellering match, a guy we don't always praise and a guy who doesn't always add to a match. Here he's excellent dressing, a bee buzzing on the periphery and getting tangled into and out of the action in ways that felt like a guy actually breaking up and exacerbating a fight. When Nick Patrick would get tangled with them it would get even better! Sheik gets hung by the neck from the top rope that Garvin used to distract and snare like a gi. These Omni DQs/count outs/messes are great at building to a climactic explosion of someone out of the ring, and this one was perfectly executed: Sheik's flying into Ellering with a running kneelift, Garvin sidestepping at the last moment. Timed to the T, with nobody looking around for a cue. The sense of space from all used to max effect. 

Stan Hansen/Tommy Rich/Ole Anderson vs. The Road Warriors/Paul Ellering

MD: I feel for Arn that he wasn't in the Tommy Rich role after they made a big deal about him not going with Ellering in the build. This is Ole in his Bill Watts standing tall phase and he is over but it's still weird. Also weird is Hansen and Tommy Rich as tag team specialists and, of course, like always, the Roadies eating so, so much offense in the extended shine. It goes on forever. Very fun to see Hansen cutting off the ring by blocking so Rich can come in and keep the assault on. He also hit a great monstrous belly to back out of a headlock.

Pretty interesting heat. They kept cycling in the babyfaces (first Hansen) and controlling with headlocks using hairpulls or their own corner to keep control. There'd be tags but it'd be right back into the headlock. They opened things up on Rich which let Ellering tag in quickly over and over to get cheapshots. Eventually he kicked his way out of the corner (to great applause) and made a hot tag to Ole. Ole ended up back in the headlock and they really worked it this time. I thought maybe they took the fans a bit too low because there'd already been a hot tag but when Ole started to fight back, the fans did get up for the comeback. He went through the legs which was a wild image and got a hot tag to Hansen. Everything fell apart after that and I think the Roadies were DQed for tossing Rich over the top. Man Mountain Darsow (who just debuted on TV) came in to take care of business and the fans did like that. Too many inconclusive finishes on this one, I think.

ER: Hansen vs. The Road Warriors is so sick. He looks so damn tough against them, he looks towering. The way he knocks them both back with chops, the way he moves both with no issue, it's marvelous. Hawk and Animal are not yet Hawk and Animal. They are not will imposers yet, they are machines without full ideas of what to do. They're 10-20 matches into a 2,000 match career, a feeling that has never been felt before. Think of being 10 of 2,000 into anything. Your 10th ever beer, or your 10th ever burger; how those would be if Stan Hansen was punching your neck while you had it. Hawk has this nasty side headlock grab that looks like some real ranked bouncer Dalton sweep up the eyeballs toughness, and Hansen just lifts him cold and quick with a back suplex, like it was instinct and the easiest way to shake off a 275 pound man. 

The Road Warriors are infants with fuzzy Monchhichi haircuts. Hawk, always gifted with finding surprising ways to take offense, apparently had that skill from go. I watched it back a few times when he ran through a Wildfire punch to his stomach, stumbling through it and out of it with a leg buckling forward roll.  The Road Warriors long headlock control wasn't my favorite. Animal did the greater portion of it and his control was too stifling with too little advancement; too slow burn without catching fire, too smothering to lead to rewarding babyface selling, minimal intrigue given to Tommy and Ole in the headlocks. The headlock on Rich was enough, we didn't need one on Ole. Rich finally tagging out to Ole was one of the best parts of the match, Ole great at fighting messily through Hawk and Animal and Ellering for good measure. 

The real treat is after the match, as I've never seen any part of Barry Darsow's one month long Man Mountain Darsow era. His rarest persona. He's dressed like a 5 year old who likes big truck, and big hulking baby who's a Real Man's Man. Unrestrained Darsow is a sight. It's the biggest I've seen him outside any modern YouTube thumbnails. Had I been there and been even slightly more interested than the depressed man in white slacks in the front row, I would have thought Darsow was a future wrecking ball no different than Hansen and the Road Warriors. I wouldn't have known about how much he would call people goofballs.  

Buzz Sawyer vs. Scott Casey

MD: Casey had come in from Southwest and built this with a promo that he heard Sawyer was the toughest guy around so he wanted to fight him. Meanwhile, there had been some Rich and Sawyer animosity (re)building with a great backstage fight at the last Omni show. This was definitely good. Buzz got outwrestled to start, and he made it very engaging, constantly moving and flailing, teasing clean breaks and handshakes, taking his signature bump sideways out of the ring after a punch during rope running. 

He took over with a spinning heelbutt in the ropes after all those clean breaks and his cutoffs were all wild bits of body motion as he got his feet up. Finishing stretch had him missing a huge top rope knee drop and then holding the ropes after a roll up reversal. I could have used a little more on the comeback but this was really just to set the stage for Rich making the save for Casey and the two of them having a wild bloody brawl around ringside. Better to save the energy and fans' attention for that. 

Larry Zbyszko vs. Mr. Wrestling II

MD: We've not covered the weekly TV the vault has been posting leading up to this show. Those have had less great matches and more were great episodes where stories ran throughout the show.  

They had built to the last match by having this great show long story with Larry saying Wrestling II didn't deserve a shot followed by II winning a handicap match (pinning one person after another with his new pal Rick Rood coming out to ensure Larry didn't interfere), and then Larry's crony Killer Brooks failing to pin two guys, the second being Rood, after II came out to help him. 

That led to the last Omni show having Wrestling II get a pinfall on Larry that was counted by by Rood while the ref was down and stealing the belt. On the next show, they instituted a new rule where in case of a draw, a ref could decide a winner, and it was all about setting up Killer Brooks and guest commentator Wrestling I as co-refs for the upcoming match.

The following week, Larry finally got Geigel to force Wrestling II to give the belt back to him, but that led to a $25,000 vs Mask challenge where Larry brought in Tully and Wrestling II had Pez as his partner. They'd do a three round elimination tag. The reason for this was clearly because GCW TV wasn't set up to do one long match over the whole show. That defeated part of the purpose of the TV to cut promos for the weekly shows around the horn. By doing it in rounds, they could be a bit like Portland who would do promos between falls of 2/3 falls matches. The elimination gimmick was more to put Wrestling II's mask more at risk and build the story of the match. 

That was fun (even if it was weird to see Tully as anyone's second banana) and led to Wrestling II beating the odds.

Which brings us to this long, long title match. Like I noted, it was a great build and we were lucky to see it. 

The premise here is that with the two refs, Larry wants to wrestle clean if Wrestling II dares. Wrestling II does dare ("Mr. Zbyzsko, my name is Mr. Wrestling"). Brooks is all cleaned up which is funny to see. 

So they work this match for far longer than you'd expect with Larry getting one-upped hold after hold, exchange after exchange, and throwing a fit on the outside (with the fans counting along) only to come back in and get shown up again. That meant headlocks that II was able to keep despite Larry's best efforts, times where it looked like Larry might have gotten an advantage with something legitimately slick only to immediately lose it, and rope running where he did A-B and C right only to get clowned on D. At one point, when Larry was disengaging to try to figure out what to do, II grabbed the house mic and said "I thought you wanted to wrestle" to a big pop. We've seen this a thousand times, but I've never seen it taken to this level where they just run it for so, so long building up pressure for him to totally lose it. And the best part was that they had the fans the whole way between the build, the premise, and the execution (including and especially Larry's selling of the humiliation).

Finally, Larry got frustrated enough to throw a punch. Brooks (playing it even) was quick to admonish him and II hit a kneelift, only for Larry to go sailing out. Then the humiliation continued. Roll-ups, rope running, monkey flips. There'd be little glimpses of Larry losing it, not breaking clean in the corner, escalating to a body slam (only to get slammed immediately himself), but he kept going back to the wrestling, even having just a bit of luck with a full nelson. It wasn't enough and II escaped. That's when Larry lost it and kicked II through the ropes onto the table on a rope break. This was a whole 30 minutes into the match, which is a massive testament to the two of them, being able to keep the ball in the air that long.

Larry opened things up from there, peppering in punches on headlocks. Both I and Brooks (surprisingly) admonished him. He'd keep throwing punches, with Brooks doing most of the admonishing. Because he was giving him grief, there was only so much I could do, even as Larry came back for more punches. Eventually though, that little bit of delay, that little bit of distance let II start to duck and weave and mount a huge comeback.

Things get a little muddled for the finish unfortunately. We get a bit of out of the comeback clipping leading to a double down. II then does get the kneelift but Larry's hand is in the ropes and Brooks starts giving II grief. That causes I to get in his face and Brooks to toss I out. I eventually comes back and takes Brooks (who had been more or less doing his job) out of the match. II has a clear advantage down the stretch but can't quite put Larry away before the bell. As it rang, he had him in a great sleeper, with Larry's legs far, far out causing a big visual lean. I awarded the match to II (given the new rule that refs could do that on a draw) but said the belt should stay with Larry. The clipping hurts it a bit and it'd almost be better with only one ref (though it did help cover some of Larry's punching, maybe), but overall, I thought this was a fairly big accomplishment to pull off.

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Jaguar! Galactica!

Volume 4  

13. Jaguar Yokota vs. La Galactica (WWWA Singles Title, Hair vs. Mask) - 5/7/83

K: We previously covered Devil & Tarantula vs. The Dynamite Girls from this show, but I’ll add now that this was probably the biggest AJW event of the year. I’m not sure exactly what the build for the Hair vs. Mask match was; it’s a little strange because you’d expect that stipulation to be a blowoff, or at least in a well-developed feud, but this is actually La Galactica’s first match in AJW (she wrestled as Pantera Surena in Mexico, maybe running Jaguar vs. Panther would be too much). I’m guessing the stipulation was more to sell to the Japanese fans that a top Mexican star was coming over and they’d be getting something unique because of that.

And, of course, this has historical significance because it’s the first match in AJW history where someone’s hair would be on the line, which would go on to be one of the company’s big special stipulations.

They don’t wrestle in the opening like they’re in a hot feud - though to be fair, they aren’t, it’s mainly just exchanges of throws and holds where no one really gets the advantage. But it does put over that Jaguar can hold her own against the unfamiliar Lucha stylings of her opponent here. The lack of heat does hurt things a bit though. The main noise from the crowd is someone blowing a whistle a bit erratically like at a sports game, but without context you wouldn’t be able to guess who they were even rooting for. 

There’s a nice little payoff early on when Galactica extends a hand of sportsmanship to Jaguar, who seems a bit reticent to accept but she still kind of falls for it in that Galactica immediately jumps her once she’s allowed to get too close. They later do a reset after Galactica gets thrown into the chairs, and she gets back in and tries the same trick, but there’s no way Jaguar’s gonna get suckered in a second time and just charges at her with strikes.
About halfway in we get the first Monster Ripper interference, which then becomes a frequent occurrence. I’m not a fan of this. Firstly, the way the match was building didn’t lead us to this. Galactica seemed to be handling things quite well up to that point, whereas Monster was acting like her pal was in danger of losing if she didn’t charge in. Part of this is Galactica is only in Japan for a six week tour whereas Monster is here full time (I’m guessing the AJW office wouldn’t know at this point how often Galactica would be back over the next few years), so this is putting the bulk of the heat on Monster to use up later, but at the expense of today.

We get a glimpse of that more vicious Jaguar Yokota when Monster Ripper’s interference escalates into cutting a chunk of Jaguar’s hair off with a pair of scissors, and Jaguar lets out a great yowl of frustration. I thought it was a bit funny when she hit Galactica with a piledriver and then attempts to pin her despite her legs very obviously being in the ropes, like she was hoping the referee would brazenly cheat to help her to compensate for the illegal interference she’d suffered earlier. Doesn’t work though.

Jaguar’s frustrations get the better of her when she pulls out a chair, and takes out the referee and another official when they try to stop her. The referee being out though just gives Monster Ripper the opportunity to jump in and do a prolonged double team with big top rope moves that leave Jaguar crushed, with the referee getting back in the ring just in time to count the three for Jaguar’s 1st title reign to end after 27 months. That is a big deal in itself, but the bigger deal is the drama of the hair cutting ceremony. Jaguar tries to bail out at first, loudly protesting the injustice of it, but the commissioner insists that the result must stand (though promising a rematch and advertising which show it will be at in a classic pro-wrestling hustle). Jaguar calms down and accepts her fate. We cut to a girl in the crowd in tears as the hair cutting commences, and the former champ seems transformed into a wounded, more bitter, less innocent creature.

The match wasn’t that great and I wouldn’t recommend it if someone just wanted to see why this feud is so well regarded (it’s easily the worst of their series), but I include pre/post-match events when assessing matches when they’re clearly part of the overall package, and the post-match definitely enhances this into something very good and worth watching, even without the historical ground you’re getting for later.

***1/2 

14. Jaguar Yokota Interview - 5/7/83

K: This is the earlier extended interview/talking segment I’ve been able to find of Jaguar Yokota, she doesn’t seem to be a wrestler who ever talked that much. She just let her in-ring do the talking. I thought she was effective here though. She’s even kind of funny when she sternly shut down a reporter who dared comment that he thought the whole hair-shaving match stipulation was a bit melodramatic, insisting that losing this match was truly devastating for her and she looked deadly serious the whole time. She’s not known for her promo ability but handled this whole segment like pro-wrestling was all real and, for me, sometimes that’s all I need a wrestler to do to enjoy it.
The slow zoom out as Jaguar finishes the interview and looks like she’s slowly starting to cry and drop her iron lady persona is very well done. Felt like an arty movie scene.

MD: This was clearly to set up a show a few weeks later. It should be viewed as much as an angle as a conventional match. What we get of a conventional match in here shows us that there could probably be a really good straightforward (heated, bloody, etc) match between these two at this exact moment in time. Despite the stakes, they start it almost like a lucha title match. There are some very nice exchanges that no one but Yokota could pull off (or at least it feels that way). She bounds on her feet like it’s nothing. You wouldn’t want a whole roster doing that but when she does it, it’s great. Likewise, during a bodyscissors reversal where Galactica picks her up by her hair, she is able to somehow turn it into a drop toehold of sorts and I’ve never seen it done quite like that.

Charles over at Wrestling Playlists has been watching a lot of this for a best of the 80s capper he’s doing and (to paraphrase) he does feel like in a lot of what he’s seen Yokota is almost too much, too indestructible, too athletic. I think that’s been less of an issue in the singles matches. Here, though, this was almost a handicap match with Ripper interfering again and again and again. Jaguar would have her big comebacks (using the bridge out of a pin or the front tumble to start them) and hit her big bombs (tombstone, belly to back) but there would be Ripper to break things up. Jaguar had ten people at ringside with her but neither them nor the refs could do anything to stop Ripper. At one point she tried to give Galactica the scissors but Jaguar got them and cut part of the mask, which is a pretty novel idea that I don’t remember ever really seeing in a lucha mask vs hair match.  

Eventually, it was just too much and after Ripper jumped off the top rope on her, Galactica choked her while pinning her. The officials said the result had to stand but immediately mentioned a rematch, so this was as carny as anything you’d get in Memphis, even if there they’d establish the rules and why Ripper was able to break them more clearly (and yes, I know this was billed as Death match, but come on). 

There was one moment in the middle where Yaguar let out a primal scream after putting up with too much interference and that’s the sort of thing that makes a match like this work, as did her fighting the haircut, eventually giving in, and giving the emotional post-match promo how she’d die if that’s what it took to win the rematch. We don’t have the rematch but I bet that thing drew even if this match had to be relatively unsatisfying to get us there.

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Tuesdays with Daddy: Week 1: Introduction - vs. Mr. X (12/22/79)

Introduction

MD: So just what are we trying to do here? Just what do I, an uncultured American, have to do with Big Daddy? Not a lot actually. I don’t have any core memories of him. I probably never heard of him until some time into my late 20s or 30s. I haven’t seen a lot of matches. I have a lot more to say about Otto Wanz and a lot more of a personal connection, even after the fact, to Jerry Blackwell. Honestly, the one Klondike Bill (UK) match we got from the French Footage probably moved me more than any thought I’ve ever had about Big Daddy. But I know he was a star. I know he was beloved. I know a lot about the behind the scenes reasons for that.

And I know no one’s ever seriously looked at his ringwork to see why and how he connected to crowds.

I have to think that he did. We’ve evaluated Hogan and Dusty, Backlund and Inoki. Even Cena and Reigns. Jackie Sato too! We’ve taken a look at stars and aces, lead babyfaces, and we’ve tried to distill what they did specifically that moved the fans. It’s not just presentation. It’s not just being booked to win. Plenty of wrestlers have been booked to win and weren’t national sensations. I believe, above all else, that details matter when it comes to pro wrestling. What the wrestlers do in the ring matter. 

I want to see up close and first hand what Daddy did and what he didn’t do. Even if he didn’t have conventionally great matches, that doesn’t mean he might not have been a great wrestler. Maybe great matches weren’t going to serve the purpose of what he was trying to do. Even if he wasn’t athletic or didn’t have a great workrate, that doesn’t mean he didn’t do other things well when it came to crowd control and engagement, in working to his opponents’ and partners’ strengths and working them into his act.

Or maybe he didn’t do any of this? Maybe the rep is true. Maybe conventional wisdom is right. Maybe we reevaluate and find that there isn’t much laudable there and the promotion and the framing was everything. That’ll be interesting too. 

But don’t you want to know? Wouldn’t any wrestler or wrestling fan want to know what, in a wrestler’s ring work, helped to make him a cultural sensation? I sure do. Maybe we can figure this out together. The goal isn’t necessarily to push back against this or that or even get him into the WON HOF. The point is that I don’t know, I haven’t seen for myself, and we’re willing to put in the legwork and write about it.

So we’re going to watch around ten matches picked completely at random, just what’s available and I can easily date. Singles where I can find them. Tags. We’ll look at him a little younger and a little older and in the middle. We’re not trying to be comprehensive in how the act changed over time, but we’ll point out things as we go. Feel free to play along and comment along. We’ll take firsthand accounts and extra bits of context if anyone wants to share, but for the sake of this project, the footage’s the thing.

Week 1: Big Daddy vs Mr. X 12/22/79 

MD: We're still early into this, and I'm trying to make sense of just what he does well. Why is he over? What does he do that connects with the crowd? It's not just "he's big." It's not just "he's pushed." The presentation is part of it, but there have to be performative elements, good or bad. Details have to matter. That's the world I want us to live in and quite frankly, when it comes to pro wrestling, that's the world that I witness no matter the place or era. 

So let's break this down. Daddy comes out with his hat and jacket. When he takes them off, the fans are happy to see the girth and he starts a celebratory chant with them, engaging immediately. He's got a white singlet with black "Big Daddy" letters on them. It is certainly memorable. Mr. X is a masked hairy bloke. 

Daddy moves around the ring fairly spry. He's fresh after all. He lets Mr. X get him in a couple of holds first to sort of invert expectations and get his points with the crowd in the escape. First he tosses him across the ring off the headlock to a big pop. Then he actually sells for a few long seconds in a top wristlock, grimacing, slapping Mr. X's back gingerly, before chucking him off with one hand. That matters. It creates a bit of dissonance, the hint of peril. It certainly got a pop because he drew people in.

Then he takes over and doesn't really look back over the rest of the round and the minute and a half or so of the next. He does have some varied offense though. There are corner whips which X takes face first. There are beales off the rope but he charges into them in a way that puts real impact behind it. He lets X bounce off him a couple of times, but when X throws a fit and jumps up and down, he's right there with a belly bump. 

Some things are more interactive with him engaging the crowd and giving them something to latch on to. He does a cross stranglehold and then goes for the mask, revealing that Mr. X has a beard. When he's done with that, he just chucks him to the mat. Mr. X is creating the motion, even running around the ringside area in frustration at one point, but Daddy more than helps him along. 

It gets a little repetitive at times, even in a short match, another headlock toss off, another set of whips. These don't have quite the same response with the fans, but as soon as that starts to happen, he brings things to a close, first with a thudding headlock takeover he rides X down with. Then at the end of Round 1 with a front chancery suplex. It doesn't look great but you get the point anyway and the fans liked it. Then in round two, with X beaten down and barely beating the count, he did a sort of hanging back body drop, almost a waterwheel drop, landing on him in a way that looked brutal. X didn't get up from that.

Not a bad first look, but the question, in part, is how much is going to be ritual and how much is going to be variance. He'll certainly have opponents of different types and there will be tags and other things. It's clear that he knew the sort of effect he could have on the crowd through something as simple as taking his hat off and something as complex as selling a top wristlock for a few seconds before dispatching X. He knew when it was time to wind things down too. It is telling, maybe, that he was in a tiny bit of danger of overstretching what he did have, but that was, in part because X really didn't pose a threat. Key bits of his offense looked honestly great in in 79 at least. Let's see how that progresses. You watch this and see a pretty talented wrestler who knew how to make use of both his skills and work around his limitations and really understood the crowd. But that's just a snapshot.

ER: Matt has been waiting so patiently for me to hop on this Big Daddy project, I don't know why I've been putting it off. Matt waited for me because he knows how much I love fat guy wrestling. Fat guys are what drew me to pro wrestling in the first place. Maybe it was because I had a fat dad, of the different kinds of dads we could have. He was shaped like Boss Man and maybe that's why I loved wrestlers shaped like Bam Bam Bigelow. I wanted to see fat guys even though I did not aspire myself to be fat. My neighbor friend Colin had a Vietnam vet electrician dad, so instead probably liked Jesse Ventura or Dutch Mantell. Sgt. Slaughter if he didn't know. Fat guys in wrestling make great shapes. WWF was nothing but great wrestling shapes. Big fat guys are the most pure, beautiful things Allowed by pro wrestling. Pro wrestling does this weird magic trick with the biggest and best fat guys: it makes them look more normal in their gear than in normal man clothes. Bam Bam Bigelow, John Tenta...I don't want to see them in jeans. Bam Bam found the perfect flame unitard to enhance the best features of his wrestling body. He looks perfect in his flame suits, literally every color, even though we all know the one with that rich blue is the best one. 

Big Daddy was a great shape. What a figure. Big Daddy's body is wrestling perfection. The British were right on this one. The Germans loved big fat Otto Wanz, Big Daddy discovered the perfect wrestling shape and the glowing white singlet to contain it, and the British rightly said "That's our guy." Imagine what that body would have looked like with American portions and American snack food aisles. Big Daddy grew this tremendous body on tinned mince and boiled potatoes. 

Big Daddy is a unique character, a dominant babyface who is literally never in trouble, never threatened, never on his heels. In control, at all times, effortlessly....but that shape. I gotta say, I get it. If you're going to be a dominant babyface, you have to bring a new way of executing offense, and Big Daddy is captivating to watch. 

Is this really just an Arthur "Buffalo" Bice project? Will this project, instead of being a Big Daddy love fest, turn into Matt and I discovering all the different no names who were incredible at getting run over by this sequined dump truck? Every week will it be something like "Did this just become a John "Bengal" Swynford project??" Here's Buffalo Bice pulling the Big Daddy Christmas match, which feels like a major deal. This program signs off with Christmas wishes for all, and Mr. X is tasked with taking two dozen dangerous bumps in the biggest match of his career. 

But this is no big bumping youngster pinballing for an old man, this is a man being forced to bump by an incredibly imposing megastar. Yes, Bice bumped big, but I don't know if he ever had a choice. Any time Daddy whipped or bieled X, X had no say in his landing. Daddy looked like he had the pulling power of Andre. Every time X got yanked full speed face first into the turnbuckles, it was like an ogre swinging a peasant into a tree. His biels are quick and violent and go farther faster than you'd think. His biels are a real satisfying motion, backing X into the ropes and letting him go at their most torqued, and just letting that man fly. This lad has no chance of stopping. His bumping was forced upon him by a double size Dick Murdoch with quick closing speed. By the time he escalates to his side headlock takeover or front chancery suplex, Bice is a corpse getting dummied. Bice makes it to the 2nd round, the last time any TV Daddy match went to the 2nd round. It may have been because the cat was enjoying the exercise, but it happened, and Bice weathered it. 

And God DAMN Fatty Thomas!! Did I hear 42 stone?? That's nearly 600 pounds! This is Daddy's next opponent? Ringing in the new year with Fatty "Bulk" Thomas? How great is it that he has a nickname that's a much nicer name than his first name. His name is true. His body no longer resembles the shape of a human man, his stomach bulging out low and farther than I've ever seen a belly bulge. Commentary is unsure he'll even be able to get into the ring. God what a business. Just find the fattest men you can and let 'em struggle to get into a ring without help. 

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 8/24 - 8/30

All In 2026 8/30/26

Willow Nightingale vs Mercedes Mone

If you live by stories, you die by them too.

Willow Nightingale chose to live by them and she ended up dying by them in the end.

Mercedes Mone entered the ring preceded by a ballet performance, then attended to by those self-same ballerinas. The message was clear. She deserved art. She was heralded by art. Art respected her. Art served her. She was art. A transcendent pinnacle.

Willow, on the other hand, was preceded by a storybook narration, with images highlighting her unlikely ascent as a brave knight, her fantastic triumph, and how she would never, ever stop smiling.

Willow Nightingale lost to Mercedes Mone. That was not how the story was supposed to end. Yet as the match careened towards its finish, its unfortunate inevitability revealed itself. When? It was the moment where a line was crossed, the moment when the story ended even before the match did.

How did Willow Nightingale lose to Mercedes Mone?

Was it because Willow entered injured? That would be the most logical reason, no? Even though she bedazzled her cast, she came in at a disadvantage. That made it hard for her to do things as simple as whipping Mercedes across the ring or as difficult as climbing the ropes for a moonsault. It gave Mercedes a wedge to take back over at any point in the match and it let her drive a dagger through that wedge to split Willow asunder and tear apart both the cast and her hand late in the match. Yet Willow still had her strength, still had her resolve, still had her savvy and her bravery and she was able to fight through that pain and disadvantage again and again.

Was it because Mercedes Mone wanted it more? Because she was more dangerous? Because she was the better wrestler? Mercedes knew Willow’s moves, knew her tricks. Early on, Mercedes broke her nose and she spent the entire match with blood splattered across her visage (a visual that enhanced every single thing within this match turning even practiced sequences into gripping moments of unpredictable drama), but she obsessively fought on. She had answers for Willow’s biggest weapons, hand or no, strength or no. But then Willow knew Mercedes too, had defeated her before, was the defending champion, wanted it every bit as much, maybe even too much.

Was it because Mercedes was a dirty cheater? Towards the start of the match, the corner turnbuckle pad inadvertently came sailing off as Mercedes tried to block a strength move by Willow. Twice, Mercedes was able to get an edge by running Willow’s head into the corner, and once it even allowed her to hit her finisher. Later on, on the floor, Mercedes tried to wield the belt against Willow, but Willow is not one to back down and let bad people do bad things. She knew exactly who and what Mercedes was. She was able to wrest it from Mercedes and turn it back upon her. In that moment, it was justice. In that moment it was warranted. She met that moment with a smile.

Was it because Aubrey Edwards was knocked down? The referee was knocked prone. Willow hit the Babe With the Power Bomb. She had a visual pin closer to ten seconds than to three. She should have won. She hit her best shot. Mercedes survived. It wasn’t fair. Life isn’t fair. The trick then is to smile anyway, right? So long as she did that, she’d win in the end. So while this and everything that preceded it led to her loss, none of them caused it. Because up until this point, it was still her story.

It was none of those things.

It was what happened next in the face of all of them.

Mercedes had survived her best shot. Willow looked up, momentarily at a loss. She was not smiling. Her cast had been mangled. Her hand hurt. For just a moment. even her monumental spirit faltered; for brave knight or not, she’s human like the rest of us. If she wasn’t, we wouldn’t care nearly as much. We see ourselves in her, the best of us and the rest of us as well.

Looking around the ring, Willow tried to figure out what to do next. She pointed to the corner, to the exposed turnbuckle. She rose with resolve. She slammed Mercedes into it without mercy or hesitation. She doomed herself in the process.

Willow Nightingale lost because in a moment of doubt and confusing, she transgressed. Willow broke a rule. Willow faced the consequences, for in stories, everything has a price.

Yes, Mercedes had used the exposed turnbuckle on her twice, and to high effect. Yes, Willow had used the belt on Mercedes. But when she used the belt, it was after stopping Mercedes from attacking her with it. It was justice. Here? Now? This? Mercedes was helpless, prone. It wasn’t justice. It was desperation at worst and revenge at best. A wrestler can do that, even a babyface, but not a storybook knight. 

That was the moment this stopped being a story and became a match once again. Her armor, just like her cast, was torn asunder, but unlike the cast, this was her own doing. 

She tried to escalate matters, to hit another power bomb, this time from the top rope, but Mercedes was still all of those things that she had always been, the best at what she did. Now, with Willow no longer protected by fate, Mercedes took her over with an avalanche ‘rana and let that momentum carry her to a cruel, unyielding victory, all the way to adding insult to injury by pressing her foot into the damaged hand after the ref’s call. 

Willow Nightingale is a knight. Maybe even more than that, she is a superhero. And her superpower is perspective. She finds the positivity in life. She uses that positivity to carry her forward and to take all of us along with her. She makes us better. But she’s human like the rest of us. Just like Mercedes, if you break her nose, she will bleed. 

People aren’t going to like this, just as I don’t like writing it, but Willow Nightingale lost this match because just for a moment, she lost her smile. I don’t like it. You don’t like it. You can be mad at me for saying it. We’re not supposed to like it. 

But it is supposed to make us feel something. I felt something while watching this match. I feel something writing this now. I hope you feel something reading it. 

The thing is… I know something else too.

The joy and frustration of pro wrestling is that it is a story that never ends. And even if for all the reasons above, Willow faltered on this night, she has given us every reason to believe in her, not to believe that she is infallible, but to believe that given time, given a moment to shake of the dust, she will find her smile once again. She will cling to it, she will rise up, and she will take everyone she can with her. 

The story of her reign ended, but the story of Willow Nightingale has not. She may have not been able to write the ending at All In, but the next chapter is wide open and I know that you believe just as much as I do that we’ll all be smiling when she comes back to write it, all of us except for maybe Mercedes Mone.

----------------

Jon Moxley vs Nigel McGuinness 

(1) Jon Moxley understands the power of time and place. He lost last year to Adam Page in Texas, a cowboy bringing down the man with the black hat in front of another stadium crowd. This was England. This was Nigel McGuinness' dream.

Moxley has spent the better part of a year pulling the wool over everyone's eyes, most of all himself. He presents himself as the warrior prophet, the shepherd of violence and battle and righteous combat. If you look at his actions, however, you find someone who does not practice what he preaches. But he (a champion) wins, and so long as he wins, it doesn't matter in the end. What Moxley truly practices is that might equals right, the same damn thing he practiced at the height of his reign of terror.

Usually, he'll wrestle even to start, get down on the mat, make a show of it. It's only when it gets hard or inconvenient that he'll turn the screw and show his true colors.

Not here. Not against a Nigel McGuinness in this stadium, in front of this crowd, on this unlikely path, with this apparent destiny.

(2) Against Nigel, he didn't even pretend. At the first opportunity, the first chance to break in the ropes, he went in on the ankle.

Nigel had hurt it against Shibata utilizing an all-too-clever block of a Penalty Kick with his own leg. It helped win him the match but at high cost. How high? He had to drop out of his match against Moriarty at the ROH PPV. He almost didn't carry on in the Cup.

Nigel has seen it all and done it all as well. He's world weary. He's known great highs and even greater lows. He understands how the world works, just like Moxley does.

When Hechicero tried to attack his ankle, he went straight to the mask. He's an expert, a practitioner, a technician, a commentator, Staff, but if you cross a line, he'll cross it twice as quickly and twice as cruelly.

So against Mox, he did just that. He went after the nose, the face, the eyes. Every time that Moxley went for the ankle, he came back twice as vicious and desperate and mean. If Mox was going to fight dirty, he'd make him pay.

(3) That changed the tenor of the match. Mox, the leader of the Death Riders, a man constantly looking back over his shoulder, a man who can only look into the eyes of his own reflection for so long, was already paranoid of Nigel, paranoid of what his destiny might be. Instead of having a match wholly focused around working the ankle, they went other places instead, Mox too hesitant to unleash whatever create grown from years of desperation and despair might still lurk within McGuinness.

It became a game of counters then. Nigel tried for the London Dungeon but Mox was ready of it. Mox went for the charging corner clotheslines, but Nigel caught him and hoisted him up with an uppercut for the Tower of London. Nigel tried for the Les Kellett lariat, but Mox was ready for a cutter. Mox tried one of his own and Nigel was ready with a Lariat. Mox was lock in the LeBell Lock, but there Nigel was to reverse it into one of his own.

(4) Still, when the opportunity arose, when things got desperate, when he realized he couldn't win through conventional means, Mox, his true colors already revealed, had no choice but to roll the dice. He had been able to get the bulldog choke on, but Nigel escaped through pluck, determination, and an  understanding of human anatomy, driving his own chin into the nerve in Moxley's arm.

The ankle, then. Moxley stomped down on the ankle, went for ankle locks. Nigel fired back with everything he had, even locking in the London Dungeon, but at the end of the day, while both men were desperate, only one was healthy. Moxley had found bravery within his own cowardice as he honed in on the ankle.

Both men were not just desperate; they were also clever. Moxley realized that he was about to lose the lock, that Nigel was about to make it to the ropes, so he let go and spun him, keeping the advantage and setting him up for a stomp to the skull. From there, it was one last scissored ankle lock. Nigel stretched valiantly, but was forced to quit. This time, destiny was averted, and Moxley wrestled his way through it all yet again.

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Found Footage Friday: DOUBLE DUSTY~! MURDOCH~! SUPER DRAGON~! taro~! BOSS MAN~! IVAN & SHEIK~!

Dusty Rhodes/Dick Murdoch vs. Iron Sheik/Ivan Koloff GCW 4/3/83

MD: Another recent vault drop. It's a Texas Tornado match and it's a shame we don't have the whole card as it has Buzz vs Masked Superstar, Tito/Blair vs Arn/Borne, Larry vs Tommy, and Flair vs Atlas. BUT we will take what we can get. Heels have Homer O'Dell out with them. Dusty vs Sheik feels like a really unique match up. There's some great pro wrestling bs at the start as the announcer says that Sheik has requested the fans not chant USA USA.

The Outlaws are such a blast in this setting. A lot of it feels like Dusty doing his thing and Murdoch knowing exactly how to riff off of it. They'd throw double elbows or simultaneous punches or pingpong people between them or as part of a comeback. At one point they each took a leg and dropped an elbow (though Dusty didn't go all the way down which was funny). When the heels were able to pry one off and double team, Dusty was great at throwing himself to break up the pin (Sheik did that once or twice too). We don't have a ton of Outlaws footage and to see them conduct a crowd like this and the sheer fluidity in how they worked together is just magic.

This made good use of the rules by stressing that there were none. That meant that Murdoch could toss people over the top. It meant that at one point they grabbed a belt and used it as a weapon, just like that. It meant O'Dell could break up pins. And it especially meant that he could take Dusty out with a cane shot. Apparently he was taken to the back to get bandaged up though we don't see it. That left it two-on-one against Murdoch and he knew exactly what he was doing there too. Biggest pop of the match was him kicking out when both men were pinning him at once. He'd get comebacks but ultimately swept under, setting up the bandaged Dusty coming back and chasing the heels off. Wonderful stuff that set up the following month's bullrope/chain match as they couldn't get away then.

ER: This is from a new Dusty mixtape but it felt like it belonged on the WWE Vault's Dick Murdoch Mixtape that doesn't actually exist. Dusty is getting bandaged up for a long stretch, returning right at the end, which gives us a chance to see how great Murdoch was at working 1 on 2. We all know how great Murdoch was, but handicap matches are tough to work and most people aren't good at them. Murdoch could have been, if it ever made sense to put him in one. This was Texas Tornado rules and I think that format benefitted the pairing. I can't imagine a long Sheik/Ivan control segment would have been worth the hot tag it led to, so seeing the ebbs and flows of Murdoch and Dusty punching the hell out of these two lawless foreigners is the best version of this match. Murdoch knew exactly what to do as Dusty's partner in the TX Outlaws. During the first half there were all these little moments where each man was doing his own thing, and Dick would come in to add a little punctuation to some poetry Dusty had just finished writing. I love all Murdoch punches, but the best was when Dusty was setting up the Flip Flop & Fly without noticing Murdoch moving in, and as Dusty was throwing the payoff punch to Sheik, Murdoch landed one at the same time. Southern Synergy. 

Texas Tornado matches can often have too many instances of bodies getting in the way of other bodies, but Murdoch is a natural at moving through the chaos without slowing down. He was so good at little punctuations, like when Dusty knocked Koloff flat on his back, and as Murdoch casually walks out of the corner to go after Sheik, he stomps Koloff's face as he passes by. The 2 on 1 was really fun and led to Sheik bumping far bigger than I was expecting. The madman from Iran takes two big bumps over the top to the floor, and the guardrail was so close to the ring that his leg gets hung up on it as he's falling! When Sheik and Koloff were pinballing away from Murdoch throwing punch combos from his knees, it's perfect heel feeding and perfect babyface timing.  Murdoch is great at moving between the two as he fights to his feet, never leaving them standing and selling for too long, a man who always knows where he needs to be. 

Dusty makes his triumphant return with a bandage that makes him look like sassy Rambo, and everyone in the Omni loses their minds, except for depressed Omni Superfan Donald Sutherland, who holds the front row hostage every week with his arms folded, a man forever unmoved by the most charismatic wrestlers in history. 

Dusty Rhodes vs. Big Boss Man WWF (Toronto) 10/29/89

MD: There's a moment midmatch where Boss Man has on a hold which one might graciously call an "armbar." Boss Man is making a face that represented the exertion of effort and he was sweating enough that you bought into it. Dusty was making a face that showed the world that the world was painful. I am usually not a stickler for details such as this, but it was not a very good armbar, ok? But it didn't matter. Because Dusty simply turned his hand upwards, flexed his fingers a bit, asked the crowd to come up for him, to help him, to be there for him, to participate, to make noise, to be part of this match and this moment, and they did. 

It was enough. 

Because Dusty was Dusty. Because Boss Man was huge. Because they wanted to be there to see them. Because someone in the back row probably couldn't see the hold all that well but their eyes gravitated to the faces and the faces were larger than life. 

And he asked them. Dusty Rhodes, who himself was larger than life, flexed those fingers. There's some kid in that crowd, someone who had worked a full shift before dragging themselves to the stadium, some old lady who had seen cheered for Billy Watson decades ago.. and Dusty was asking them to come up for them.

And they did. 

And more and more as the match went on, he would reward them. Just as he rewarded them preemptively at the start by stepping on Slick's hand when it was on the apron pre-match. Late in the match he'd reward them by dodging an Avalanche so that Boss Man went careening into Slick. And at the end? As he sent Boss Man reeling, Traylor making up for the dubious hold with brilliant physical charisma as he bounced off the top rope and then the second rope, Dusty would send them over the top by diverting a Slick nightstick shot into Boss Man's head and picking up the win. 

Once upon a time I might have grumbled about this. Plenty of people still will grumble at it. Now? I see how it's so much more impressive to create something out of nothing than far, far less than the something Dusty created here out of far far more. 

ER: A much better match than their SNME match that was taped two days later. That match ended with a weak roll up and had unnecessary arm work instead of dancing, not enough of a big fat guy swaying from punches and elbows. Dusty was on fire here, and Boss Man was great at being a huge young guy setting up every Dusty strike. Boss Man had some material I've never seen, a real guy who keeps giving the more footage you watch. There's a lot of great Boss Man that's just hiding in plain sight, a gifted worker who has aged sneakily well. We've all seen the incredible All Japan 1993 but Traylor is a guy who looks really great through way more years than we talked about at the time. 

There's a fantastic rhythm to this match, like everyone took Dusty's lead and made this into Parappa the Rapper with elbows and a nightstick. When Dusty is dancing in the ring with Boss Man's stolen nightstick, Boss Man is so fed up and humiliated on the floor that he starts banging the apron while hopping down the length of the apron. Five big hopping open handed swats, bopping down the length of the apron, Slick and Boss Man banging out their own Robbert Loggia-Tom Hanks long piano. Boss Man tops himself later when he lands a swinging punch on the floor, punctuated with two lateral hopping apron slap beats before landing the punch on 3. I don't know that I've ever seen so much apron work from Boss Man and it's because NBC didn't want to let him show his rhythm. He rocks and sways for Dusty the effeminate snack charmer, the finish showing off Boss Man's legendary rope work. Dusty elbowing Boss Man into the top rope, into the middle rope, all the way across the ring into Stick's errantly swung nightstick. A flat on his back knock out ending on its biggest beat. 

Super Dragon vs. TARO LXW (New York) 9/27/03 - EPIC

MD: Traveling match as Dragon vs TARO take New York. Apparently TARO had no idea this was taped until it popped up a month ago. Fun (and as you'd expect, brutal) showcase in front of a crowd that probably didn't know what they were getting into. Lots of Dragon basing for TARO. Lots of body contact in general. We have endless reversal sequences now but these two had a way of chaining one attempt to a reversal to the move all while Dragon had TARO up or was catching him in mid air. It creates a different sort of effect where it's less do-si-do somehow, almost as if there's a better application of pro wrestling physics at play. 

Likewise there was a sense of escalation. Armdrags and headcissors to the start, strikes and grinding holds in the middle, a dive to change chapters, and bombs at the end. On the dive, TARO's button gimmick really did feel fifteen years too early. That would have been over huge in 2018. On the bombs, Super Dragon's buckle bomb hits so much better than anyone else's because he almost makes it a sit out with the roll back that follows it. I imagine the people in the crowd couldn't believe some of the kickouts and felt that the lariat that ended it might have been a little anticlimactic. At the same time, one thing I appreciated was the commentary going up for things like a dodged chop or Dragon just chucking him across the ring, even as much as some of the tricked out offense. The lines were less clear back then. If the crowd was at all thrown by the finish, they would soon get it over with the head crunching punctuation Dragon put on things after the match. I'd say that this was what they'd all be talking about in the car on the way home, but the next match was Corporal Robinson vs Necro Butcher so who knows. 

PAS: This as a touring match is pretty fucking crazy. There is something about Taro and Super Dragon doing this to each other in a warehouse in Southern California, as an attempt to start something, or change something, which makes sense. But to just take this on a tour? Do this as the third match on the card? Justin Credible in the back stretching and warming up (to wrestle La Parka, what the fuck was this show? As grody and violent as these guys ever got, nothing in wrestling was ever as sick as what Super Dragon would do to his friend Taro, and this match was loaded with stuff I have only ever seen in this match. A running liger bomb into the corner? A suplex using the horns of Taro's mask? A tapitia flipped into a powerbomb? Fucking hell. Super Dragon did a Psicosis corner bump as hard and fast as it has ever been done, in case you thought this was a one sided mauling. Unbelievable stuff, what a pair of demented psychos. 

ER: This Super Dragon YouTube channel has been such a great personal gift. As Segunda Caida's only ever West Coast representative, we grew up with completely different scenes and regional styles. Indy wrestling was at its most regional in 2001-2004, Bay Area style different from LA style, different from New Jersey style, different from Pittsburgh, different from Georgia, different from Kentuckiana. It was my incomparable favorite time to be a wrestling fan. I saw the West Coast style first hand in the best wrestling years of my life, and I bet Super Dragon was a guy I saw live more than almost anyone. Michael Modest, Donovan Morgan, RevPro/Early PWG guys, Boyce LeGrande, Bryan Danielson somehow, Jardi Frantz, Vinnie Massaro, Larry Blackwell. Those were my guys, who I drove my friends to see in my 1987 Chevy Astro van. 

This channel has given me back so many Super Dragon matches I was at with friends. It's given me back memories of Super Dragon matches I had somehow forgotten, like when I watched myself reacting to Super Dragon/Bobby Quance on the hard cam. I saw Super Dragon live at least a dozen times at the APW Gym, front rows only on three sides of the ring. I saw a Dragon/TARO match a year before this match, and I've seen plenty of tags with Super Dragon/TARO pairings. I love these two. The first RevPro tapes I traded for were shows from July 2000, and their earliest matches are just as good as their latest. TARO is one of those great regional finds from that special era. A flyer with great daring ideas and under a hundred matches; one of several guys who got talked into regularly letting Super Dragon drop them on their heads. He had to have been Dragon's most frequent opponent, and they had years of ideas for each other. 

Super Dragon had a Psicosis/Rey, SUWA/Dragon Kid level base for TARO's imagination, and their matches felt like nothing was off limits and real damage had to be happening. They were strong at placing the biggest spots of their matches, smart about match pacing and still surprising. There are consequences to the matches and the selling is perfect in the same way I think Jersey All Pro selling from the same time was perfect: the realism, stiffness, and the innovative ways to drop guys head first with suplexes was actually happening. They were enduring actual shit kickings. Whatever selling we were seeing, we were seeing a guy actually getting his nose smashed full speed into a turnbuckle, actually thrown unprotected onto his head and neck by the horns. Deranged, TARO, Orion, Nate Webb et al can sell any way they want. They were taking real life damage. Every TARO match is a reason why TARO had less than a hundred matches.  

There's so much to see, so many bumps, so many exchanges that never quite go the way you think they're going to go, so many things you may only see in one of their matches and never in anyone else's matches. This had a sitout buckle bomb that was so precisely and violently executed, a swinging fireman's carry splash mountain. and a suplex so damned it could only come from our early 2000s era of head drop innocence. Just like Jersey All Pro guys from the same era, they knew how to get to big moments in creative ways. TARO hit what had to be one of the earliest topes into a tornado DDT, but it came after Dragon had wrapped himself around the ringpost in that way he does, which was different from Cassandro's way, which was different from Psicosis's way. Setting up a big high spot with a big bump in stead of a big spot causing a big bump. They understand set up and payoff and escalation. There was a moment that felt like something Tully Blanchard would have thought up: Dragon prevents TARO from crotching him on the top buckle by bracing himself, but deservedly Mutumbos TARO and gets his legs swept out from under him into a worse crotching. I don't know if I ever loved wrestling more than when I was 22 years old.   

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE WWF 305 LIVE

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE SUPER DRAGON

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Masami! Tarantula! Jumbo! Yukari!

Volume 4   

12. Devil Masami & Tarantula vs. Jumbo Hori & Yukari Omori (WWWA Tag Team Titles Decision Match #2) - 5/7/83

K: This is a best of 3 series for the WWWA Tag Titles where all 3 matches are ⅔ falls. Yeah it does feel like they’re duplicating a gimmick but there you go. We get a recap of the 1st match so you know Dynamite Girls are 1-0 up on Devil Legion going into this one. 

The Dynamite Girls are wearing these little frilly dresses for their introductions, which looks especially weird on Yukari Omori. Also during the Devil/Tarantula’s entrance you can spot 15 year old Bull Nakano doing some crowd stewarding.

Babyfaces take control early and really go hard-hitting from the start. Devil Masami is selling well and fighting to get herself back into it. When she does Omori takes a hell of a bump off a Devil Masami cross chop. Proper hauls herself hard across the ring for it. There’s a really good superplex a bit later on due to Devil really milking the struggle she’s having to make of getting Omori up for it, but she eventually gets her up and gets a nearfall from it to a good crowd reaction. Omori’s too hurt to put up much of a fight though when Devil drags her up, and then I’m not sure what to call this move (Devil’s arsenal of offense is immense), but she gets Omori up from the apron and seems to hit her with a twisting brainbuster? Although it’s more on her face than her head. It’s really cool though and looked just as damaging as the superplex but more novel, so deservedly gets the 1st fall. So far, very good.
It also felt like the Dynamite Girls took most of the fall, and should really have extended the advantage they held from winning the first match, but they dropped a fall against the balance of play.

Again the babyfaces take control early in the 2nd fall. This time we get a little brawl on the outside when Jumbo Hori drags Devil Masami out and tries throwing her into chairs, but it doesn’t quite work as planned and they fight it out relatively evenly. By the time they’re getting back into the ring Devil is on top and Jumbo is doing a good sell job. I liked the pained expressions as she was on the mat. Once Tarantula gets tagged in though Jumbo is demolishing her again pretty quickly. She even throws her onto Devil at one point like she’s fighting both of them at once. Jumbo’s also utilising her size here a lot with big power moves like that, which is something I wish she’d done more often.

It’s a strange finish that you don’t see coming. The babyfaces look like they’re in control when they swing the heel team into each other. Then Tarantula gets thrown into the corner where Devil is, presumably to set up a spot where both heels are in the same corner and get hit with a running splash or something. But no. Devil darts out of the way and Tarantula she jumps up the turnbuckle, boomerangs back into Devil, who then fallaway slams her onto Jumbo Hori so it becomes like an assisted crossbody pin, and Tarantula actually wins it to take a 2-0 clean sweep. Again, against the run of play. You can’t really call it a fluke because it looked like a maneuver Devil & Tarantula had practiced hard in training to pull off in a situation like this, more of a very crafty sneaky win. Not sure if that’s really heelish or not.

The 1st match of the series was kinda just a going through the motions tag match. This was definitely not that. It felt like you were watching a crafty sports team with their backs against the wall coming in with a gameplan to steal a win and pulling it off, even if their tactics weren’t crowd-pleasing. Memorable stuff.

***1/2

MD: I don’t spend much time talking about gear here because I am ill-qualified to do so, but there was a real Mork and Mindy stripes with suspenders deal going on with Omori and Hori, with some odd color choices. They were the Dynamite Girls which I did not realize until after the fact. Devil and Tarantula had thematically (though not color) matching split colored deals with their names up the leg that were far cooler. I’m sure you’re glad you know that. Look, I have a whole spiel about how Mimi was full elf and Jaguar was half elf and Omori was half dwarf and Hori was some sort of giant race but I don't 100% know what D&D races exist and I don't want to call her a troll, so we'll  just move on.

Some thoughts from the first fall. The babyfaces tried for the first attack but they didn’t get far. The Devil Legion got them to the floor and took over. That said, their comeback was so good with so much of their signature stuff (Omori with a Russian Leg Sweep, a fireman’s carry throw, and her reverse bearhug drop down, which is what she took over with, Jumbo with these neat driving arm breakers, her fireman’s carry widowmakers, and a body block) that I thought it was going to lead to the finish with an Omori Vader bomb but Masami got her knees up. She followed it up with a brutal tapitia where she made Omori land on her face after the fact. Devil had some new tricks in the last few matches I’ve seen, including a throat cross chop (with Tarantula having these sweeping and overdramatic martial arts strikes), and a superplex from the second rope. That didn’t finish Omori off but a great outside in gourdbuster with a little half turn did.

Second fall had more of the same with the heels pulling them out to keep control. Wonderful visual of Devil revelling in it all as she hit a double underhook suplex from the outside in. Tarantula hit her rolls into dropkicks, which might be the best roll-into-a-move of all time. This time Jumbo came back with her twisting bearhug slam and they did a bunch more of their signature stuff. Jumbo hit the power bomb into throwing Jumbo suplex combo, Omori did her reverse tilt-a-whirl dropping Masami right on Tarantula. But Devil fought back out of a Jumbo full nelson and got her feet up as Omori charged in. After some nice tandem moves (double flying headbutts, double neckbreaker drop) by Devil and Tarantula, Omori and Jumbo came back, only to run right into a great finish as Devil hit a fall away slam on Tarantula so that she’d land in a body press and get the pin. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that before and it caught both me and Hori/Omori by surprise. So they took it in two falls after only losing the first match because of the second fall DQ. It certainly put Omori and Hori behind the eightball for the third match (which thankfully we do have).

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What's Wrong with Being a Tengu? What's So Bad About Being a Tengu? Senka vs Chi Chi

Sareee-ISM ​Chapter XI 8/24/06

Senka Akatsuki vs Chi Chi

MD: It's Chi Chi's world. Everyone else just lives in it. She moves in lockstep with society and society follows her lead. Fashion, pop music, social media. We live in an increasingly digital existence where style rules over substance, where influencer is not just a profession but a college degree, where we're judged by likes, reposts, followers. Reality is getting overtaken by the slick, sticky veneer of AI slop and aggregated information and Chi Chi is perfectly positioned to profit.

She comes out to the ring with Aqua's Barbie Girl blaring over the loudspeaker. She carries with her a handbag. She blows kisses to the crowd. She's carved her niche and created her following and is a potent force poised to disinfect professional wrestling of everything out of place and recreate it in her image.

Yet Senka exists.

Senka is the outer dark to Chi Chi's outer light (though maybe the inner light to her inner dark). Senka wrestles in her singlet, carrying the weight of generations of tradition before her. She charges forward. She kicks out. She never quits. She never stops. She is unrelenting, incessant. She's a storm. Depending on her opponent, maybe she's just a squall, but she's a force of nature nonetheless.

So she exists. Should that bother Chi Chi? Plenty exist beneath her. The majority exists beneath her. That's the point of the majority. They need to exist in order to serve as contrast that highlights her all the more. 

But Senka does not exist quietly. She could wear grey or brown and might blend in, might fit her station in life. She does not. She wears red. She walks with pride. She moves with determination. She will not be pushed aside. She will not be hidden away. She will show the world her merit and make the world remember her name. 

There is no room in Chi Chi's world for a Senka Akatsuki who doesn't know her place. She is a blemish that cannot be tolerated, a burr that must be yanked out, a lump that has to be stomped down. She is not just an imperfection, but is instead a celebration of imperfection. Chi Chi has pride. Chi Chi has determination. Chi Chi is a force. 

But Senka represents another path to success, one wreathed in substance instead of style. She is the exception who demands the world see her as exceptional. 

In the press conference leading up to this match, Chi Chi bemoaned Senka's pride, admonished her brazenness to wrestle in red, suggested she might prune the world of her, and most of all, named her as a Tengu. 

Instead of being properly chastised at the insult, one of the worst possible in Chi Chi's reality, Senka dared to take pride in it. What's wrong about being a Tengu? What's so bad about being a Tengu? 

Opposing forces, opposite poles. Neither could possibly suffer the existence of the other.

Fate (and very likely mirth, whether it be Sareee's or Chigusa's) put the two of them together, forced them to associate as a team against Spark Rush. At first opportunity, Senka kicked Chi Chi in the gut and slammed her onto their opponents. When Senka went to tag out, Chi Chi took the tag and then threw a punch for good measure. They were handedly defeated. A house divided can't stand against Spark Rush.

But that just positioned them, one week later, here against one another. 

At the bell, Chi Chi hung back in the corner, refusing to come meet Senka in the center. This was about pride. It was about a difference of lifestyles, of world views, of what the world should be. She'd hold her nose up and not give an inch. She demanded Senka come to her instead. Chi Chi might be bullheaded, but you can't outstubborn Senka. Senka dropped to the mat, sat cross-legged, and Chi Chi was forced to come to her. The first skirmish went to Senka.

After scrambling on the mat, Senka got the first real advantage as well, surviving a double wristlock to hit a few slams and lock in a crab. Her face, as always, was the portrait of effort and strain, but for a split second, it seemed like the tiniest of smiles flashed across it, a brief hint of joy for the damage she was doing to her opposite. 

Chi Chi honed in on the arm, turning a Senka fireman's carry into a flying Octopus Hold and then really sinking it in on a second attempt off the ropes. Senka survived it but came out damaged, clutching her arm and her side. With almost any other wrestler, you would want to see their offense hindered there. She shouldn't have been throwing a lariat with that arm, shouldn't have tried to use both arms to lock in a choke, or to hit multiple suplexes in a row. But, of course, that's exactly what she did. 

Unlike every other wrestler in the world, however, she made it work. It wasn't about fighting spirit or adrenaline. She emoted pain. She radiated pain. You could feel her pain burst from the screen, just as you had when she recoiled in the corner like a wounded animal. It was still there when she was on offense as well. It was pure stubbornness that made her use that arm despite the pain. How dare Chi Chi attack it? How dare Chi Chi think that it would stop her? That it would slow her down? There was a clear cost to Senka's offense, but it was a cost that she bore as opposed a cost that she ignored. 

Since she didn't ignore it, we could not ignore it either. Likely Chi Chi could not as well. Likely she was all the more frustrated and aggrieved because of it. Why couldn't Senka just stay down? Why couldn't Senka just shut up? Why couldn't Senka just go away? 

Of course, Chi Chi didn't go away either. She endured the choke and rolled to the floor putting them at another impasse. This time, she wouldn't give Senka what she wanted. This time she found it in herself to be the more stubborn of the two and forced an increasingly irate Senka to come after her. She was ready and fought her way back into the match by eating a headbutt and hitting an exploder off the apron to the floor. 

She couldn't put away Senka however. She couldn't keep up the pace, not with Senka constantly dragging her back down to her level. She threw kicks into Senka's face. Senka came back with lariats. Things devolved into wrestling's most basic form, headlocks. Senka strained to hang on while Chi Chi fought for a Saito Suplex. Chi Chi hit it but to no avail. Then when she tried to contain Senka with a headlock of her own, the strain was mirrored back the other direction. As time ticked down, Senka finally powered her over to hit a huge suplex, but the bell rang before she could full capitalize on it. 

The last minute of the match saw the two as truly mirrored images, two very different sides of what looked increasingly like the same coin. Chi Chi grabbed the mic post-match, spent, exhausted, and noted how disappointing and unsatisfying that was. Yet when Senka demanded more, Chi Chi slipped out of the ring and headed to the back. They traded insults one last time and our last image of the match was that of Senka rushing after her.

The world is a complicated place full of competing pressures. A wrestling ring has traditionally served  as a wonderful canvas on which to paint the clash of social and cultural differences. While on this night, the clash between these two primal forces proved woefully inconclusive, we were left with the promise of more battles to come. After all, the world simply isn't big enough for the two of them. 

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 8/17 - 8/23

ROH Death Before Dishonor 8/21/26

Daniel Garcia vs Adam Priest

MD: Throughout the history of pro wrestling criticism, there has always been a premium on what was done: what (hot) moves, what spots, what popped the crowd, hot finishing stretches with a lot of kickouts. And of course, the execution of those things. Did things hit clean? Were there botches? More often than not, it wasn’t about the impact those things had on the crowd, but instead a sort of “Russian Judge” approach like the reviewer was scoring Olympics Gymnastics. How much action did the match contain? How well did the wrestlers hit their floor routine? And maybe, just maybe, how much innovation/variation existed in that action? 

Rarely, if ever, was the actual narrative of the match discussed. How that action fit into an overall story was considered almost beyond the point and even sometimes something that got in the way. I’ve seen reviews that mentioned either the overarching story being told by the wrestlers or specific character beats and flourishes in their reactions as things that got in the way of the match, as opposed to being the heart of the match itself. In the eyes of these reviewers, they disrupted the possibilities for action within the match.

I’m not sure what drove this approach, whether it was a need to feel superior, a need to cope with inferiority complexes about wrestling, resentment towards wrestlers who leaned harder on story or character beats over action as if they were somehow lazier for doing so, or just personal preference, but it would be looking at a movie review and having them focus only on the special effects and stuntwork (or maybe just the cinematography if we’re being kind) instead of the writing, acting, or overall direction, let alone things like the art design or sound.

That is to say that you could watch this match and focus just on the action and big spots. In this match, it’d be Garcia shrugging Priest off the top when he went for a superplex, and Priest’s stalling superplex later. It would be the gimmicky figure-four leglock that went out of the ring and rolled up the ramp. It’d maybe be Priest’s pile driver. Or maybe you could hyper fixate on some of the technique, the scrambling early, some of the trading of holds down the stretch, some of the false finishes like the stretch where Garcia put his foot on Priest’s head or when Priest got the half crab on. And maybe you’d call it an ok match that couldn’t compare to the spotfests on the rest of the card.

But if you did this, you’d miss so much of what made this match stand out as special.

I care about that story. I care, maybe even more so, about the characters at play. Moves are great, but we’ve seen them all. Bumps. Spots. Sequences. Reversals. When something somehow manages to be innovative in 2026, it stands out because everything’s been done, but then it’s over and copied six times. It’s ephemeral. What’s timeless is the human aspect of pro wrestling. Who are these characters? What makes them interesting? How do we related to them? How does their character shape their actions and reactions? How do they interact with one another and the crowd?

Let’s map our way through this one a little. Work with me here a bit because I truly do believe this is a different way of tracking a pro wrestling match.

First, the setting. This is a ROH PPV, where they have time to breathe. No commercial breaks. No real time constraints. It’s in the midst of a very broad card with a tag team spotfest and a bomb-throwing title match, and two Pure Rules matches, and a Fight without Honor. It’s for an opportunity, an opportunity that neither man had, to enter the Continental Cup tournament in the Quarterfinals, face Claudio Castagnoli, and potentially go to Wembley. In both cases, it might be the only possible chance they’d have to get on the biggest card of the year. For Garcia, it’s a chance to prove himself against his fellow Death Riders, to show he belongs, to show he can hang, that he’s not just the most junior member. For Priest, it’s the best opportunity he’s had in his entire AEW/ROH TV run. Clear motivation driving both of them.

There is a way to watch wrestling where you focus on their creative emotional choices, their faces, their body language. Priest came down to the ring slapping hands. He shook Bryce’s hand. He shook Bobby Cruise’s hand. He moved with purpose, intensity, but played up the southern gentleman motif as well. Garcia was doing push ups with Marina, huddled with her, slunk down the ring with that chip on his shoulder, an undertone of mouthy petulance. The Code of Honor handshake is a wonderful way to immediately establish character and tone. Do they shake? Do they look their opponent in the eye? It sets the stage for the match. Here, the shake was clean, quick, brisk. It opened the door for the possibility of a clean Continental wrestling match, something which Mox always preached but never truly practiced. 

Of course, there is a third character at play in any wrestling match, the crowd. They began to chant for Priest. That’s something he’s still getting used to given that he menaces the indies, up and down, as one of the more hated men in America. On ROH TV, though, in front of this Philly crowd, he was the favorite, and he basked in it, hyping them up, maybe even pointing it out to Garcia. That poisoned already murky waters. They scrambled on the mat (the first lock up being another way to set the tone). Priest went for a snap suplex but couldn’t get it. Too close to the ropes. He maybe took a few seconds too long to break it and Garcia, boiling over already, maybe frustrated by the crowd, maybe frustrated by life itself and his lot in it, shoved Priest back angrily. 

Priest followed with a headlock. Garcia shrugged him off and ran through him, basking in the tiny triumph, the first in the match. They went running again and Garcia stopped before a Priest leapfrog and piefaced him with one hand. He continued to get in Priest’s face, shoving him back, taking up his air, asserting himself. So what did Priest do? He shrugged and kicked Garcia in the shin. Action. Reaction. Character.

The match was maybe two minutes in but the lines were clearly defined and compelling. Active, engaged characters acting with motivation and drive, reacting to one another and the crowd. This is what gives all of those spots and moves and innovation meaning and purpose. It underpins it all and makes it resonate. They were showing us exactly who they were and what made them interesting and worth caring about. They care so we care. 

From here, Garcia responded with aggravation, having an answer to every Priest shot. He overstretched though, wanting it too badly, already gotten to a bit, and found himself with his foot caught in the corner. That let Priest start to wear it down. The crowd went up for Priest again and that distracted him, allowing Garcia to fire back. Priest went low with a chop block to cut him off. 

Just like Priest was caught up with the crowd’s reaction, he was a bit ahead of himself overall. He went for the half crab too early then went for a superplex too early. Garcia shrugged him off to the mat, forcing his leg to jam on the way down. Now both men had damaged legs which would inform the rest of the match. Priest moved right in to reassert the advantage, but Garcia caught him in the ropes and dragon screwed the leg from the outside in. He then hopped to the floor to celebrate his small victory, jawing with the fans and getting right in their faces. Was it the smartest tactical move? No. Was it absolutely what Daniel Garcia would have done and part of what makes him so engaging? Absolutely. 

You can trace these trends through the rest of the match. Priest used the crowd to help him fire back up, refusing to quit or back down, Garcia resorting to a cheap throat shot to cut him off. Garcia got distracted mocking the crowd during his ten-count corner punch and Priest was able to take advantage of the space. Priest hit a series of nasty dragon screw leg whips which Garcia sold in a unique stalling way, but Adam got caught up as the crowd wanted just one more and that allowed Garcia to lock in a sleeper. Their mistakes are human mistakes. Their resilience is a very human resilience. The balance between the two is where the human interest in the match resides and the human interest is far better than any series of complex choreographed spots that exist for its own sake and to pop a crowd.

At one point, they found themselves at an impasse, each having grabbed the other’s leg, two men intertwined through fate and determination. That was even more true during that figure-four which rolled up the ramp. Part of it was spurred on by the shared legwork throughout the match, sure, but so much of it was sheer stubbornness, with neither wanting to be the first to find a way out, neither wanting to be the first to blink, to let the other see him blink, to let the crowd and the world see him blink.

Priest was infinitely resourceful. When Garcia (leaning hard into his Death Riders rearing) managed to beat him down, he always had one last trick to use. He’s not big to begin with. He’s used to fighting from underneath and he did so literally, tossing a knife-edged chop into Danny’s knee so he could hit the pile driver. Garcia survived it though, managed one last trip using a dropdown (the oldest trick in the book but one that almost never works, fitting that it did here), and locked in the Dragontamer for the win. Post-match, he limped through the crowd from whence he came, while Priest convalesced in pain and disappointment.

It was a hell of a match but it was a hell of a match as much (more so if you ask me, far moer so) for who they were and how they presented themselves as for any specific thing that they did. There’s not really been a critical tradition of us examining that in pro wrestling. If anything it’s been lumped into the category of “charisma,” but charisma, to me, is much more about a certain sort of over the top dynamism, and really, in a lot of ways, goes back to popping crowds instead of serving narratives. 

A narrative was served here, driven by character, by actions and reactions, and the prideful, tempestuous, driven, and all too human souls underneath. That’s what makes this one of the best AEW/ROH matches of the year and a quiet triumph. Interesting people doing interesting things in interesting ways to interesting effect. Motivation, character, consequence, where the action serves and is shaped by the narrative instead of forcing it, kicking and screaming, to drag breathlessly behind. That’s the ideal and they absolutely nailed it here. 

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