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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Found Footage Friday: PRE-MUTA SCALE MUTO SCALE~! BUZZ~! NEW VS. NOW~! BIGELOW~! FUJINAMI~!

Buzz Sawyer vs. Keiji Muto NJPW 7/21/87

MD: This episode of NJPW TV wasn't in the usual sets over the years. It had fallen through the cracks. There's very, very little written about this match, for instance, and the match deserves to have a lot written about it. It's wild. I have some questions about this episode of TV actually. There are some hype pieces before the matches and I don't know if they were just clipped out of how I usually watched NJPW or if this was a different show but they are cool and of the times. Laser lights and noises as you see Buzz posing and stuff.

Muto was Space Lone Wolf here, coming out to Final Countdown. He was getting a push as the young guy in NOW but he really felt like an outlier here. His stuff was smoother and more theatrical than anyone else in the company. He didn't fit in against the UWF guys, for instance, but since he was the only guy like that, he stood out. Buzz, is, of course, way over the top here, funny faces, noises, whining, etc.

At first this is a normal match with Muto controlling the arm and Buzz hitting the floor and Muto hitting the handspring elbow in the corner. But then Buzz tosses Muto out and they end up sort of under the ring with Buzz biting him and obviously some big blading happens here, as they both comes up bloody. Buzz works the wound: headbutts, biting, a chairshot. Muto bites to break a hold and they slam each other's head into the mat. It's pretty glorious carnage by this point, exacerbated by Muto punching the wound in the corner and Buzz hitting a snap suplex on the floor. All the while, the blood masses all the more. Muto reverses a suplex. Buzz gets his power slam. Muto tries for a desperate roll up out of nowhere.

It builds and builds, but to what? It builds to Buzz getting knocked out of the ring. He staggers, stands, arms extended, welcoming, blood running down his face. I've never seen a man waiting for a dive quite like this. He invites it. He longs for it. He wants nothing more than for Muto to embrace his in this grisly bloodletting, for the two to become one there on the floor. He craves an escalation of the violence, an increase of the danger, for flesh to hit flesh and bone to crash against bone.

And Muto, Space Lone Wolf, a boy becoming a man before everyone's eyes, does not disappoint him. 

The match is shortly thereafter thrown out, a heap of bodies and blood, but what a ride while it happened.

ER: Buzz is no longer working as Mad Dog, here he is some kind of ill, demented, disease riddled dog. He's weepy, he's weird, he sometimes appears to be crying, he mainly appears to be unwell. It's a totally unique take on the unleashed monster gaijin. He's not out and swinging at a soul, he's like a rabid dog who goy sprayed by a skunk and he's just wandering around and sort of whimpering, effects of the rabies hitting his system hard. Every time the camera cuts to Muta in the ring, he's wearing an expression of concerned distrust, no clue what this diseased dog has in store.

As he works over Sawyer's arm, Sawyer howls and whimpers and you can see a version of this match that doesn't build to blood and stays Sawyer fighting through arm work and I can see an interesting match there...but it plays so much better as Muto using it as a way to restrain a large unpredictable animal before he breaks free from his restraints. I don't know if I've ever seen a scene like Buzz holding Muto on the floor of the gym for so long, biting at his head. It goes on long enough that it almost seems like the illusion is broken, as it always looks like a man holding a smaller man down solely for the purpose of gigging his head, but the longer it goes it dips into the wrestling illusion being broken and back into something Not Supposed To Be Happening. The more young boys swarm, the more it feels like this diseased animal had done something unpredictable even for him. When Muto comes up bloody, I admittedly expected there to be more, but I also don't think there are many instances of Muto bleeding before this. The truly shocking thing happens just after, when Muto gets his first chance to bite Buzz back, and it is truly disgusting. Muto digs the entirety of his full lower jaw of teeth into Sawyer's forehead, and when he pulls away Sawyer has so much dark crimson on his face and chest that I said aloud "Muto fucking bit him FOR REAL!?" 

Buzz Sawyer has this magical blood that behaves differently from any other bleeder I've seen. His blood is not free flowing. He tried several times, earlier in the match, to bust himself open by slamming his head into the railing, but he only ever got a stain. Now, cut open, his blood does not flow free but it flows in spurts, when attacked. I don't know if I've seen bleeding like this. He spurts blood after Muto bites him...then it stops. Until Muto rans him into the ringpost, and then a new batch gushes out all at once, repainting his body. It's fascinating. The whole things ends in a mess, Buzz staggering around to let everyone in the arena see the damage, Muto looking shell shocked. I love the use of Sawyer's signature bump, flying out backwards through the ropes from a dropkick, and I loved him simply standing up from the floor, arms raised. He flies through the ropes and rises from the depths like Michael Myers standing up after a shotgun blast, and Muto knows his only chance is to ignore rules and referees and just try to escape intact. 

Every new piece of Buzz Sawyer footage adds to his legacy, the type of person who we will likely never see in pro wrestling again. Shape, look, attitude, style. We're not getting any of that back. Celebrate this.  

 

Antonio Inoki/Yoshiaki Fujiwara/Masa Saito vs. Akira Maeda/Kengo Kimura/Nobuhiko Takada NJPW 7/21/87 

MD: This was right in the midst of the NOW vs NEW feud where instead of having, for instance, Choshu's Army come in and declare war on everyone, they positioned all the old guys (and Muto) against all the younger guys. Inoki, Fujiwara, and Saito were sort of the leaders of NOW. Maeda, Fujinami, and Choshu were the leaders of NEW. This meant that Inoki could be positioned against all of the other top stars and none of them could be positioned against each other. It was a real frustrating state of affairs that only lasted a couple of months even if it did make for at least a couple of fresh match ups. It also absolutely killed Kengo Kimura's momentum. He was one of the hottest acts of the year having turned on Fujinami (in a Choshu-esque way) at the start of the year and disappearing to "learn boxing". 

Regardless of how frustrating the overall feud was, just given the people involved here and the potential match-ups, this was going to be fun and heated. This wasn't a subtle feud either. The commentary more or less outright said as the NOW team came out that they were trying to protect their spots and they presented it as a battle between fathers and sons (or at least older and younger brothers).

We never got that satisfying Inoki vs Maeda singles match but it was always exciting to the crowds when they faced off in a setting like this. Even before getting the towel off, Inoki charged him here. But all of these match-ups were exciting. The fans wanted to see Fujiwara vs Takada after a year and a half of the two being on the same side. Saito vs Takada was fresh (and felt unlikely). Fujiwara vs Kimura was particularly chippy with Kimura using that boxing skill in the corner (and some slaps) and Fujiwara fighting out. And Inoki vs Maeda when they finally faced off? Well Inoki was a genius in framing it. He took a tag from Saito and time just stopped with a huge pop. Takada was in the ring and he saw Inoki poised to enter and tagged in Maeda, and the place went nuts. It was a minute of awesome scrapping with a rolling kick and the spin wheel kick and headbutts and a half hatch suplex and Inoki scrambling his way to an advantage and Maeda jamming it. Just what you'd want until Inoki made the tag.

But even that was okay because the tag was to Fujiwara so now the crowd got THAT match up. That's the way a match like this worked. Fujiwara did get swept under, and I've seen enough of these, that for him to be the one to take so much offense in the match and work from underneath, well, I knew the ending midway through this bit of heat. It was chaotic enough but he was going to get the armbar on out of nowhere, and he did. All of this did feel larger than life. The feud was a failure but not necessarily because the action wasn't good or fans didn't like specific match ups. It's just that it didn't give them everything they wanted most. 

Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Bam Bam Bigelow 7/21/87

MD: This is usually a solid match up, but maybe not as fun as Bigelow vs Choshu, for instance. They'd wrestle a notorious 3-match series in early 1989 which was about making Fujinami as champion look as dominant as possible as he was teaming with Inoki and Choshu, wherein he won all three matches. 

This was well before that. It's sub-five minutes but I think we get most of it. Bigelow (who came out with a chair threatening the crowd effectively) dominated to start, just clubbering and power moves. I wouldn't say that it was the best clubbering in the world, but it worked. Fujinami came back by ducking a clothesline and leapfrogging Bigelow but then he crashed into Shibata's dad who was reffing. I can only assume he was supposed to crash into him right after the leapfrog which would have been a great visual, but instead, he came up short and had to clothesline him by accident, which came off as pretty funny. Bigelow used this to get a chair and smack Fujinami. He went for a top rope splash with the chair (with Japanese letters on it) on Fujinami, but Fujinami rolled. I'm sure he was supposed to get all the way out of the way but instead he ended up tripping Bigelow on the way down, which was another great visual, this one made better by the miscue. 

If it went to a finish right after that, this would have actually been very effective and one of the better sub-five minute matches I've seen in a while. Instead, Fujinami threw an enziguiri but then Bigelow went out and eventually over the rail for the DQ instead. Ah well. 

ER: This was like going into an ice cream shop intending to buy a scoop, but getting enticed by the different flavors on display, getting a few different tasty samples on those little wooden spoons...and then you realize the samples scratched that sweet itch and you back out of buying a scoop, annoying every employee in the shop. It's over before it really begins, but contains several moments of intrigue, most of them from the young red singleted Bigelow. You expect a couple big bumps, and get them. Toward the end of the match he ocean crashes over the top to the floor off a dropkick, then takes a faster and even cooler version of that bump going over a guardrail. While I wasn't sure which type of big bumps we'd get, I was expecting them. The neatest things were the things I wasn't expecting. Bigelow had an almost fistdrop turned into a single hand choke. I've never seen Bam Bam do a fistdrop, and this was not intended to be one, but it very clearly was one, just with different intentions. Then a huge missed splash off the top, that turned into a much weirder and cooler and bizarre looking moment. Bigelow had set a chair over Fujinami before going up top, but Fujinami rolled out the way of the splash a bit late. What this wound up doing was causing a fluke log roll effect, where Bigelow was going to splash flat on the chair, but instead his ankles caught Fujinami mid-roll and it whipped Bigelow into a face plant on the chair. A much worse bump than was planned, but much cooler in an unintentional cool accident way. 

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Matsumoto! Yu! Chigusa! Lioness! (But not the Crush Gals!)

Volume 4  

9. Saipan Training

K: I liked the little bit in this where Devil is making her minions all run up the hill and Matsumoto is way slower than the rest and she gets a little whack on the backside for it. Villain origin story in the making there. 

MD: This was a fun contrast between Jaguar just practicing holds and the Devil Legion running through the woods and doing crash push ups on tree branches. They made a special point that the Legion was trying to uncover the secret of Jaguar’s speed and that Yu and Tarantula still wore their masks despite the heat. 

10. Chigusa Nagayo & Lioness Asuka vs. Kaoru Matsumoto & Masked Yu 4/11/83

K: I think it’d be nice for someone to watch this set with zero knowledge of where things are going, and I know for some people that’s close to being true. But someone watching this without knowing that the team of “Chigusa Nagayo & Lioness Asuka” are the Crush Gals is probably pushing it. But for historical accuracy’s sake, these are not the Crush Gals. They wouldn’t get that name and become a regular team until later in the year. This is just another  inconsequential two random babyfaces vs. two random heels tag amongst many that happened on AJW TV most weeks to fill time. But yes of course this becomes interesting with the benefit of hindsight quite quickly, especially when in less than two years these exact teams will be having some of the most heated matches in wrestling history (which I doubt anyone would have thought possible at this point). 

So with that in mind, this is also a peak into the low-card. Matsumoto & Yu ambush the babyfaces to start but with a twist, they grab them by the ankles from the floor and pull them outside. You don’t see them coming from the camera angle, so it’s an elevated bit of chaos compared to the usual ambush when both teams are in the ring.

Chigusa is very worked up. She’s shouting and pointing at the heels, making herself, her emotions and feisty attitude the centre of attention. When she gets in the ring she quickly succumbs to Kaoru’s repeated lariats, which she hits with a very smug demeanour. I think this was the most noteworthy part of the match without looking ahead. After this, the strange thing is how little this looks like their future matches. You even see what looks like a classic spot, like the Irish Whip into a double strike, but instead of doing the signature Crush Gals pose & punch we just got a (missed) double dropkick. It feels like these two becoming a tag team was an idea, but they have absolutely nothing else figured out other than a little fun match.

**

MD: Got to think this was included because it’s the earliest Crush Gals footage we have as a team. It’s sub-ten minutes and while it has its moments, I’m not sure there’s all that much to it. Chigusa and Asuka come out without any sort of unifying theme but they do come out together. Then they get yanked out of the ring by surprise as Matsumoto and Yu had been lying in wait. It was a great visual actually. 

They’re all coming along really. Matsumoto has these nice thudding clotheslines. Chigusa sells as viscerally as you’d expect. Asuka is a dynamo on the initial hope spot/teased comeback and Chigusa has all of the added intensity from earlier this year with her karate shots. Finishing stretch was good with Yu and Matsumoto hitting a fun double belly crush until they crashed into into each other. Asuka and Chigusa hit this great belly to back/top rope back elbow combo but got jammed on a double dropkick as Matsumoto held Yu on the ropes. Then the Legion pretty much won clean on a canadian backbreaker by Yu while Matsumoto cut off Asuka. Post match, Asuka and Chigusa were upset and thrashed the ref but best I can tell, they didn’t really have a case. Not an auspicious start for the Crush Gals (which is fair as it wasn't a start at all) but there was something there, I think.

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I Just Wasn't Made for These Times (AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 8/10 - 8/16)

AEW Dynamite 8/12/26

Kevin Knight vs (Chris) Jericho 

When I was a kid, my favorite band was the Beach Boys. Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m old, but I’m not THAT old. My parents are though, and I am old enough that when you were in a car, you listened to the radio. They controlled the radio and listened to Oldies 103.3 so that’s what I heard. 

I have no idea why I gravitated towards the Beach Boys in particular. We were in Massachusetts far from any sort of surfing scene. I’m pretty tone deaf so I couldn’t exactly appreciate layered harmonies. Maybe they were just fun to sing to despite that. Get Around is 2 minutes and 12 seconds and it’s perfect for a kid. 

I had Pet Sounds on cassette too though I don’t think I fully appreciated it until I got older. Nor did I understand Brian Wilson’s struggles until I was older. I probably had a few chances to see various forms of the band over the years, but I never went for it. It just always seemed off or wrong for reasons one might imagine (many of which having to do with Mike Love). 

Still, one of the better birthday presents I’ve gotten in my life is when my wife arranged for us to see Wilson (aged 74) with a few remaining band members and associates perform the album in Atlantic City in 2016. 

Almost everyone there seemed to be my parents’ age and they blissfully bobbed their heads and sang along, happy and oblivious, but I just couldn’t look away from Wilson. I’d never had a concert experience quite like this. He’d lived a hard life, one full of many different forms of abuse, and one might question the motivation for him to even be on the stage at that point, even if, very likely, it was more earnest than previous tours. 

But when he performed, there was every sense that he wanted to hit the notes, that he wanted to sing loud and be proud of what he had created in front of an audience that wanted to hear it. Founding guitarist Al Jardine was with him, and it was Jardine’s son who ended up doing most of the heavy lifting on vocals, Wilson cutting out at points of almost every song. He just couldn’t hit the notes, couldn’t sustain. 

But yet he always came back, trying, striving. It felt more like an athlete pushing himself down the stretch than a singer playing the hits. It should have, perhaps, been sad and maybe for some there actually paying attention it was, but there was something undeniably valiant about it. The effort somehow transcended the result and it left me uncomfortable in some ways, but moved in others.

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Chris Jericho was my favorite wrestler in my later teenage years. I had come back to wrestling after a few years away during the back half of the Monday Night Wars. A scrawny kid growing up, I had loved the idea of WCW and GWF’s light heavyweight divisions (though maybe not the execution), so it was great to see a Cruiserweight division flourishing. As a scrawny kid, I was a bit of a smartass too, so to see Jericho out there, utilizing clever bits and scenarios at every turn (even if he often was made the fool in them), well, that was great to see too. 

The only official wrestling shirt I ever bought was a Y2J one (having missed my chance at a Monday Night Jericho one). That’s how big a fan I was. In-ring, he played a cruiseweight bully well, doing moves that he’d have a harder time doing against bigger opponents and he was well protected through that year. Having some great opponents didn’t hurt. 

As I got older, I don’t think his work resonated with me quite as much. I appreciated his penchant for adapting and refreshing his act, but what I got the most enjoyment out of was his Bockwinkel-esque turn in the late 00s (even if I hadn’t fully learned to love Bock yet) and the bits with the List a few years later, not necessarily what he did in ring. I think he had a very strong 2022 though. I’ll stand by the Kingston match, for instance.

He was always a very self-aware worker in some ways, prone to building to spots that he knew would have a big impact, but he was online enough to react with thin skin if they perhaps did not get quite the credit that he thought they deserved.

Moreover, he always had a bigger eye than stomach when it came to his own athleticism. He couldn’t always quite do what he wanted, but he’d go for it nonetheless. On some level, that’s admirable. On another level, it leaves someone with a broken arm after trying and failing to hit a shooting star press or, to a lesser extent, with a match which may have worked out better in his head than on the screen.

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I’m not sure there was as important an “event” for me when it comes to pro wrestling in the last fifteen years than the Houston Footage ending up on NWA On Demand. That’s what really took me down another rabbit hole of seeking out lost footage (we cover new matches every week with New/Found Friday and have for years and years now). It was amazing to see 80s arena footage that no one had seen since it first happened in great quality with interesting and varied talents. 

Of all those talents, maybe none made quite the impression as Jose Lothario. He was a figure most of us only knew from his ill-fated WWF run as Shawn’s trainer. To see him even in the back third of his active in-ring career was eye-opening, however. He was “Supersock,” with one of the best worked punches in history and had such a special connection with the crowd. On his comebacks, he’d be able to hold court in the center of the ring, have his opponent create the motion for him, and through his perfect timing, execution, and performative instincts, he’d make the crowd go wild. 

It was one of the most impressive things I’d ever seen because he was able to do so, so much with so, so little and have it feel more gripping and immersive than what most people are able to do with ten times more. If you were to watch late 2010s Jerry Lawler, he was able to do much of the same, though with a few more tricks, bells, and whistles. In both cases, it was a blueprint for how to age not just gracefully but greatly as a pro wrestler.

Likewise, we’ve spent the last couple of years watching Blue Panther do his thing. The highlight reels will show you the dives, and given his age, the dives are impressive, but it’s how he hypes the crowd up and frames them that makes them work even more than the idea of a 65 year old actually hitting them. So much of what makes Blue Panther stand out as special is his crowd control, not the moments that make it into the gifs. 

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Which brings us to Jericho. No Chris. Just Jericho. I have no idea what he’s doing with this run, except for that he wants to wrestle new people and in new ways. Maybe he’s running out the clock on injury time. Maybe he wants to make sure to keep himself relevant in case he wants to jump. Maybe he just can’t give up the ghost. 

We’re past the self-aware Jericho Vortex stuff. He got what heat he could out of it. I’ve been under the opinion for a while that he should be transitioning into Paul Jones, more of a manager who occasionally wrestles than a wrestler himself, ideally positioned against a Jimmy Valiant type figure (Mark Briscoe or Eddie Kingston for instance?) but I assure you (Chris) Jericho doesn’t care what I think. I absolutely believe the ROH Title feud with Bandido would have served everyone better if Jericho was managing a monster Big Bill for it. But then again, Bill’s gone, so who knows.

But, if he’s not going to do that, then he should lean harder into his charisma and follow Jose Lothario’s lesson. He should be wrestling people who can create the motion for him. He can follow Blue Panther’s lesson too. He can hit those few big spots, but only properly built to and when they’ll mean the most, and maybe leaning more on the anticipation than the actual payoff. 

And on paper, there’s been some of that. His first feud was with Ricochet, someone perfect to create motion for him. But he still felt the need to do more than his share (and to carry more of the load than was advisable), and they turned a quite good twelve minute match into a very dubious nineteen minute one. 

It’s interesting to think why he’s not adapting. It follows a career-long trend of overestimating his own physical abilities, sure, but I think it’s more about incentives than anything else. He could have a far better match that would be far simpler where his opponent created the motion and he created the emotion, and not only would he not be rewarded for it, even if it got over with the crowd, he’d probably be actively punished for it in certain critical circles. And at this stage of his career, he literally cannot afford to be punished. Instead, so long as he does enough stuff, and contributes enough stuff of his own, no matter how well it hits, he’s going to be more rewarded for that.

---------------------------
Which, finally, leads us to the Kevin Knight TNT Title match on Dynamite.

A match he was rewarded for, not by conventional wisdom which was instantaneously frustrated by it, but by instead the unconventional wise man that matters more to the people that matter most.

There were things about the match that clearly worked. One tricky part about having a heel opponent that creates motion is that the fans may decide to back them. Jericho is, of course, a pro at playing to the crowd and continuously fighting back so they have reasons to root for him, but Knight did his best to keep himself reviled. He ambushed to start. On the floor, when he took over, he mocked Paul Wight who was on commentary with the Big Show hand raise. Callis snuck in a cheap shot when the ref was distracted. On a backslide, Knight used his athleticism not to further the hold but to reach blatantly to the rope for leverage with his foot. They went out of their way to draw clear lines.

But then, there was Jericho’s awkward dive to the floor. There was, of course, the baffling spot with Callis interfering during the Walls. There was Knight’s need to cheat not just early on to establish roles or later to control, but on the finish, when really, the damage had already been done and Jericho, who doesn’t need to be protected like this anyway, had already been protected.

But most of all, the image that will stick with me, the reason why I brought up Brian Wilson in the first place, were those ten count punches. Jericho straddled Knight on the top rope. His legs were splayed oddly, not without reason as we would soon see, but to bizarre visual effect. He hung on to Knight with one hand as he threw the strangest worked punches, coming in at totally askew angles, creating an illusion of connecting right up until they didn’t, which was far too soon. It was all to set up the top rope rana (for he apparently would not be able to get his legs where they needed to be otherwise), which hit clean, but in the meantime, we were left with the image of a man who was not punishing an opponent, but instead seemed afraid.

Afraid of falling, afraid of aging, afraid of irrelevance, afraid of being undervalued, afraid of one critic and every critic, afraid of not living up to his own self-image, unable to work himself and unwilling to do what it took to work everyone else, so all that was left was embracing the real, athletic elements of pro wrestling that his body could no longer manage.

Jericho, this amazingly self-aware, incredibly delusional wrestler, who has somehow spent an entire career balancing those two impulses to incredible and frankly, unbelievable, success, could likely find one last grasp at it were he to admit who he was now, admit what he was, and lean hard into it. He made me feel something as he perched up on that top rope. He could spend a whole match making a crowd feel that and come out, once again, against all odds, on top. 

But it would be admitting a vulnerability that he could never come back from. It would be his greatest strength, his last great strength, one that he might even be able to carry for years, carny that he is, but one that would never let him be the in-ring rock star that he’s seen himself as. God only knows what he could accomplish if he could admit it and embrace it.

But he can’t, and so he won’t. So instead, we have this, a wrestler trapped in a purgatory of his own making and forcing us all along for the ride. And as I watch it, I do not see something valiant and inspirational as I did that day in Atlantic City ten years ago. Mostly? Mostly, I just feel sad.
 

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Found Footage Friday: HANOVER 86~!

Hanover 

9/86

Franz Schuhmann vs. Steve Wright

MD: Four shows. Mainly the layperson appeal is Bull Power against all of these guys but it's nice to see some shows not even on wrestlingdata with guys we've been watching in 80/81 and some others. They fit 4 hours onto this tape and we'll see how many shows we make it through this week. We have dates for the subsequent shows but not this one but it's probably the first few days of September 1986.  Everything is clipped but you tend to get the flow and a lot of fun spots. 

For instance, you get a lot of Wright really stymieing Schuhmann here with his meticulous precision, Even when Franz has a good counter, like looping one leg over the other to turn Wright over, Wright just moves into a cartwheel to get out of it. There's some fun bits where they hang onto holds through escape attempts (there Wright lets Franz hang on even as he does a scooping hip takeover for instance). Some fun pin exchanges too where they both end up laying there. If this boiled over we don't see it but as things progress to rope running, we've seen Wright win enough times that even without the actual finish, we can imagine it.

ER: It's too bad this is so heavily clipped. Weight looks extremely spirited all match and I love when he tries out tricks. The clips mean we miss on some of Wright's move application, and I like seeing how he gets into and out of things. He works his way into several inventive and firm submissions on Schuhmann, but we never get to see how Schuhmann gets out of most of them, nor how Wright maneuvers through them. We get to see a lot of Wright getting into things, and that in itself is great. He is a clever Dean Malenko, a Dean Malenko with follow through and natural progression through holds. I don't have any experience with 80s Franz Schuhmann. I've seen plenty of mid 90s Schuhmann but no mid 80s. This match doesn't offer much insight, it's clipped into a Wright highlight reel, but I loved the way Wright maneuvered him through sequences. A series of rolling Malenko nearfalls actually felt like something, and ended with both men lying flat on top of each other, a rest neutral position that hasn't been seen in pro wrestling in 40 years.  

Tony St. Clair vs. John Quinn

MD: Quinn had superior size but got plenty of heat by going with inside shots or hair pulls to keep St. Clair on his back leg as well as just bullying him around. Nice Tony chant here. He always had a connection with these German crowds (as early as 86 we can see now). Tony would finally get one over on Quinn and use a  headcissors and they'd do the Gotch Lift style spot but out of the headscissors which you never ever see and is really the damndest thing. We get this a number of times but the clipping means it's never QUITE as clear as I'd like. They take it out of the ring and then back in from the apron, working in and out of it. A very cool spot (and way to spend a few minutes). Quinn bullies St. Clair some more, tossing him out, but St. Clair comes back with a number of nearfalls en route to the time limit draw.

ER: Quinn kicked ass here. There are very few men today who look like John Quinn and none of them are trying to become wrestlers. I like Quinn, a worker I don't think I'd seen before Matt and I started writing about Germany, but this is the coolest I've seen him. He's a monster, a sadist. I don't remember him being so sadistic in the '81 footage we've written about. This was mostly Quinn beating St. Clair's ass, as viciously and as stiff as I've seen him beat someone. He's a hard hitting bully, hitting St. Clair hard enough that St. Clair gets loud reactions any time he's in control (which isn't much, that we saw). Everything Quinn does looks mean. Kicking Tony in the back with a scoff, hammering him several times with punches to the stomach that St. Clair sold as if he didn't think he was actually getting punched in the stomach, headlock punches so good that you realize it's been ages since you've anyone do a headlock punch even thought they're literally always good. Holding a headlock away from a referee, unleashing your inner Nolan Ryan just once, elevating yourself as a wrestler to all who see? Easiest shortcut to looking like a great wrestler, right there for the taking. Headlock punches, gone. Why don't you see brown cars anymore? 

Eddy Steinblock vs. Bull Power

MD: This isn't 89 Vader here. He's only been wrestling for about a year and he's been a babyface for a lot of that, even if he had another tour of Germany before this. He's out with the flag and a trucker hat and windbreaker type jacket and American flag, shoving fans away before the bell. Also attacking Steinblock with the flag before the bell, which gets the exact right reaction from the get go. 

He's raw but there's a lot to like. You don't want to look away a bit due to the rawness, not just in spite of it. He has brutal looking blows from every angle, plus the Vader Attack (with a big pose) and usage of the ropes or just wrenching his back over the corner turnbuckle. He'll just throw in a knee on Steinblock or lean on him with one. Some of it got a little repetitive since he only had so much stuff (the back elbow and Vader Attack hit multiple times) but it was all doing damage so you hardly cared. Steinblock came back with dropkicks and big sweeping blows (to huge crowd reaction since they cared about Vader already) but he missed a splash onto the leg and Vader never really looked back, crushing him with an Avalanche and a Splash for the win. Definitely a way to establish him for later, bigger matches.

ER: Not much Vader earlier than this. This is Vader at his most long haul trucker, with the perfect wrestling body and his sweet round face. He shifts side to side with soft polite eyes during the long in ring introduction ceremony with everyone from the tour, but when he's out for his match he's taunting everyone with an American Flag. An odd sized American flag, Vader's belly sticking out under his short, zipped, normal man's windbreaker jacket. Pointing to the flag, doing ethnic heel "How about that, huh? How about that right there!" Cheap heat diner brawler Vader, Bull Power, works the best Eddy Steinblock match I've ever seen, because he just beasts Steinblock's ass and makes him sell and bump. If it's not the best Steinblock match, it's the most compelling. I haven'y seen any 80s Steinblock, but I've seen plenty of 90s Steinblock where he's booking himself on top forever. It's wild to see him get punched around and beaten up bad by Vader. Bull Power doesn't have all of Vader's presence and size confidence, but he knows he can hit hard and throw his weight around. This man looked tough and out of place, a different cool version of a favorite.  

Axel Dieter/Steve Casey vs. Le Grand Vladimir/Rasputin II

MD: A feel good tag. We've seen a bunch of these now but the clipping made it seem even more so since you never really saw the heels on top. Maybe they never were even over two falls. This had heel miscommunication, Vlad walking into a bunch of spots (the best was when he armdragged nothing and was made to look the fool), Dieter playing the hits and Rasputin bringing size and energy in his bumping and Casey relative youth. You got some fun moments in here but it was harder than the other matches to get a real sense of things past Vlad's annoyance with Rasputin.

ER: We only have four minutes of this, but we see a lot in four minutes. Matt and I are the only two people in the world who talk about Le Grand Vladimir and this is the first I'm seeing him five years older, and he's somehow even better. This German style that nobody cares about that acts as a fountain of youth to older tall brutes. Vladimir works as stooging brute great at getting caught off guard by Steve Casey, a chance to nuanced bad partner bullshit with Rasputin, five years older but taking faster bumps to the floor than in 1981. I was blown away by how strong Casey's fundamentals were, admittedly more so when I thought it was Texas Steve Casey. No, British Steve Casey has the fundamentals and worked real strong as a babyface with heavyweight moving dropkicks and snug headlocks. Dieter is eternally loudly over, a god. Steve Casey looked like he belonged with Dieter in every big babyface moment, a natural fit. 

9/5/86

Franz Schuhmann vs. Hansi Rooks

MD: Rooks is kind of like if you merged Vader with Harley Race, in look at least. He's a real jerk. Schuhmann had a connection with the audience which reminds me of UFO and especially Sal to a degree and it made sense he'd be a top guy there for years after this. He went sailing out at Rooks' hands right towards the camera to start and then pulled back in. Then Rooks had the audacity to go for a handshake and kick him. When Rooks was beating on him on the outside and got a yellow card, he merrily waved to the crowd on the way back in. You have to like his style at least. Franz had some fiery comebacks including dropkicks that knocked Rooks out of the ring or that pinballed him, but Rooks eventually won it with a nice tilt a whirl slam.

ER: You're telling me that there was a big fat guy with Harley Race hair out there named Hansi Rooks?! Fans wanted to see Otto Wanz's body with the familiar blond curls of Harley, with a name honoring Razzle Dingley. I've never heard of this guy and neither have you. He's the perfect kind of brute for our German tent shows, a big heel who knows how to kick and punch and is a real bully. That's what they wanted to see and that's the 80s German heel style I've grown accustomed to. Rooks is not as good as Quinn or Vladimir or Wiskoski or Vader and he leans out of strikes but he is one of them and this was a fun, clipped look. His clubbing to Schuhmann's chest looked heavy and his finishing slam was cool, but this was just a glimpse. 

Otto Wanz vs. Col. Brodey

MD: I'll be honest that part of the appeal of the 80-81 shows is that there's just a bit less of the familiarity we've already had with later 80s German footage. Guys like Brodey and Guajardo. They're fine and generally functional but I've liked getting to know Morowski better for instance. 

So this felt familiar, almost stereotypical. It was, of course, a nightmare of a time for Brodey. Wherever he tried to go, whatever he tried to do, Wanz was there. He'd go for a full nelson and Wanz would butt butt him. He got whipped into the corner and belly attacked. Wanz would throw these brutal looking hamhocks or take him down with a swank tricked out armbar takeover. Once or twice Brodey would pry off a leg and have some hope but Wanz would just kick him across the ring or propel him that way out of a pin. When he hit the flip senton and the splash it was a mercy, even if Brodey's ineffectual kicking might have said otherwise. Obviously, the crowd loved it all of course.

Bull Power vs. Axel Dieter

MD: We're lucky to have this footage. It's very good, even if Leon was just figuring it out still. Dieter was not and he knew exactly what to do, charging in right at the start and doing some damage. The ref wasn't going to let him go wild so early though and Vader used that distraction to snatch Axel's throat. He'd do these lifting hanging tree chokes, put him down and just clobber him. It looked great. He had plenty of Vader attacks and back elbows and a tendency to move Axel around by his throat. Dieter would come back when he could, either throwing desperate shots, or after Vader missed a corner charge or he could duck a back elbow. The place went nuts as he just laid into him with uppercuts and punches. All it took was one shot from Vader to turn things right back around though. Both men went over the top once or twice (with Axel able to use Vader's weight against him) and things devolved on the floor. This was raw but well worth watching.

Klaus Wallas vs. Eddy Steinblock

MD: Wallas was a judoka in the 1976 Olympics which more or less made his pro career and got him runs in New Japan. He picked up a thing or two there like the enziguiri he used at the end of one round. he was 43 and at the tail end of his career but he had presence and confidence as he moved around. My favorite thing he did was this little duck around to whack Steinblock in the back to cut him off. The first time we see him do it, he does it in the lower back with an outright slap and it looks nasty. Steinblock would come back which would mean mostly whips into the corner and mares for Wallas. I get the sense he wasn't taking too many big bumps anymore, but the fans ate it up anyway. I liked the finish which had Wallas whipped, do a little do-si-do where he hooked the arm to whip Steinblock back the other way, where he caught him in that European arm drag slam that ended so many matches.

Steve Wright/Klaus Kauroff vs. Rambo/John Quinn

MD: This got time and actually had a decent amount of heat. It's one of Rambo's first tours of Germany, if not the first. Apparently he had come in through working for Delaporte in France. Of course, the heat wouldn't start until Wright clowned these guys, absolute menace that he was. Fun bit with Quinn where Wright would cartwheel off of whips and Quinn would just walk off of them, refusing to run. Wright also did the multiple kip ups deal with Rambo, and then a great chinlock bit where he worked up to a fireman's carry, got cut off by Quinn, did it again, and then when Quinn came in whacked him with Rambo's feet on an airplane spin. Big pop for that. Heels controlled with a lot of illegal cutoffs and even when Wright came back after ducking a second double clothesline, Rambo kept breaking up pins until he got red carded. You need to do a finish like that now and again to get over the rules, really.

 

9/7/86

Bull Power vs. Steve Wright

MD: This feels like a real find honestly. We're just looking at 86 Bull Power here, but you watch him against a guy like Wright who was such a master of his craft and Vader comes off like a huge monster, a huge star. He nails Wright before the match with the American flag and the image of it made me wish he had worked the whole match with his hat. Ah well. Wright dodges a Vader corner charge at the bell, and follows up, knocking Vader all the way out of the ring. Vader comes back and press slams him over the top rope. They really don't look back from there.

There are cool bits in here where Wright, who is usually a menace to everyone, just can't get out of a wristlock and he keeps monkey flipping Vader who just hangs on. You get all the stuff you'd expect, Vader Attacks, and corner charges, and just the meatiest shots from Vader. Wright comes back by throwing his entire body at him and choking the life out of him desperately, no funny tricks here. Vader's able to shut him down with one shot though. Ten shots from Wright equal one from Vader. They go quite a while and we get a sense of it even with the clipping, before Vader KOs him with one, slams him, and hits the big splash for the win. It's a very good match where Wright took but only at a high cost and when it made the most sense. Mostly it was giving. They were still building to the Otto match here.

Axel Dieter vs. Le Grand Vladimir

MD: It might just be a selection of the footage we have but these two feel like lifelong opponents. I just went over to wrestling data on a whim, after having that thought, to see how many times they faced. I clicked on Dieter's opponents and there, at the very top of the list by a wide wide margin was Vladimir. I wouldn't have necessarily guessed that but I'm not at all surprised by it. So it's not the selection of matches we have. It's simply truth.

There's such familiarity and contempt in this match. They spend the first round trading mares and chinlocks and fighting out of them and cutting each other off, but as it gets going, Vlad comes in with his overhand hammers and his casual knee strikes and his stomps, and Dieter comes back by ducking a shot and catapulting him into the ropes so he lands on the knees, and ultimate finishes him off with mean whips into the corner and body slams. These two know each other, every cell, and it's almost like watching a married couple bicker on some level, the way it's obvious they're under each other's skin. It's a very lived in match, if that makes any sense, and it's fun to visit, especially knowing we get to go home and they're stuck with one another.

Kid Burgess/Steve Casey vs. Hansi Rooks/Klaus Wallas

MD: Burgess is George Burgess, also Jamaica George and "Coolcat Jackson" which is an amazing name. He passed away a couple of years ago. He was able to clown the heels by escaping things and especially (of course) with a preternaturally hard head. They were able to get their heat on Casey instead and leaned on him hard. After winning the first fall, the camera cuts to the crowd where some security guards have to force a guy back into his seat and I got the feeling people were getting upset. That's probably why Casey came back (as Rooks was trying to work over his ears) and won the second fall with a quick jumping back elbow that seemed to surprise Wallas on the apron in that he didn't move to interfere until it was too late. They did a lot of brawling outside of the ring in the third fall, probably to try to channel the energy elsewhere, so that when they worked over Burgess and Wallas won with a suplex, there wasn't a riot or anything. 

 

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

ROH TV 8/6/26

Eddie Kingston/Ortiz vs RPG Vice (Trent Baretta/Rocky Romero) 

MD: Where's Eddie Kingston?

Oh, well, have you seen Eddie Kingston lately? He had had a bad leg injury. 

Yeah, well, I have seen Eddie Kingston. I saw him vs Joe. I saw him vs Charli. I saw him in Germany vs Tihanyi and in London against Manders and in 8 man action on ROH. I haven't seen him again Cannon and Hot Sauce though but he's done that too. 

As I write this on Friday, the day after ROH aired, he's about to face Mason and then he'll be back on AEW TV in the Continental Cup against Doyle (edit: I'll hit that next week, but we all saw him there).   

So I have seen Eddie Kingston and I can speak to Eddie Kingston. One thing I can say, without a doubt, that there's no scenario more compelling for the sometimes fascinating and always frustrating morass that is Jon Moxley's last year than to see him interact with Eddie Kingston.

But that's beside the point. 

The point is that Eddie is right here on ROH, teaming with Ortiz against RPG Vice. This was set up by Eddie and Ortiz talking about how they want to face the hungry young talents and by RPG Vice saying they just wanted an easy win. It was set up by RPG Vice being taken by surprise by Warner and Zayne and Eddie and Ortiz making the save post match. 

It's on ROH TV. It's studio wrestling. It feels like wrestling for the sake of wrestling. It hits just right.

What it feels like, and I mean this in the best way possible, is 1997-8 WCW Saturday Night where you'd have the NWO B-Team facing off against Rick Steiner and ... let's say Brad Armstrong. I don't know if that specific match ever happened, but it's something which makes the world seem a little more vibrant and lived in, something with low but personal stakes. A skirmish in a broader war between the Don Callis Family and everyone else.

And in some ways, Eddie feels like Rick Steiner in 98. Still as over as can be. Still a presence. Still a Star. The fans would pay to see him. The fans would chant his name. He can get under someone and throw a suplex. He hits hard. And when first Rocky and then Trent tried to get in his face late match when he had the Stretch Plum on, one stare from Eddie had as much of an effect on a crowd as ten moves from someone else.

He's credible. People believe in him. 

A great booker could make magic out of that. I think there are only two or three guys on the roster that can move a crowd the same way (Bandido, Briscoe, and maybe Hangman though that's frayed a bit). 

A matchmaker though? That makes it a little trickier. But I think the answer remains true, because I saw the Manders match and the Joe match and I especially saw the Evans match. I can imagine Eddie against any member of the Death Riders and what that could look like with the right positioning and the right framing? 

Do I think he could have Omega vs Okada or Komander vs Dorada or Fletcher vs Ospreay right now? No. But they're already on the roster, more or less. Do I think Omega vs Kingston would be special? Yes. Do I think Fletcher vs Kingston would be special? Yes. Do I think Moxley vs Kingston would be special? I think there isn't a match the company could currently put on that would be as potentially special if it was framed by Kingston calling Mox out like no one else could. MJF vs Kingston is up there as well. It'd have a different flavor than MJF vs Briscoe. 

Do I think that there's a heel run in Eddie where he could base for all other guys in those equations? Yeah, I do think that too. World got away from him. Chip on his shoulder. Fans love him but I think he could get heat if anyone could. He stands out as different on a roster which has so many overlaps, but he could still interface with those guys in so many compelling ways.

Ortiz worked the brunt of this one. It had multiple bits of heat with multiple comebacks, a fairly unconventional style. Trent and Rocky's arrogance caused them to slip up once or twice. It was compelling. It had the crowd. There were Eddie chants. There was even a This is Awesome chant. It felt longer than it was, but not in a bad way. It felt like it could have gone either way. There were a few very specific things that Eddie did (a hand sell after a Gotch Pile Driver, turning his head at the start of the match in surprise as the fans chanted for him, the way he handled those Stretch Plum moments) that were as good as what anyone else in the world is doing. Post match, RPG Vice got their heat back laying out Eddie and Ortiz and then Eddie in the back (with Mance and Ortiz with him), cut the most human, believable, compelling promo I heard all month, just like that. Again, it felt like the NWO B-Team and some people will tell you that's a problem, but not me. There was real utility to those guys doing their things in their own way on Saturday Night, a big fish in a smaller pond making the world feel more lived in. 

So where's Eddie? He's right here, and if you can't see the unique value he offers in 2026, it's you who have a small idea of what pro wrestling is and what pro wrestling can be. 

 Athena vs Janai Kai [Proving Ground]

MD: I came into this one thinking it wouldn't be too unlike the "Athena In Action" match on Collision a few weeks ago against Ava Everett. I thought Athena did a good job there emotionally selling Everett getting one over on her and surviving one of her moves, even if she didn't give her much offense.  

Hierarchy matters in my mind. Yes, I know you can have Omega give a long match to Angels or Flair to Mike Jackson or whatever and they could be good and they might even still serve purpose, but maybe they're almost too good for what is needed for the big picture and maybe they could serve a more important purpose in a better way. The more over someone is, the more established they are, the more dangerous and protected they are presented, the less it takes to get an opponent something tangible with them.

There are people who will disagree with me on the balance. It works the other way as well. The more a heel like Athena gives her opponent, the more it means when she goes over them. Theoretically, there's a balance where she gives a lot and that puts over both the opponent and Athena. But how much was Ava Everett supposed to get over on her? How much did Athena need to show Everett was an opponent worth facing? It's a balance, right? And I think the balance for Everett was different than the balance for, let's say Persephone or Maya World, and somewhere in the middle, you have Kai.

Athena started the match (post left handed dainty handshake, of course) with a lock up. When she didn't get her way she immediately stepped on Kai's exposed foot and got a headlock out of it. Already, it raises a flag. Why would Athena have to go to such lengths. Kai lifted her leg for momentum and turned things around. Athena got the better of the exchange and mocked Kai for being called the Kick Demon. Kai came back with a kick. Athena ducked away in a panic, barely dodging it, and then jumped into Billie's arms on the outside. Athena, on her way back in, started immediately in on the legs, showing how dangerous she felt Kai was and how seriously she was taking her.

If Kai got nothing else the entire match, that would have been substantial. She got Athena to go dirty early. She got her to scurry out. She got her to treat her like an actual threat. Considering the hierarchy difference, that's actually a lot. It's a ton. Yes, Kai is a name to those who pay attention. She's been featured on MLW. She's a unique wrestler. But she's 0-8 in ROH coming into this match. If she didn't get a single piece of offense in the rest of the match, she'd still come out looking better than she came in just for putting Athena on her back foot and making her take her seriously.

But they seem to be pushing her towards a bigger role and she ended up getting quite a bit more, coming back with kicks, forcing Athena to pull the hair, forcing Billie to get involved on the apron, surviving a nasty curb stomp, and then only losing because Billie intervened with the title belt. Maybe she would have lost anyway, but you got the sense she was going to survive the ten minutes. 

With just that first bit, she would have come out better off, entirely on the strength of her own confidence and Athena's ability to let things get to her and give things emotional resonance, to cash in on the value she has banked up over the last many years. But by giving Kai all the more (and by Kai taking it for her performance matters here just as much), she came out of this with a post-match promo and a match with Billie ahead of her and it all feels entirely credible. Details matter and the details here worked exactly as they were supposed to. 

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Found Footage Friday: HIJO DEL SANTO EARLIEST FOOTAGE~!

Hijo del Santo/Matematico/Blackman vs. Blue Panther/Lobo Rubio/Black Terry 7/24/83

MD: Our earliest footage of Hijo del Santo. This is just 8 minutes, clipped, and we usually don't do clipped matches, but look at the names here. It's not like we have a ton of lucha from this early either. A lot of the focus is on the Lobo Rubio vs Santo pairing and some things do stand out. they would hang on to a limb through escapes and moves much more than I'm used to in lucha (I'm more used to one hold moving into the other). It felt more European in that regard. Some of it was very slick. Santito had these great leap through armdrags too where he sort of jumped past Lobo and whipped him around. Santo already had the flip senton off the top but here he chained it into a forward charge and the set up for the caballo instead of a dive. The footage cuts off with a later fall with Santo doing quite well against everyone all at once until they did catch him and start triple teaming. They certainly didn't let him out there with the gimmick before he was ready. That's my big takeaway here. 

ER: What a find, guaranteed to be the best eight minutes you spent on a match this week. If this is the earliest Hijo del Santo we've seen - and I don't think Matt would lie - then this is a real find. It's not a full match but it gives a very full picture of everything that young incredibly skinny Hijo del Santo could do. This man arrived fully together on sight, kept from the gimmick but advancing quickly. This man was already here, looking like he understood everything already. What stood out first was the honesty in his basics, the advanced level quickness of his exchanges without skipping past the actual contact and transition. He knew how to apply a side headlock, how to do tough scissors escapes, how to fall for leg picks making it look like he's not just moving through a sequence. Just like the Santo you've known every active year of his career, his execution is flawless. His dropdown floated in gorgeously at the tops of Lobo's knees, forcing Lobo's roll rather than relying on Lobo to do the sequence anyway. 

Beyond his command of physically sound basics and speed, he had tricks and ideas. He did a mystifying armdrag that is perhaps the prettiest armdrag I've ever seen, where he floats past Lobo as a magician's misdirection and hooks him as Lobo is turning around to his left. He does it twice. I watched it I don't know how many times. His rolling senton hit just as smooth as any year of Santo you're familiar with, and while your brain expects tope, I liked the quick to the point in ring tope he hit to Lobo's neck. His confidence was unreal. 

The bit at the end, with Santo working both Blue Panther and Black Terry, is the most GIFable thing I've ever seen, on the level with the real primo Super Porky sequences, for different reasons. Every man is On for every single step. They're all the best man of the sequence. Look at Blue Panther set up this wonderful bit where he actually gets tripped by Santo's dropdown while Terry makes it over; Panther is up rubbing his head in confusion as he stumbles perfectly into place to grab Santo before getting armdragged past Terry. Terry takes a bump through the ropes when Panther gets shoved into him, and Panther hangs up in the ropes by the boot when he's dropkicked after. Even Lobo gets involved, kicking Panther's boot free and dropping him off to the floor. We go into Santo's earliest footage and come away learning that Blue Panther was just as fully formed. 

I wish we got more Matematico and Blackman. Matematico had a roll up that gliding up and over Panther's body, hesitating at the top of the steady rollercoaster before tumbling perfectly down the other side. Blackman is at minimum a great North Star for viewers with mask blindness when watching 40 year old lucha footage. Blackman had a nice command of his speed, and the bit at the end where he evades all three rudos was a guy who surely had some good ideas in the footage we don't have. Bask in what we do have.   

Hijo del Santo/Matematico/Blackman vs. Blue Panther/Lobo Rubio/Black Terry 7/31/83

MD: The revancha from the following week. Another minute or two longer than the first clip too. This was shot more from ringside/underneath and we come in (after the tecnicos greet the kids and pose for a photo) with a rudo ambush. Panther and Lobo have a great Hart Attack style dropkick followed by a pendulum back onto the knees. The kids are already chanting Santo and for good reason as he bounds over Lobo in the corner and hits a bunch of armdrags and dropkicks. This is clipped but we get a really nice Matematico vs Black Terry exchange and then all of the tecnicos bounding off the top rope one after the other with body presses until they pin the rudos all at once in a great fall-ender. It's so easy to take Santo for granted since we have year and years of him and plenty of footage, but he was constant motion here, all over the place and they certainly set him up for success with the feeding and basing. It had to be pretty exciting to see him vs Panther for this crowd. Panther had a great roll through landing/escape on a catapult I'd never seen before, though it all built towards Santo's tope. Lightning in a bottle that would shine in the night for years and years to come.

ER: We should be making a bigger deal about this right? We should be shouting about these two matches from the rooftops. It's Hijo del Santo, it's Blue Panther, it's Terry, it's glimpses of guys like Matematico and Blackman, it's just constant gorgeous sweeping lucha action. This match is just as special as the previous week's, as this one is in the middle of the most amazing arena, a bullfight arena that stretches to the heavens and doesn't even seem to have spaces for proper aisles and rows. The higher you see the grandstand stretch to the sky the less sense it makes. It feels like reckless construction, thousands of people stacked on top of each other defying physics row by row. It's the same kind of wonder as when I saw National Geographic photos of favelas on a hillside, stacked impossibly on top of each other, no roads or paths or support network visible, just colors. The lucha action itself is beautiful, impossibly smooth, but I can't stop looking at these thousands of people piled on top op each other, how impossible the lines and angles look. It looks like how they draw a large crowd in comic books, like during that storyline arc where The Thing gets involved in pro wrestling. It's just stacks of people. They aren't real, but these people are, and they're ALL chanting for Santo. 

Because, Santo was ready on arrival and everyone in this impossibly shaped building knew it. We've all played with Coach's Sons in childhood sports and we're all inclined to dislike them, but Santito was the rare coach's son who was clearly a megastar. His tope is filmed from the crowd, making it look like Santo disappears deep into the crowd. I wish I knew where he landed, but it's probably even better that we don't know. El Hijo del Santo recently finished #22 on the GWE project, and seeing how he looked in his earliest footage...how silly is that? My entire life as a lucha fan, we've been subliminally underselling the perfection that is Santo. It's writers getting MVP fatigue for Bonds and Jordan, you just see nothing but high end work from the same guy and eventually you just want to vote for Charles Barkley or Jeff Kent. I love Samoa Joe, but I was also there for his earliest matches representing UPW. We know the wrestler he grew into and the great heights he reached, but here's footage that show Santo reaching those heights from go, under the brightest lights...and I'm just not sure you can reasonably compare the two. 

Celestial/Stuka vs. Carlos Plata/Gran Markus Jr. Arena Coliseo Monterrey 1989

MD: Apparently we have very little footage of Plata. This starts with kids surrounding the tecnicos and a guy in a dog costume handing out candy. Commentary loves this for the "seed must be sown in children today and harvested tomorrow in adults." It's funny as they talk about wrestling being more sanitized for national consumption and then at the blow of the whistle the rudos immediately ambush the tecnicos. I could watch Markus pick up guys by their mask/tights and drop them on their face over and over. You really don't see that often but he's just a brick wall in there. The finish of the primera was just Markus holding Stuka in a surfboard while Plata kicked him over and over. Mercy rule win for the rudos.

Segunda did have the tecnicos come back with Markus basing for some fun stuff. Plata kept things more back and forth. He was good at sneaking shots in and had a way of throwing his body around interestingly on bumps. Nice finish with Celestial stretching himself up backwards for a victory roll and Stuka doing a back handspring headbutt. Tercera had Plata using this pretty great choke drop off the ropes right into a choke. Things broke down pretty chaotically, with Stuka fouling his way back into the ring to mount a comeback and then Markus trying to interfere from the outside after he got eliminated. Even with two refs that just led to distraction which backfired on his team much to the children's delight. 

ER: A great rudo showcase, a great look at Markus and our (my?) first look at Plata. Plata is such a good base and expert at setting up tecnico offense, that he makes Celestial look like Atlantis in the first two falls, while the bad 3rd fall finish makes him look like Celestial. Markus works dominant stooge and plays to Stuka's bumping shtick while taking big bumps of his own. Markus and Plata worked what felt like 80% of the match in control while working like they were on their heels. Stuka I liked more when he was bumping for Markus's strikes, but Markus knew how to take their tecnico offense so well that he made them look like mountain movers at times. Markus and Plata are such great bullies, Markus kicking Celestial in the ribs while he was held in a submission, or my favorite, Markus lifting Stuka by his singlet and repeatedly throwing him face first into the mat. Markus is doing a Taue reverse nodowa otoshi, only using stretch fabrics. No less vicious. The peak is when Markus and Stuka have a showdown punch exchange that is truly great, both reeling in ways that nobody can real now, Stuka dropping into the middle rope after a shot straight to the chin. Beautiful work.  

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Jaguar! Mimi! Masami! Tarantula

Volume 4   

8. Devil Masami & Tarantula vs. Jaguar Yokota & Mimi Hagiwara (WWWA Tag Team Titles) - 1/4/83

K: Well here we go it's the absolute dream team of Jaguar Yokota & Mimi Hagiwara (who hold the two most important singles belts) against tag champs Devil Masami & Tarantula. Devil makes a bit of a ceremony of giving up her wooden sword to Commissioner Ueda before the introductions, in stark contrast to her recent antics when she was fighting him over trying to wield it as a weapon.

The opening is conceptually captivating. Tarantula gets a bit too close to the babyface corner when she's circling the ring, so the first offense is actually Mimi grabbing her on the apron for Jaguar to charge in and double team. It conveys that the babyfaces aren't gonna be goodie-two-shoes tonight after all the shenanigans we've seen this heel team commit over the last year (they main evented last year's 1/4 show). 

Naturally, the babyfaces are less experienced in these tactics so it doesn't immediately go their way. In fact, Tarantula is able to pretty quickly dodge and escape the double team attempt, and also pulls out a pretty cool spinning trip to take down Jaguar and send her to the outside to set up a double team for their team. But Mimi is on it, runs over to fight Devil before a double team can happen, so the babyfaces end up winning the opening skirmish with the symbolic throwing onto chairs/table.

I'm sorry if that was a bit too play-by-play so to sum up what I take from it; it's that we're gonna see feisty babyfaces ready to fight the heels on their own terms if necessary - who may not be as good at dirty tactics - but their determination and fighting spirit may be enough to get them the win. 

The first few minutes are quite hectic and get all this across before settling into something more conventional: long Mimi babyface in peril. Again, she's very good at this. She veers on looking a bit helpless at times, but she fights back just about enough so you don't give up on her. Tarantula takes most of this, at one point she's got Mimi tied up in the ropes while Jaguar protests the referee, and she pulls Mimi's hair across her face to add some extra nastiness to it. When Jaguar gets tagged in she does her usual handstand flip comeback, but this time she does a twisting bodypress rather than a dropkick. Bit of an evolution on what we're getting used to. 

This built nicely into a Jaguar tag and comeback (with some setbacks). The flaw here is that Jaguar's tag-in felt too easy after all that buildup, and so did he picking up the fall. She hits a bridging vertical suplex that didn't feel like a particularly big move, and actually gets a 3 count from it.

The energy heightens for the 2nd fall and the levels of violence escalation. Devil & Tarantula feel like they're setting the pace now and the babyfaces are struggling to keep up. Although they have collided a bit in the 1st fall, when Devil & Mimi square up in the 2nd they give it a lot of gravitas as if this was the first time they’d tagged in against each other, but they’re also long-time rivals (by AJW standards) so it’s effective and there’s genuine anticipation there.  This may be because of direction choices, but for a lot of this it feels like Jaguar has gone missing/been taken out while they focus on poor Mimi. The end for her starts when Devil has her cornered on the outside and is choking her with a microphone cord, and then later uses the microphone itself as a weapon to loud electronic thuds.

When Mimi is pulled into the ring, Devil hits her with this spinning backbreaker where she has her upside down in what looks like a tombstone position for a moment, but rotates her round and down hard onto her knee. Devil has such a huge arsenal it feels like she hits a cool new move in every match. This gets followed up with Devil & Tarantula both lifting Mimi up high to hit a double gutbuster move.

The 3rd fall starts hilariously as the babyfaces pull the referee out of the ring and bonk him on the head with a ringside table while looking very mad. The bell sounds after they do this so it's not strictly part of the match.

Devil is going on a rampage as soon as the match properly starts though. She has Jaguar up in a big military press and throws her OUT of the ring. She's so strong. She's also bleeding, I guess it's from getting hit with the table earlier when she was trying to save the referee. The blood seems to make her even stronger. She throws Mimi straight out of the ring too. She just totally demolishes both of them and... she wins. Wow. The 3rd fall is usually a lot longer than the 2nd but they flipped the switched here to make Devil look unstoppable after her blood was spilled. Jaguar is kicking off complaining about who knows what while the heels celebrate.

This is all really good stuff, the only significant flaw really is that just as they seem to be hitting a higher gear to turn this into a great match, someone picks up a fall.

***3/4

MD: We’ve always seen Jumbo or Omori in the mix and they’re fine, well and good, but at this point, Jaguar and Mimi feel like a super team to me, the best suited to try to take the titles from the Devil Army. Pre-match Masami gives up her boken and I don’t know if that’s a symbolic gesture that this was going to be a fair fight or what. It’s certainly not going to be a restrained one. Jaguar and Mimi go right on the attack, but they have immediate miscommunication as Jaguar punches (a clearly cheating) Mimi (on the apron) by accident. Things spill out and are quite chaotic until they’re able to work Mimi into the corner. It feels like there’s maybe even a bit more intense screaming here than in previous matches as they go at it. 

Most of the first fall is them working over Mimi and it’s all nasty as you’d expect, lots of draping over the rope throat first and falling headbutts by Tarantula. Jaguar comes in hot but has to work from underneath until she nails the bound off the ropes against Tarantula and then barely goes up and over with a body press. That leads to a killer knee attack off the top by Mimi and Jaguar taking the fall with a bridging front vertical suplex done in away you almost never see where she just holds it and gets her shoulder up. 

What stands out to me the most in the second fall is the way Masami took over on Mimi. They locked up and she slowly walked her back towards Tarantula. Simple, right? But the expressiveness on Masami’s face is some of the best pro wrestling I’ve ever seen. She had a deranged, obsessed look in her eyes, lips wide, gritting her teeth, pressing back step after step, leading with her chin. Incredibly compelling, believable struggle that felt inevitable all the same. They took things outside after that, using the microphone cable to choke with Tarantula dangling her opponent off the apron simultaneously. Back in the ring, Tarantula hit her rolling dropkicks (which work so well because of the lack of time between the roll and her having to get up for the dropkick giving everything a frenetic feel), and they finished Mimi off with a double press gutbuster after Devil’s brutal tilt-a-whirl backbreaker.

The final fall starts well for Jaguar and Mimi, as they smack a table into Masami, opening her up. But the Devil Army thrive on chaos and they soon take back over on the outside. That leads to Devil press slamming Mimi from the ring to the floor, the beginning of the end. A bit more mayhem and chaos, and then tandem suplexes back in the ring and even the super team of Jaguar and Mimi fall to Devil and Tarantula’s reign of terror.  

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The Young Man and the Sea: Greco-Malenko vs Bosby

PRODUCE Vol. 3: Azùcar 8/3/26

Karl Greco-Malenko vs Tim Bosby

Generation after generation, the story is the same.

Those who possess youth, strength, vitality cannot help but feel immortal. 

The world stretches out before them. Possibilities are endless.

There is always tomorrow. There will always be another tomorrow after that and another tomorrow after that.

Any mountain can be climbed. Any obstacle can be overcome. Any foe can be defeated. All it takes is hard work and determination.

Time is on their side. 

Success follows success and with success, adulation. Everyone wishes to celebrate the new champion, the next big thing. Everyone wants a piece of the future.

Eventually, the young champion, like every young champion before him, thirsts for a greater challenge.

Eventually, the possible is no longer enough.

Eventually, he seeks out the sea.

And then, to his ultimate regret, he finds it.

The sea is fluid. The sea is endless. The sea cannot be contained.

The young champion is an expert at planting his feet, at controlling his balance. There is no footing to be found in the sea. 

The young champion is lithe, powerful, quick. To traverse the sea is to have every movement hampered. 

It snakes around him effortlessly, with a calm, relaxed ease. The sea is at peace with itself, even if it wages war with him. It batters him with waves. He survives the first and the next comes right behind. There is no rhythm to the onslaught, or at least not one that he can recognize, not one that any youth might possibly recognize. 

But the champion is no simple youth. He tries to snatch at the sea, to lock it in a hold. The sea slips out of his grasp and threatens to drag him down. He survives it, grits his teeth and puts his all behind it. He slips around a wave, tosses it overhead, not once but twice. The water splashes and reforms as if nothing had ever happened.

How do you fight the sea itself?

Surely, as the young champion was battered and dragged and stretched and strained, the thought must have crossed his mind. Hardship tended to have that effect on the youth, to make certain thoughts cross their mind when nothing else could. 

Hardship leads to such thoughts and such thoughts lead to truths and thus wisdom is grown. 

It was never about fighting the sea, never about conquering the sea. The effort is about fighting one's self, against fighting the legacy of all that had come before, all that had themselves fought the sea in the months and years prior. 

Perhaps, once upon a time, the sea itself had battles of its own to fight. The point was to measure one's self against all that came before through effort and determination. The sea was the crucible, not the opponent. The opponent was one's self. 

Yet, the sea threatened to drag him down, his arm stretched, his throat constricted. But now, realization in hand, the young champion knew what he had to do. He hung on to the waters and pulled himself up, dropping them down around him. 

And that's just about when Karl Greco-Malenko had enough of this shit. He's 56 years old. Bosby was born in 2004. His career was basically over before this kid was even born! Yeah, he was fluid as hell. Yeah, he was toned. Yeah, he could take a fall and escape a hold, take a lot and escape almost all of them, but this was getting old, and he knew a thing or two about old.

So he wrapped the lace of boot around Bosby's throat and went for another triangle choke. Time to punch out, say good game, and ice up. Yellow cards? Red cards? Ref can't call what ref can't see. Wisdom. 

Bosby, suddenly realizing that it wasn't the sea at all, just a cantankerous bastard of a warhorse who'd seen it all and done it all, and was about to do it to him as well, lifted up again. This time, he wasn't going to let the sea splash away. Instead, he put his knee down, a surface hard as hell, and power bombed Greco-Malenko down on it. A crash instead of a splat.

But Bosby wasn't just some young champion. He was the new King of Tennessee and feeling his moment, he harkened back to the generations before and dropped his straps. Dropped his straps and walked right into one last wave, a kick to the skull. Greco-Malenko wrapped him back up, shifted his grip from chin to throat, and ended the match. 

Maybe Bosby would have tomorrow and tomorrow's tomorrow, and the tomorrow after that, all the tomorrows he wanted, until he, just like everyone else, ran out of them, but today was over. 

The young champion had faced down the sea itself and survived to tell the tale. A tale worth telling.  

And the old warhorse? He was more like the rushing stampede of a herd of waves crashing over waters that by all rights should have been calm. Challenges accepted, challenges made. He has some tomorrows left ahead of him too.

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Graduation Day: The Education of William Peter Charles Ospreay (AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 7/27 - 8/2)

AEW Collision 7/30/26

Daniel Garcia vs Will Ospreay

MD: I was not a fan of the Ospreay/Mox vs Bucks tag. 

Put the bit with the 450 in the finishing stretch aside. Put even some of the over the top character beats down the stretch aside. There was a moment early on where Ospreay and a Buck crashed into one another and did a double down. Let's also put aside whether or not that spot worked (I lean slightly towards no because while you want an exception now and again to jolt people, there's a fine line between exceptional and implausible within the confines of what people have seen; doesn't matter though). It's the aftermath that frustrated me. 

They were teasing a Jackson concussion. Mox obviously wanted Ospreay to press the offense. Ospreay was hesitant. It was a microcosm to the story overall. Had Will gone to dark places in his recovery? Did he buy into the Death Riders ethos? Were the Death Riders even that bad? Did Mox have a point? Was Mox setting him up for a betrayal? Would Ospreay lose himself in order to gain the world championship? 

That's the story right? So when Ospreay gives into peer pressure and hits a dive on said Jackson, taking advantage of his potential concussion, that's a negative moment. It has to be. The fans should have responded negatively. The guy they like did an objectively morally bad thing because he was pushed into it. That had to be one of the straws breaking the back, that sets up things later in the match with Ospreay having dissention with Mox and the Death Rider mentality, and later in the night, when Ospreay refuses to bag Omega and makes the save on him instead (only for Omega to then turn on him). 

Big emotional moment. Important moment. It has to hit.

Ospreay, obviously conflicted, yet ultimately led awry, goes for the dive. He gives in to peer pressure. He gives into Mox. He acts like a Death Rider. Will he cross a line and never look back? What is the state of his immortal soul?

And the fans?

The fans start singing his name in elation because he hit a dive and they sure do like it when Will Ospreay hits dives. 

You realize how thoroughly the story is failing for that to be the outcome? It doesn't matter how strong Jackson's selling was or how conflicted Ospreay made himself seem or how charismatic Mox was or how nice the dive was (or even that they were in Montreal). It failed. That moment, a key moment for the entire story, failed. Utterly.

This matters, right? It has to matter. Obviously it doesn't matter to some people, but that makes them part of the problem and part of how we got here in the first place.

But life goes on, the story charges forward. 

And that brings us to Collision and a chance to course correct and hammer home the themes. It's only to set up the biggest match of the year at the biggest show of the year, something to set the direction for the company for months. No pressure, right?

Mox is on commentary.

Mox is always compelling on commentary, always entertaining. The problem, of course, is that Mox's own story is clear as mud. He's the emperor with no clothes but the entire world doesn't care that he walks around naked, because there are no consequences and nothing matters. Pro wrestling is no longer a morality play. It's romper room. Mox wins. Mox is cool. The Death Riders stand with him. The fans go along with it. Why would they boo Ospreay for doing a morally bad thing? That's how it feels way too often.

On some level, it benefits Moxley (kayfabe) to foster such an environment, and you can hear him spew his bs on commentary. Oh, he still likes Ospreay. Oh, Ospreay trained hard with the Death Riders. This will be a nice friendly match between two sparring partners. It's all just business as usual. Just pro wrestling. None of it really matters. It's personal, but between brothers. 

It would be great delusional cult of personality bullshit, honestly, if Mox was ever going to pay for it, if it was presented as him trying to pull the wool over the world.

Traditionally, you'd have commentators who would constantly point that out. Imagine Mox trying to pull this bs with Lance Russell? You'd have babyfaces who could speak to it. Imagine Dusty Rhodes cutting through this. Instead, they joke about Tony Schiavone's wife beating him up. Everyone wants to be Mox's pal. Great.

Okay, so that's the Redemption tag and Mox on commentary.

What does this leave us with?

It leaves us with Daniel Garcia. 

And that is a massive relief, because Daniel Garcia can do his job. Daniel Garcia delivers. Daniel Garcia almost never strays from true north. Those times that he does? It's almost certainly because of pressure from above. They're few and far between though (and mostly involve multiple superplexes in a row). 

The job isn't to wake up Friday morning and count stars. It's not. That's the horse chasing the cart. It's not to work matches around a checklist specifically set up to get those stars. It's not celebrating once you got them, not when other things don't work, like, you know, the biggest emotional beat in a key match? 

The job is to work people, to make them feel, to get them to a specifical emotional point, to build pressure and then take them over the top. It's not to put smiles on faces. It's not to get them chanting "This is awesome." It's also not somehow saying that the wrestling itself doesn't matter. The wrestling itself is the point, but the goal of the wrestling is to move people emotionally. That happens through selling, and timing, patience and framing, and ultimately execution. It happens through getting people to buy what you're selling, but you need a clear vision of exactly what that is. 

And yeah, like I said, Daniel Garcia can do the job. He may not pass the airport test. He may not do the biggest spots. He may not end up in all the gifs (though the gifs he does end up in are almost all great; you just have to dig a little deeper to find them). He may not even get the pop when his music hits. But as the match goes on, he gets the crowd. He hooks them. He's more over on the way out than he was on the way in.

And whatever he was trying to accomplish in the match gets accomplished.

So then, the match.

Mox is full of shit, but it's up to Garcia (the character) to buy into that shit and give it his own spin. Maybe they were going to stab Ospreay in the back. Maybe they weren't. Maybe Garcia resented him because the fans never left Will when they had left Danny back when all he wanted to do was to restore the feeling. Maybe Garcia felt kinship anyway. Maybe Garcia liked the idea that Will was the "young boy" and not him anymore. Maybe Garcia feels betrayed that Ospreay gave back his patch. 

Maybe a lot of things. They all make Garcia's performance compelling. That said, Daniel Garcia (the wrestler) had a job to do. That job was to put over how far Ospreay had come, put over the fact that he as a different wrestler than before his injury, different from when he had just come back from it. He had to present clear lines that differentiated Ospreay from the Death Riders. He had to put forth the idea that Ospreay was not just a star, but the star, not just a wrestler, but the wrestler, not just a champion, but the champion that can carry the company forward. 

Ospreay hadn't quite landed that on his own. He had good individual moments, such as when he finally took Brooks out after Brooks played upon his remaining good nature. But that was still mid-stream in the story. Ospreay was still conflicted. He had to be past that now. He had to be fully focused, fully driven, an ace. 

And it was up to Garcia to provide the contrast to let Ospreay show it to the world.

Garcia and Mox can be mud. Ospreay has to be crystal clear. 

So Garcia started things by muddying the water. He talked a big game. His hands flew all over the place, full of attitude. He wanted the "young boy." It was "graduation day." 

And then, as Ospreay charged in, Garcia dove right out of the ring. Dissonance. The greatest tool of a pro wrestling heel. Get people thinking and feeling one way, that the world itself should be one way, and snatch the rug out from underneath them. Garcia wanted this fight and now he was running away. 

He was goading Ospreay (treating him like a twelve year old). And Ospreay gave chase, because of course he did. The Detroit fans booed, jeered, and then, when Ospreay caught on and caught Garcia, let out their pent up frustration with big cheers as Ospreay did the same with big shots. Garcia kept his cool in the face of the onslaught though and snuck in a throat shot. It didn't do him much good though. In a fair fight, no one can stop Will Ospreay. That's the point.

No one, except for maybe Will Ospreay himself. That's also the point.

Ospreay here flexed his greatest strength as a pro wrestler. It's not the athleticism, though that's a close second. It's the bull-in-a-china shop charisma. It's weaponizing that (potentially charming) 12-year old mentality to connect with the crowd. He brought Garcia over to a young fan and whacked him before high fiving the fan. On the outside, when he slipped off the guardrail (planned or not), he steadied himself with another fan' shoulder and gave him the biggest, most endearing grin.

That's when Garcia caught him, dangled him over the rail, and dropped him on his head. Ospreay's weakness is his the same as his strength, his personality. That is compelling fiction. A minor plot-related vulnerability to help rationalize his opponents not getting totally swept under is his neck. The two are very different and it's important to keep that in mind.

Garcia went in hard on the neck. Ospreay was ready for that though (this matters), so Garcia went in to the leg. This was a different Ospreay, though, and it was important to show that, so increasingly, Ospreay had counters, not ones that were just bounding and adrenaline rushes, but little bits of wrestling as well. For maybe the first time in this entire journey, Ospreay felt like a different wrestler, a more seasoned one, one that could carry a company. That had been the point of all of this and it was finally starting to come out in the actual wrestling. 

Garcia wasn't going to make it easy for him though. There were counters to counters. They didn't feel overwrought and needlessly flashy like you'd usually see (for instance, from the classic Ospreay vs Ricochet footage). This was close up magic, holds hung on to, body control kept, Garcia being a monkey and refusing to let go. The flash was additive, a magician's trick to get you to look at one hand when the other was doing the work. The flash was a means and not the end. A different world. A different Ospreay, one that was grounded in what the wrestlers were both trying to accomplish and not just what might look cool in the moment. 

Means and ends. That's the thing that's been missing, and it took Garcia to drag it out of him. Because Daniel Garcia is damn good at his job.

He's good at the emotional bits too.

By the end of the match it was clear that in Garcia was wrestling a different Ospreay, that Will had taken on the lessons and decided upon his own truths, that he had graduated. Even though Garcia had an answer of his own to every answer Ospreay provided to Garcia's questions, the fact that Ospreay had answers in the first place, adult answers, not just twelve-year old ones, meant that Garcia seemingly broke first. He started laying shots in, started berating Ospreay. Ospreay stood up and clocked him. Just like that. Garcia thought he was luring Ospreay in, just as he had tried early in the match, and caught him in a choke, but Ospreay calmly dropped his elbow pad, flipped back over, and hit the hidden blade.

For the first time since this story started, we have a truly different Will Ospreay on our hands. Post-match, the Death Riders left ringside, leaving him for dead as the Don Callis Family attacked, but this was a different Will Ospreay, one that could stand on his own, that could make his own save, and he did so, standing triumphant in the ring as the show closed, beating the odds, an ace.

What remains to be seen is how much that different Will Ospreay that we saw here was due to Ospreay finally growing into his role in the way the company so desperately needs and how much was simply due to Daniel Garcia being so damn good at his job.

We'll all know soon enough.

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