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. 

Read more!

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.  

Read more!

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.  

Read more!

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.

Read more!

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.

Read more!

Found Footage Friday: WAR GAMES~! DUSTIN~! GOLDUST~! CW~! BUNDY~! CORINO~! A BALDWIN BROTHER~! HOGAN~!

Hulk Hogan vs. King Kong Bundy WWF 1/20/86

MD: Lost Minneapolis house show footage from the Vault. We get glimpses of Harts vs Bees and the full Bundy vs Hogan match, including Heenan laying into a very familiar crowd. "You know, you people..." It's about thirty words and it's perfect. Hogan's out with the bandana in his mouth. That's the era we're in.

Interesting structure here as Bundy attacked Hogan first with the bandana and then with the belt with some pretty nasty shots before the bell. Hogan hulked up early, hit the axe bomber, and tossed Bundy out, nailing him with a chair. Bundy came back with an avalanche for the transition. I don't usually think of that of a transition move but it worked here. Then Hogan had to fight from underneath. He hulked up again, did more brawling on the floor (at some point Bundy started bleeding), hit the legdrop and actually pulled him up at two so Heenan could interfere and they could keep the feud going. 

Post match, Heenan held Hogan's leg so Bundy could hit the splashes and Steamboat made the save with the most over the top kung fu poses possible. He took his shoe off as a weapon. Heenan came back with HIS boot off, and Hogan got to make the save on the guy making the save for him before they both posed. We only have so much of the Hogan/Steamboat pairing but it is a lot of fun, especially post-match when Hogan cut a backstage promo about the energy of the universe and the ninja showing him the dark side while Steamboat made funny noises. 

ER: I'm glad they gave us a couple minutes of Hart Foundation/Killer Bees even if the most revelatory thing about it was how fucking cool beard Jim Brunzell looks in HD. Bearded Brunzell looks like a tanned stud who would beat James Brolin's ass and replace him on Hotel without anybody saying shit. He usually looks like an orthodontist. It also offers us some long crowd shots, beautiful crowd shots that offer us people we've never seen, a deep range of winter Minnesotans with great tight fitting 50/50 blend t-shirts no matter the body side, and a pornographic amount of snap front caps. 

The main was real good, a violent brawl in front of an off route arena crowd. One of the best things about any newly released WWE Vault match has been the sound quality. The sound is incredible on those Omni shows, and it makes house shows pop like the hottest 80s territory wrestling. The ways the sound highlights what's happening in the ring adds to every strike and every weapon crash. Bundy fucking murders Hogan with an early match belt shot, stripping it from his waist and swinging it as hard as he could at the back of Hogan's neck. It sounded like a Hogan getting brained with a slapjack. Beyond Bundy hitting a 1999 level weapon shot, he had a lot of really impressive worked offense. It's one thing for Bret to pull his weight and never hurt anyone on his elbowdrop, but Bundy has so much more weight to pull. He protects Hogan on everything - smart time to tighten up your work and secure the biggest monthly paydays of your life - but all of it looks really great. Precise worked kneedrops always amaze me, the distribution of weight that goes into the best of them. Bundy's is so tight that I'd love to see footage of him testing it out on and not breaking eggs. Is Yokozuna's legdrop our Fattest great worked "drop"? 

I was surprised when the legdrop came so early and exclaimed aloud when Hogan pulled him up at 2 and started punching him. But I appreciate that Hogan's two best punches were thrown at Heenan standing on the apron, short targeted staccato rights to Heenan's forehead before Bundy pulled him off and Heenan held Hogan's legs down for the splash. Even with Tito and Steamboat on the card I'm sure nobody else sold two punches better than Heenan sold Hogan's two. 

WAR GAMES! Team JBL (CW Anderson/Elix Skipper/Hernandez/Homicide/Steve Corino) (w/John Bradshaw Layfield) vs. Team Slaughter (Dustin Rhodes/Kirby Mack/Rick Steiner/Scott Steiner/TJ Mack) (w/Sgt. Slaughter) Sadler UWF 9/21/07

MD: Speaking of things we've somehow never covered. The KrisPLettuce Patreon got its hands on all these Sadler UWF shows. Certainly worth a look. This has Slaughter out to Born in the USA which is not something I remember him coming out to often. Hebner does the coin toss and jaws with the fans about Bret. The one liners between Slaughter and JBL are not great. Obviously JBL wins. Someone in the crowd shouts out "the heel always wins" long before the toss. Best not to overthink it. 

This is honestly a pretty good Indie War Games. You start with Dustin and CW Anderson for the five minute period, playing up Dusty and Arn in the classic, obviously. Dustin is in the midst of his Black Reign gimmick at his heaviest but he's going to be in there for 25+ and damn it if he doesn't make a showing of it. People point to this as a disqualifying period and this match certainly seems like a counterargument to that.  They worked a nice little mini-match here with CW feeding for Dustin's strikes (all looked great) and Dustin running into the spinebuster, having to fight his way back. 

Just when he had things under control, it was Corino's time to come in, and they worked a comedy spot or two before taking over. In general, I thought the balance was really good with this one. You had a lot of unique elements, like Hernandez who could just come in and throw people around or Rick Steiner who in his mid-40s could make a believable impact without seeming overly gimmicky (Scott was a bit more so). The Macks were quite adept at getting thrown around. And there was novelty in having Homicide in there teaming with Corino or facing off against Dustin. Skipper was the only guy who felt a little out of place to me. 

It was ultimately pretty chaotic and hard to follow at times, as you'd expect, but that had its own wealth of riches, like looking away from one side of the ring only to see Dustin slamming Corino's head between the rings like a plunger over and over. Finish was silly, with JBL and Slaughter getting involved, even if they did cover it with a simultaneous submission, and it never quite went as bloody as you might have wanted, but overall, it was a pretty well put together War Games with a lot of talent interacting in interesting and unique ways. 

ER: We were all so convinced that we had already covered this match that we had multiple text threads across multiple apps trying to figure out why we hadn't already covered it. I assumed Phil had already covered every single War Games match, but somehow this is THE ONE WAR GAMES that has not been written about by any Segunda Caida member. When Dustin watched our DEAN~! 2 show with us, I wish I had known about this match when the discussion turned to what our favorite War Games matches were. He was obviously proud of his daddy's match concept and was in three straight years of them. I had no clue he was ever in a non-WCW War Games, or that it was one of the three best War Games he'd been involved in. 

Before Slaughter and JBL do the coin toss, some "smart" fan yells out that "the heel always wins the coin toss". Yeah smart guy, you showed 'em all. Nobody wants to see a fucking War Games where the babyfaces have a constant advantage, but there will always be wrestling fans who think they cracked the code about how basic storytelling works. It's like how my dad will turn to my mom and say "Told ya" when a TV/movie character who is clearly the bad guy turns out to be a bad guy. Some people will always seek mysteries to solve while others have long moved past the need to search for mysteries than never pretended to be mysterious. 

I typically hate modern applications of "lore" but I love that this match started with Rhodes and Anderson. It's the best possible throwback to the original classic but also two guys who make logical sense to start a War Games and be in the entire match. I love that heel CW has a manager who needs to be pushed in a wheelchair. This is clearly not a heel manager faking injury that will lead to his chair being tipped over, our heel enforcer just has an actual invalid as a manager and that will sadly never present us with a difficult "wouldn't hit someone with glasses" scenario. Anyway, the whole War Games is shockingly good. I knew the floor would be high just from seeing half of the people involved, but it hit a high note in the first five minutes and I thought maintained that level through all new entries. Some entries were less than others: Rick Steiner accidentally got in the middle of other people's sequences 3x more often than he actively did anything, Kirby Mack looks like the clear worst of the Mack brothers, and Elix Skipper does a couple moves so convoluted that nobody - including Brad Stutts on commentary - could have guessed that it was actual offense he was delivering rather than taking. 

Everyone else though? Everyone else showed up. CW lights Dustin up with elbows during their 5 minutes and goes on to work smart sequences with everyone all match, great at taking TJ's offense, great at stooging when necessary. Dustin works insanely hard all match. I remember watching the Black Reign era and always thinking there were occasional glimpses of Dustin in there but assumed they put him in super short matches because he could no longer go. Nope. Here he is smack dab in the middle of Black Reign and he's breaking out offense I've never otherwise seen from him. He comes off the top rope multiple time, with diving elbow attacks and I can't recall any time past age 25 when Dustin even went to the top rope. TJ Mack is a Hardys trainee but wrestles like a Marufuji acolyte. The thing is he does Marufuji spots with more snap and sounder physics, like the Billy Kidman of Marufujis. He's great at being the guy every heel goes straight after when they enter the match. Homicide murders him with a quick series of strikes and suplexes, Hernandez comes in and press slams him from one ring to the other, he takes a Border Toss from one ring to the other, I'm kind of shocked he wasn't the one to take the Clothesline from Hell. 

There wasn't going to be blood, but the action was strong and the energy level being kept high the whole time elevated things. I expected a lot more lying around time, but these men were here to work. Far exceeded expectations, fits in nicely within the War Games pantheon. I don't think WWE has done one better. 

Goldust vs. Dean (Shark Boy) Baldwin Tribute Championship Wrestling 3/2/13

MD: Somehow this escaped our gaze for years and years, but better late than never. Dean Baldwin is Shark Boy... with a Baldwin brother gimmick, including someone from "hollywood" hyping him up and three valets and a tracksuit. There is a fake Shark Boy as the ref. Dustin is Goldust in between runs. A scene has been set for you.

This was, unsurprisingly, a ton of fun. Match was straightforward. Baldwin would run spots with Goldust, running into a shoulder block or arm drags, then head out to complain and stall and whine. Goldust eventually went out after him. He got over with a banana peel and stayed over with cheapshots even though Dustin did pretty well with his comebacks. He was working this crowd hard, skidding his feet on a backslide or really kicking the leg to get the fans going for a chinlock, just working huge for the back row even though he was also working small from underneath given that Baldwin was tiny compared to him.  

He hit a bunch of his signature stuff on the comeback but it came to the ref losing the mask (beats me who it was) to hit the stunner setting up the final reckoning. Post match they did all the bs you'd want: the shattered dreams, a kid posing with dustin and the ref (re-masked), the valets leaving with Dustin, Baldwin throwing a tantrum, Dustin paying attention to every individual kid in the place. No idea how we'd never seen this one before.

ER: Dean Baldwin looks more like an unsuccessful Jamie Kennedy brother than an unsuccessful Baldwin brother, but he perfectly understands what it's like to be a phony Hollywood douchebag. Coming out to Weezer's "Beverly Hills", a song so bad that it might be the only song that has ever made me spit out my drink the first time I heard it. We got it into our college radio station one Friday afternoon, threw on track one, and I don't think any of us could have possibly expected music this putrid. I sprayed my water out in a fine mist. Had "We Are All on Drugs" been track 1, I may have choked to death. 

This was several months before Goldust was triumphantly brought back to WWE, on his comeback trail to show he was in shape and ready to have TV classics again. In 2013 he was healed up, trimmed up, tapping back into the things that always made him a great babyface. This is pure indy wrestling, a former star on the mend or on the spiral, working in a middle school gym in a small Midwest village that's close enough to major civilization. This is was indy wrestling always was before the 2001 boom, gymnasium shows giving people a chance to see someone that had been on TV for years, filled with kids who likely have no idea who the big TV star even was. Knowledge or no, everyone recognizes Goldust's effective babyface beats, and he works hard to remain underdog and make the smaller Baldwin seem like someone who could control. 

While I would have preferred seeing him work someone with size, like Daniel Baldwin, I thought Dean's punches played as great heel punches (helps when you have a babyface this good at reacting to punches) and Goldust knew how to bump to make him more effective. My favorite Goldust bump was the way he took Baldwin's kitchen sink knee, tumbling painfully and leaning into the bottom rope as he came up holding his stomach. My favorite part was the early match magic show, where Goldust punched and slapped Baldwin around ringside, letting all the kids see up close and personal how good he was smacking this guy around. I can only imagine how much I would have lost my mind if my middle school's gym ever hosted a wrestling show, and Goldust knew exactly how that must have felt. 

Read more!

80s Joshi on Wednesday: Nagayo! Lioness!

Volume 4  

6. Mimi Hagiwara Sings "Sexy in The Night" - 1/4/83

K: It’s January 4th, and you know what that means! Well, if you don’t, it means it’s the first show of the New Year. AJW would run Korakuen Hall every year (usually the 4th, sometimes 3rd or 5th) with some big matches to start the year strong.

There’s an interesting section in the intro where Announcer Shiono advertises wrestler try-outs. There’s a graphic on screen detailing where to send your resume to, noting that applicants must be aged 15-18 and be at least 165cm tall. It might not seem that odd now, but in 1983 wrestling was still a mostly closed business. Most people got in because they already knew someone in the business. It’s pretty rare that random fans just turned up saying ‘hey I wanna be a wrestler’ and got trained if they passed an audition, but that was the norm in AJW.

MD: They’re playing this up as a “singing duel” between Mimi and Devil, as Devil has a new song too, and I wonder if this aspect isn’t a little lost even in the set. I do get the idol culture and we’ve seen elements of this throughout but I wish I could get into a fan’s head and figure out how all this all synced together. Was it like watching an episode of JEM and the Holograms from the 80s but with fight scenes? Were they wrestlers who happened to sing or singers who happened to wrestle? Did they have a rich, full life in the minds of the fans where they were just competing at everything? Were they having craft fairs and baking contests and boat races and prank competitions on the side and people only happened to see the wrestling and the singing? How did all of this make sense to people? As an aside, this show also had Nancy Kumi’s retirement match so another stalwart is gone. 

7. Chigusa Nagayo vs. Lioness Asuka (AJW Title) - 1/4/83

K: If you watch this in vacuum it might not feel particularly noteworthy, but this is a famous match that apparently changed wrestling history. It’s the first match featuring the future Crush Gals to be featured in the semi-fictionalised ‘Queen of Villains’ Netflix show, which obviously used the real match as a template. 

The non-kayfabe story going into this is Chigusa felt her wrestling career was going nowhere and had told other wrestlers backstage that she was going to quit after this match. Her performance displayed all the reckless abandon of someone not concerned about damaging her body too much to perform adequately the next day. Maybe a bit of her frustration can be felt in the force she puts behind her spinning kicks. The way she wrestled that day backfired on her ‘retirement’ plans however, as when she went to Kunimatsu Matsumoto’s office to tell him she was quitting, before she got round to that he showered her with praise for her performance and told her she should try and wrestle like that permanently. Somewhere in that conversation Chigusa changed her mind and didn’t mention that she wanted to quit. Turns out her wrestling career was going somewhere after all.

It’s hard for me to review this without seeing everything through those lens. Still, I think without knowing all that, I’d still think this was the best singles match in either woman’s career to date. Right after the announcer lists all the matches Chigusa recently lost, she shows her new angry jealous heel attitude by trying to storm Asuka before the belt and snatch the belt off her. That she fails to get it actually works, because she’s just not good enough to beat Asuka at anything, it’s that feeling of failure which is driving her emotions.

The opening strike exchange salvo is really good. Asuka throws harder and appears to be winning already after a couple of hands get thrown. Rather than no-sell/try to look tough, or just backing down, instead Chigusa covers up and tries to go for some kind of takedown. It looks both like she can’t handle Asuka’s strikes but also that she’s going for a counter.

After a hot start, they never really relent. There’s slower sections of course, we get the customary legwork section, but there’s such energy and aggression behind it from both women that it doesn’t feel like a cooldown at all. They just keep on fighting, that Asuka looks like she’s going to win for almost the whole match doesn’t stop them from behaving like things are neck and neck. Their pin attempts are very tight and we get a AJW-special kickout before even a count of 1. Get those shoulders off the mat! Now! Don’t wait till 2…

They’re relatively limited in moveset here but that doesn’t stop them from pulling off a memorable finish. Asuka gets Chigusa up for a backdrop, but this time drops her right on her head. She follows up with a Samoan Drop like move to get the win and retain the belt.

***1/2

MD: Bit of a weird one. Kadaveri explained to me that Chigusa had gotten frustrated at a losing streak and went heel, but this was not in the least a showcase for her, except for maybe her selling (more on that in a second). Asuka came in with the belt and the intensity early for the pre-Crush Gals pre-exploding was great. They just really swung at each other to start, a chaotic feel. I did get the sense that Asuka was the aggressor. It made sense that Asuka got the early advantage and she had a lot of “stuff” here, including a nice torture rack drop and this great over the shoulder arm submission where she spun around with it. 

Chigusa took over with an absolutely brutal bridging toehold, and truly that was just about her only real offense in the match, that and the subsequent beating on the leg. Asuka came back with a figure-four. That revealed Chigusa’s super power. She was the one-eyed woman in the land of the blind when it came to extended selling. It wasn’t even THAT extended but she sold the leg as she came back just a little (having dodged a move). It wasn’t much but it was appreciated in a sea of everyone just dropping lengthy limbwork to move on to the next thing.

Finish had Asuka hit another torture rack slam and a giant swing en route to pressing the arms despite Chigusa’s best efforts. I didn’t have any real sense that the fans wanted to boo her here, but this was spirited at time. I just thought Chigusa should have taken a lot more of it.

Read more!

The Possibilities of the Now: Liiza Hall vs Hazuki

PRODUCE: PRODUIT 7/26/26

Liiza Hall vs Hazuki

MD: Pro wrestling is interactive and no pro wrestling is more interactive than indie wrestling. 

That's not just true for people watching in tightly packed, close-up rooms either. It's true for us as viewers at home. You don't just consume pro wrestling. You engage with it. That's doubly true for indie wrestling. 

It's not just closer to the fans there live. It's closer to all of us. There's less polish, less distance, less over-production. It's more natural, more organic, less about glitz, glamour, and artificial spectacle and more about passion, showmanship, and human spectacle created entirely by the wrestlers plying their trade. It's more a conversation.

WWE isn't going to challenge your priors. It tries to drown them out in slop and noise, rewriting history and presenting a twisted insubstantial alternative to reality that it needs you to buy into without doubt or hesitation. Without thought. AEW's better along these lines, but it still goes out of its way to reinforce your priors, giving you what you want, even if it's often not what you need.

Indie wrestling is out there trying to figure it all out with you. Sometimes it works out for the best. Sometimes it doesn't. But that risk, that effort, that triumph and frustration is half the joy, half of what reminds you that you're alive while you're watching it.

I had priors coming into this, not a ton, but some. I think Hall did too. I think the PRODUCE as a whole did. Hall had been presented a certain way leading up to this show. PRODUCE may not flood your senses and try to shut off your brain like WWE does, but it certainly works to establish the wrestlers and the fights ahead of time, encourages them tell their own stories in their own way. In my eyes, Hall came out to the ring with a certain expectation clearly expressed through her reaction to the crowd and subsequent bemusement when the crowd didn't want to love her back. 

She's Canadian. She works hard. She fights hard. This was Canada. Except for it wasn't. It was Quebec, and she doesn't have a big history with the province. Hazuki was more the attraction, someone that this crowd might have felt like they'd never get a chance to see live. 

Either way, whether this was the plan all along or whether Hall shifted in the moment, it's a testament to her that she landed where she did and a testament to indie wrestling that it has that sort of flexibility to be agile, to turn on a dime, to live in the moment, to face the human reality before it and adapt to take advantage of all the possibilities of the now. 

I came in thinking that Hall would have a chip on her shoulder after her loss to Billie Starkz, sure, that she would meet the opportunity for what it was, that this would be spirited and technical and hard hitting, and that eventually it would boil over into something mean. 

But I didn't think it would start that way, that the chip would split into a fissure before the bell and any sportsmanship or good will that Hall might came in with would fizzle away in the face of a crowd that had a very clear preference for Hazuki. 

I didn't think Hall would be trying to distract the ref so she could pry at fingers just a few minutes into the match or that Hazuki would have to channel her fire to fight from underneath from the get go because Hall had every intention of using her superior size and reach to bully her around. Maybe it all cost Hall in the end. She took that yellow card with panache but she simply couldn't keep Hazuki down. Maybe she was thrown by the crowd. Maybe the strength that resentment fueled in her wasn't pure and potent enough to get the job done. Maybe she couldn't get out of her own way. 

But that's why we watch, isn't it? That's what makes pro wrestling, and indie wrestling especially, interesting as an art form. It's not enough to just see a bunch of spots and yell This is Awesome. That's just being fed candy. It's fun once or twice but eventually, you get sick to your stomach. Sometimes you want something that's real, that hits at odd angles, that comes together a little off center, not polished and perfect, but with just enough dirt and grit. Sometimes it doesn't even come together at all, but the parts that hit still hit you in ways you didn't expect, ways that have value, that make you engage and strain and grow instead of just being another picture perfect spotfest for you to consume.

So maybe, just maybe, this crowd and this match gave Hall something she wasn't expecting, and because of that, they gave me something I wasn't expecting too. If you go and watch this now, you might have a completely different reaction. Maybe it'll even be my fault for priming you a certain way. But that's fine, that's good. Wrestling is art and art is subjective and the journey matters a hell of a lot more than the destination.  

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death 7/20 - 7/26

AEW Dynamite 7/22/26

Darby Allin vs Kevin Knight

MD: So who then is Kevin Knight?

For the first couple of minutes of this match, it actually doesn't matter, because this one begins as Darby Allin's story.

What do we know coming in? Kevin Knight inadvertently injured Darby Allin in the Continental Classic and took him out of the running. Darby successfully defended the World Title against Knight, who subsequently won the TNT Title, a title associated with Darby. After Darby lost the World Title back to MJF, Knight came out and turned on him. Knight then joined the Don Callis Family and has broken the record for most TNT defenses (not a particularly impressive record because the title tends to get hot potatoed; it's fine as that's its purpose, but it feels a bit like a false claim, in this case helping matters). Darby's recently came back for revenge. And finally, Knight claimed to want to beat Allin in a wrestling match, no interference, just to prove he's better.

You'd have to look back at their previous encounters, but given the hierarchy at play, I imagine Darby's entered second for most of them. Here Knight, the champion, entered second. He made his way down to the ring, posing, preening, full of confidence (more on that in a minute). That made him a target for a Darby Allin seeking revenge. Darby's the sort of wrestler that'll go to the top of Everest and envision jumping off it onto your head if you've done him wrong. 

That's basically what he did here, using his body as a battering ram multiple times. At one point, he pulled the protective top cover off the corner of the ring to flatten out the space so he could jump off of it onto a Knight draped over the guardrail. 

So, yes, it didn't really matter who Knight was or what he wanted at the start of the match. He was a target, completely without agency. 

But of course, Darby's fury has a cost. One too many crashes. One too many landings. He started limping. That let Knight get some distance. It let him go to the eyes. One might argue that what Darby had done here wasn't proper for a "good, honest wrestling match" but that doesn't hold up in 2026. Is it really a sneak attack when you see Darby coming? 

Going to the eyes though? Shoving Darby off the ramp so that he lands groin first on the guardrail? 

Well, maybe it was tit for tat. Maybe. Regardless, it was certainly Knight exacting his agency. And it means that it's at least half his story once again. 

So that brings us back to the start.

Who is Kevin Knight?

He's a heel. But he's a complex heel. He's a multi-dimensional heel. He's an effective heel. 

Most of all, he's a vulnerable heel.

He claims to have attacked Darby because he couldn't get the job done. Out of frustration. It wasn't about Darby, though. It wasn't about Max being champion. It wasn't even about Knight himself losing to both Max and Darby in title matches. 

It was about the ticking clock, the Sword of Damocles over his head. 

Kevin Knight is 29. His former partner, Speedball Mike Bailey, is 36. Bailey lost years trapped behind the Canadian border due to visa issues. Were it not for that, Bailey might have been the world champion years ago. Darby himself is 33. He was in AEW from the start and only now won the World Title. Years and years of working his way up. MJF is 30 now but he won his first world title three and a half years ago. 

Knight is athletic, dynamic, but he crashes and burns every match, much like Darby, even without some of the reckless intent. He watched Darby hold the title for one lone month before MJF won it back.

So why did Kevin Knight attack Darby Allin?

For the same reason the greatest, most human heels do anything. 

He was afraid.

He was afraid of it all slipping away, of time getting away from him, of losing his opportunity, of not seizing on the moment now so that when he did have his time, it'd be far too late. Like Darby. Or maybe it'd never come at all. Like Speedball. 

He didn't know what to do, but he knew he had to do something. So he did something desperate. Once he acted, there was no going back. Speedball offered forgiveness, but what would forgiveness get him? Forgiveness would be admitting he was wrong, admitting he was afraid, admitting he was lost. He'd be back where he started, worse off for the effort.

Once you stray from the path, it gets easier and easier to stray again. One bad choice leads to another and another and another. It's sunk cost fallacy. It's guilt. If there's a good man somewhere inside Kevin Knight, that man is refusing to look in the mirror, refusing to admit the truth. All he can do instead is keep digging deeper, keep hiding behind false confidence and swagger. And so long as he keeps winning, he'll get away with it too.

So yes, Knight went to the eyes, crotched Darby, and catapulted him into the ringsteps, opening him up. It's not crochet. It's pro wrestling. Darby came back, hitting a code red off the top followed by another one, slamming Knight's head into the steps, grinding his hand in the exposed corner cavity. They crashed into one another and then, after an attempt at a Scorpion Death Drop, the ref went down. 

Knight had claimed to want a fair, honest fight. He claims a lot of things. He believes a lot of things, right up until the point he is challenged by life. That's the problem with a foundation of lies, lies to yourself, to the world. They don't stand up under pressure.

Knight's resolve broke. He went for the belt to wield it as a weapon. Darby dodged it, and then, with Knight's legs flailing in fear, Darby dropped him with the Death Drop. For a moment, Darby looked to use the belt himself, but that might have brought him victory, reclaimed him his title, but it wouldn't have brought him satisfaction. Darby understood that because he was at peace with himself, a peace that Knight is nowhere near anymore. Darby mounted the ropes for the Coffin Drop. Knight recovered quickly enough to nail him with the belt. 

And he hit the same spectacular coast-to-coast dropkick that injured Darby during the C2 and stole the win. That belt shot may have appeared to have gained him everything in the moment, but it only dug his hole deeper. 

Months ago, with a heart full of fear, Kevin Knight made his choice. Once made, the only path forward was to go deeper. Into the Don Callis Family. To become the most successful TNT champion ever. And yes, all the way to his first PPV main event. 

The path can lead nowhere good. The path can lean to nothing but the same sort of inevitable destruction that Knight had been running from in the first place. 

But in the hands of a talent who's willing to be vulnerable, who's willing to commit, it sure does make for a hell of a story, doesn't it?

Read more!

Found Footage Friday: 1990 FMW~!

FMW 3/10/90

Kumiko Matsuda vs. Crusher Maedomari 

MD: Crusher isn't Crusher yet. This was pre-show and you could tell they were working things out, but they had good aggression, Matsuda with strikes and Maedomari with throws and holds. Lots of shoot pin escapes. Matsuda could be pretty relentless with the kicks and knees. At one point, they had a funny bit where she missed on a spin kick in the corner and got the ref. Maedomari wanted in on the fun and turned to nail the ref too. It was funny but added to the sense of wild aggression from these two. Matsuda finally got a series of dropkick in the corner which let her hit a double underhook suplex and follow with a jackknife pin for the win. This was rough around the edges but had good energy for what FMW was trying to be at this point, which was definitely a little bit of everything.

ER: Strong Opener, great energy. Matsuda does her leveraged throws and kicks with intent and can believably back Maedomari up with palm strikes. I loved the bit with her spin kicks in the corner swinging wide into the referee's ribs. Her dropkicks down the finishing stretch could use some steam but I also like the raggedness of someone 10 matches into her career guiding someone through their first ever match. Actually that feels like the exact situation where you'd expect someone to be murdered by dropkicks. 

Miwa Sato vs. Drake Morimatsu 

MD: DVDVR stalwart Gordi had been at a party recently with Morimatsu, so I was hoping to get this match back out there after seeing the listing, but it's a non match. Thanks to BAHU's history of FMW, I know this was the debut of Kudo with two fellow non-active AJW Class of 86 alums (Reibun Amada and Noriyo Toyoda) as the The Outbreakers. They come out of nowhere and destroy Miwa (including with a spike kneeling pile driver), setting up a tag and then singles match later in the month (we have the 3/30 singles and Kudo dominates). There is a clear sense of chaos to all of this though and it helps the overall feel compared to what else is happening in Japan at the time. Like any other unexpected surprise, this had a big buzz from the crowd.

ER: This angle made me so excited for tag matches we're never going to see. Miwa Sato takes a great beating at the hands of the AJW veterans. The kneeling stuff piledriver was disgusting, just a full head drop. Sato comes off like an underdog babyface star and it sucks to hear a Kudo singles match was one sided. 1997 Kudo would have had the most memorable match on the card with her. 

MD: After this, they played Final Countdown and had everyone come down to the ring. I've seen enough AJPW and NJPW house shows to think they didn't do that for those in this era, but they did for UWF in a big ceremony. This sort of aped that but you have such a misfit bunch of people out here that it has a completely different effect. 

Yukihide Ueno vs. Shooter #1 

MD: Shooter 1 is sort of credible, I guess. He had debuted earlier in the year as a "discipline of Tiger Mask" and had been over enough for it. This is all over the place at times, but Shooter has just enough presence to press an advantage and he has solid strikes and can bully Ueno around on size alone. He's constantly fixing his mask which is not something that usually bugs me, so that gives you a sense of how often he does it. He hits big stuff but can't always follow up because it's all a bit too disjointed. Ueno has the crowd (who are primarily happy to be there I think). He gets one big comeback with a gutshot, a German, and a kick out of the ring (and does get one big dive) but Shooter takes back over with a great press slam where he takes him off the top but slams him out of the ring instead of into it. Beautiful visual. It meanders a bit to the finish and there are a few times where the thing probably had an offramp to end and they should have taken it, but I'd say the trainwreck feel adds more than diminishes given the setting.

ER: Ueno would go on to be Choden Senshi Battle Ranger, one of those sick undercard FMW guys who didn't get as much acclaim as the more violent guys he shared rosters with. He became a gifted flier with great glue, and seeing him work a Different Style match like this you can see where all his stickiest glue came from. He debuted earlier in 1990 and is quickly tasked with working a long shootstyle fight against a guy who seems less familiar with the concept. Ueno is much smaller but had great purpose on offense, in a way I could have seen him controlling the whole match. His rolling kick that knocked Shooter to the floor was awesome, the follow up plancha a beautiful one within the crowed pool of wild 90s Japanese indie planchas. 

Ueno looks like he going to dominate with kicks and armbar takedowns, when he gets gorilla press slammed to the floor and spends a long back stretch fighting to get back to his feet. Shooter kind of sprang to life as a worker after this, turning into a kick combo machine while trying pro wrestling clotheslines and rope running for the first time. He wasn't great at peaking his knockdown kicks, mostly throwing left-right body combos and trying weighty kneelifts. He needed a big finish instead of a long wear down. Ueno fighting through the knockdowns was impressive, but he's someone who got so good at chaining big runs of cool offense that I wanted to see more of what he could do when he was a rookie menace.  

Masanobu Kurisu vs. Shooter #2 

MD: Shooter #2 is not nearly as credible. He tries for an ambush but obviously that's a terrible idea. There are no good ideas against Kurisu, except for maybe to run. Kurisu headbutts him out of the corner and doesn't really look back. He headbutts him again, stomps and kicks him, hits him with a chair on the outside, and it's all top 5% ever pro wrestling brutality. Just another day in the office for Kurisu. Shooter gets a miracle clothesline and tries to get a hold out of it. Kurisu reverses the hold and kicks and headbutts and slams and clotheslines and chicken wings this poor jerk. Shooter doesn't quit (he should). Instead he gets a miracle belly to belly but Kurisu just rolls him over and gets the double wristlock for the win. Almost a mercy.

ER: A 5 minute classic, something for every fan of wrestling violence and all Kurisu heads. The full Korakuen crowd is in LOVE with Kurisu and actually laughs with glee as he stomped the skull plates apart of the future Ryo Miyake. Miyake by the mid 90s was a WAR/Yume Guy I Liked, here he is a game sacrificial lamb who takes the worst of Kurisu's head kicks and bone breaking submissions. He gets to kick Kurisu in the head a couple times and bounce him with a pretty nasty suplex, but mostly he was in there to test a 1990 theory about how many unprotected kicks a rookie could take to the cranium. 

We think of Masa Fuchi as evil, sometimes. It's because of his eyes. He is a businessman who double crosses you on a deal, but will also step on a guy's face. But Fuchi was never evil, he was a dickhead. Masanobu Kurisu is Evil Fuchi. Kurisu unleashed on the 90s All Japan Old Men division would have been Hell on earth. He would have been the reason everyone traded for All Japan tapes. He throws a short fast overhead chair shot that lands with such impact it's like seeing someone get hit with a chair for the first time. His submissions always look like we're getting a glimpse into dojo torture, a live bone density test on a Saturday. Miyake making the ropes more than once felt like huge moments, as they felt like they actually pissed Kurisu off. Bad news for Miyake, but he came out of this looking likWhen e a guy. 

Tarzan Goto vs. Satoshi Imaizumi

MD: Not sure why Goto had back to back gimmick matches but here we go. This was more of a judo gi mixed styles deal (Goto did have a gi too). FMW was still transitioning towards death matches as more the norm and there was still so much of the early martial arts feel here. I think it worked better in the main event than it did here though. At least the people around the camera were into all the judo throws. Goto would try some more pro wrestling, things like kicks and clotheslines. Imaizumi got his knees up on a Vader Bomb attempt and almost won it with a cross arm breaker but Goto came back for a choke. Not a ton here but it's fun to see him go from one gimmick to the other in subsequent matches. 

ER: I saw Imaizumi standing around during the extended Europe introduction ceremony and I wanted to see him more than anyone. He looks like Kurisu's large son with the exact same hairline but a young  branching out from his tough father mustache. Goto looks trim in his gi and ponytail. This started like a kind of dry judo throw exhibition and slowly grew into an aggressive sparring dojo war. Imaizumi started going for broke and using his strongest throws on Goto, working hard for a head and arm submission like he was really trying to end this fight while he had a gas tank. When he pulled an armbar after getting his knees up on a Goto Vader bomb I thought he had it. There's this weird FMW guy trend of shoehorning a dropkick into their Different Style fight. None of them have had dropkicks good enough to work in a shootstyle/Different Style setting, Goto included. Goto's headbutts were welcome but Imaizumi came across as the more intriguing figure. Goto is such a good pro wrestler that I thought he would have been more of a dynamic tough guy fit in a Different Style division. 

Tarzan Goto vs. Beast the Barbarian

MD: This was far more interesting than the judo jacket match. I always joke that Beast could be a time traveling Mad Dog Connelly, by looks and gimmick but he didn't have the intensity or presence. He was set up to succeed with this match gimmick though and this was a perfectly acceptable dog collar match. He's able to use the chain as a weapon and clubber Goto down and he laid it in. Goto would come back hitting just as hard. There were a few transitions with one or the other getting a little tangled up with the rope and the chain and I do wonder if this wouldn't have been better with a slightly shorter chain which kept them a little closer together without some of those apron bits. Goto bled. Beast asserted himself pretty well overall especially relative to his Onita match a couple of months before. And cleverly enough, after each man meted out a sufficient amount of punishment, Goto won with a backslide of all things. Beast didn't think his shoulders were down which led to a post-match fit.

ER: If Matt is saying he has a regular routine about Beast the Barbarian, I can confidently say that I have never seen nor written about a Beast the Barbarian match in my life. I don't know a thing about this guy but on sight he's like Damien Demento working a balding shorter Bruiser Brody gimmick. 

Atsushi Onita & Sambo Asako vs. Kim Sung Ho & Lee Gak Soo

MD: The story of this one was that Asako or Onita would get one of the taekwondo guys down and in a hold and again and again and again, the other would come in to break it up. That lasted until Onita finally got fed up and hit his deadly over the shoulder power bomb. Even that wasn't good enough but then Asako got the message and cut off the ring for so he could hit a second one. That was the basic story but the devil's in the details and Lee Gak Soo is one of the most dynamic pro wrestling kickers I've ever seen. 

He somehow manages to throw kicks from every angle, sometimes flying around with them, and obviously Asako is a great canvas, but Onita would get knocked out of the ring like it was nothing too and the fans loved it. Kim had some fun charging ones too. Basically Onita would run at people with lariats or trips, cutting the distance however he could, and Asako had all these cool throws if people got close enough to him, but then the subsequent holds would get broken up and Kim and Lee would just take right over with the meanest stomps and kicks imaginable. 

Right until Asako (also fed up) dragged Lee over to the corner and the power bombs happened. Crazy, enjoyable stuff.

Battle Royal

MD: This was all about the taekwondo guys just throwing flying kicks everywhere in the middle of a battle royal. Even more fun than that sounds. What you need to know is that Onita and Kurisu were working together but Onita accidentally chopped Kurisu which went about as well as you'd expect. Onita eliminated him but Lee and Asako immediately eliminated Onita afterwards. I imagine he and Kurisu are still fighting to the back today. This is one of those battle royals were people get pinned by everyone in the ring piling on them. I think that was Imaizumi's fate. It ended up Asako, Shooter, and Lee and then was an entertaining mess of guys kicking and then immediately falling over. Asako shoved Lee into the ropes and he came right off on him for the pin. Then he followed up with a kick off the top on Shooter. Stupid amounts of fun. 

Read more!

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

Volume 4  

5. Devil Masami & Tarantula vs. Jaguar Yokota & Jumbo Hori - 11/4/82

K: Tag champs Devil Masami & Tarantula in a non-title match here. It's still 2/3 falls because AJW TV just did that regularly for main event tags whether it was for the titles or not. 

They flip the script a bit here by having the heels jump the babyfaces right at the start, rather than later into the match as a reaction to the momentum swings against them. The announcers are very alarmed that Jaguar & Jumbo were still in their entrance gowns while being accosted. 

The 1st fall feels more like a heel showcase with the occasional comeback spots. Tarantula inherits Yumi Ikeshita's plant opponent onto sticking up toes move, but follows this up by savagely biting Jaguar's neck like she's a vampire or something. Later Tarantula has Jaguar in a headlock, but with the other hand she's pulling her hair just out of sight of the referee. It's delightfully villainous how the ref can see she's doing something untoward, and Tarantula isn't really trying to pretend she isn't doing something illegal, but is just about managing to stop the referee from directly seeing it, like that's what really matters. I thought the finish to this fall was a bit odd. Jaguar Irish Whips Devil into Jumbo Hori, presumably to set up some double team move, but Devil just spins around her, hits Jumbo with a side suplex as Tarantula prevents Jaguar from breaking it up. It made sense in conception, other than the move to actually pin Jumbo didn't look that strong.

But that slight complaint about the 1st fall goes out the window with the finish of the 2nd fall! Jumbo hits a slam, and then Jaguar does a missile dropkick from the top rope to take out Devil, but lands into a pinning position on top of Tarantula and gets the win! Surely someone else has done a finish like that before but I don't remember it. I've only mentioned the finish, but more generally the 2nd fall had a nice pickup in pace and Tarantula in particular was showing out.

The 3rd fall is almost an inversion of the 1st in that its the babyfaces who almost ambush the heels at the start, there's a big double figure four spot that they like to do. But before long the heels take control and methodically grind them down without many big spots to specifically point out, but it's all good stuff. Devil & Tarantula are very good at coming across like they really are just an excellent tag team (whether they fight dirty or not) and it’s just really difficult for anyone to sustain any momentum against them. I liked when Devil was using the big hanging choke on the turnbuckle while Tarantula got her chops in. Devil goes wild with her cane while the referee gets distracted and this sets up Devil getting a rare pinfall win with her leaping senton (usually used for a nearfall). I like how although wrestlers have signature moves, nobody really has a finisher here, so what will win a match is far less predictable.

Jumbo punishes the referee for his poor eyesight by throwing him into the crowd. A strong AJW babyface tradition.

***1/2

MD: Masami and Tarantula had become a pretty effective team by this point. They ambushed to start. Tarantula would sneak in a choke or just bite you in the face. Masami was relentless. There was a real sense that if you got breathing room by going one way, they’d be the other ready to get you. Still, the big difference I’ve noted in 82 relative to 79 or 80 was just how much the babyfaces could fight back. The Devil Army made them really, really work for it though. One second of lapse and Tarantula’s hand would be right in your face. Hori came back only for Devil to stop short on a whip and nail her in the back. Yokota fought back only for Masami to get a foot up from a prone position. When they did mount a comeback at the end of the first fall with a series of press up seated sentons by Jaguar, all it took was one duck by Devil and she hit a belly to back on Hori for the fall.

Second fall had Jaguar winning a test of strength against Jumbo which seems a bit silly and then laying in headbutts. Tarantula hit her roll-into-a-dropkick which is one of the few good rolls in wrestling history, then a missile front dropkick. Again, they made Jaguar work for it as she hit her forward vault to start her comeback but Devil caught her on the apron and she had to side step. I won’t use the word “evolutionary” but I do think that they were building on things so fans did not grow accustomed to the same match over and over. Jumbo came in with a massive power bomb, leading to a sort of bridging exploder and a great finish where Jaguar hit a missile dropkick on a charging Devil and then landed with a top rope splash on Tarantula. Great end to the fall.

In the third fall, Devil tried to hit some of her big offense (like the press slam) but Jaguar kept escaping. She and Tarantula had more luck choking with an outside bit of rope/wire. She also did a dangling choke from the top while Tarantula hit some chops which is not something you see every day. When she was firmly in control she hit all that offense she wanted before like the press slam, which felt perfectly petty in the best way. She followed that up by being even more petty and vindictive with the stick and won it with a flip senton, which is not something I think I’ve seen her do chronologically up until now. This was a good distilled version of the style at the time. We’ve seen a few tags like this now and you can tell where they were developing different aspects over time. I’m curious if that survives into the next generation’s tag matches. Post match, Jumbo goes after the ref again. We know that’s not going to do them much good over time.

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death 7/13 - 7/19

ROH TV 7/16/26

Eddie Kingston/Ortiz/Adam Priest/Tommy Billington vs Shane Taylor Promotions (Shane Taylor/Lee Moriarty/Shawn Dean/Carlie Bravo)

MD: I can hear it in your head.

Ospreay VS Brooks Was 8 Minutes Long With Will Working From Underneath When He's The Title Contender? What's The Ticket Sales For All In? How About Summerslam? Did The Dynamite Rating Hold Up? What Did Collision Do Against SNME? Danhausen Brought Out Karl-Anthony Towns? WWE Is Booking New York? Does That Mean There'll Be A Grand Slam To Counter SaudiMania? Someone Posted A Hogan VS Michaels Clip. Got To Post A Take On That. Dave Didn't Post The Mercedes/Maya Star Rating Yet? But He's In Arena Mexico. What's Going On With Sammy? What's Aminata's Contract Status? What About Bayley? Alvarez Says We Should Criticize AEW. Some Fans Say We Just  Should Focus On The Positives. Why Am I Typing This Like Ric Flair Tweets? What Did Styles Say This time? It's G1 Season. Big TJPW Show To Catch Up On. The TNT Champion Is Challenging at the PPV Again? Liv Morgan Supports Conversion Therapy? Tony Khan Is Playing 5 Star Booker? The Triangle of Madness Have Stardom Titles Now? 

Stop

Just stop.

Breathe. Take a breath.

None of that is going anywhere. 

Or it is, but you don't need to go with it for a few minutes.

It'll be there when you get back. Or the next thing will. Or the next. Or the next.

And you won't miss much of anything. It's fine. It'll be fine. There's something better for you out there.

A match.

A professional wrestling match.

It's full of story but not part of any storylines. 

It didn't go viral. Haven't seen a single clip from it. 

But it has eight practitioners of their craft, artists. Guys who have been around the block, guys who are on the rise, different sizes, shapes, styles. 

Twelve and a half minutes of freedom from everything above. It's on Honor Club. You have to want it to watch it. You're going to be surrounded by people who want it. It's in front of a studio audience there to see hours of wrestling. Small, intimate crowd. People who care. People who love it. People who are passionate enough to love it that much for what it is and not for all the noise around it. 

Where's Eddie Kingston been? 

Here. He's been here. Teaming with Ortiz. Wrestling with the younger guys. Wrestling the younger guys. Staring off against Shane Taylor. And yeah, you've missed him, but you don't need to miss him. He's right here waiting for you. 

Just get off the never-ending train to nowhere. Take a breath. Relax. Watch some pro wrestling that exists for the sake of pro wrestling. To entertain a crowd. To make Honor Club worth the price. To get guys reps. To create something out of nothing.

What does it look like when Eddie and Ortiz team with Priest and Billington? What does it look like when Shane Taylor Promotions come out at full strength? What does the clash of the two look like?

Aren't you curious? Even though it's not going to score you any points in any online argument. Even though it probably won't even get a look from the Observer. Even though this episode of ROH only has ONE vote on Cagematch. 

Doesn't that still sound interesting? Doesn't it sound more interesting than a lot of things that you feel far more obliged to watch and follow and post about?

Trust me when I tell you that it's better for your soul.

It was sure better for mine.

And yes, there were stories galore here, because characters drive stories and look at these characters. Ortiz and Bravo to start. Does Bravo respect the Code of Honor? No. He's tells the crowd to shut up and has a single finger on each hand for Ortiz instead. Mood set.

They trade rolling leg picks. Bravo goes under and around the leg. Ortiz gets behind him with a hammerlock. They burst into rope running. Ortiz drops down, gets a leap frog, hits an armdrag. Great way to start a match.

More stories. Eddie comes in and hits a Japanese arm drag on Dean. Dean yelps that it's an illegal move in the United States. Small crowd theatrics, maybe the best kind? Billington tagged in intending to chop down Taylor. Fearless bulldog mentality but up against a tank. Contrast makes things interesting. Styles make fights. It took Billington, Priest, and Ortiz working together to take him down. Things (like Taylor's size) mean something, have significance. 

Sometimes you want to see like vs like too. Adam Priest is any style. Lee Moriarty is the pure champ. They face off and Moriarty goes for a rolling leg pick of his own, but Priest had seen it twice so far in the match and jams it with a nasty back elbow to the jaw.

But then, Priest gets swept under. Transitions are structural, as important as any part of the match. Moriarty distracts the ref as Priest hits the ropes. Dean trips him and hits a stunner onto the apron, Bravo hits a knee drop off the apron, Taylor hits a legdrop on it. It takes mere seconds and changes everything.

Adam Priest, maybe the best heel of the 2020s, is out there playing face-in-peril, constantly reaching for his corner, constantly dragging himself across the mat, looking for any sign of hope and trying to create his own when there's none to be found. But STP stretch and do their thing. They toss him to the floor and swarm him. Bravo works small, little flourishes full of confidence. Dean has that same confidence, but he works bigger and more over the top with it. Moriarty is precise, contorting body parts, hitting suplexes, holding bridges (just as confident). Taylor is a wrecking ball. Priest tries to fire back on him. It doesn't go well for poor Adam. 

Nevertheless, Priest doesn't quit. He doesn't give up. He keeps on running, keeps on fighting, and manages to double down with Bravo after simultaneous clotheslines. He gets the hot tag. Eddie comes in like the (beloved) maniac he is. The Kobashi chops in the corner. He directs traffic. His team unloads and then toss Bravo in for an exploder. STP comes back and do the same to Eddie, tossing him in to a Taylor uranage. Things have broken down but even in chaos, there's a beautiful undercurrent of symmetry and order.

It's an 8-man tag. Plenty of people to break up pins. Plenty of offense to feature as well. Things waterfall. One guy rushes in to hit a bit of signature offense, then the next, but it all happens so quickly, and here in the finishing stretch after the meat of the match has already been consumed, that you can relax and enjoy it. The subsequent dives cleared the ring and the finish had Priest's half crab, a missile dropkick out of nowhere by Billington and dueling roll ups leading to the pin.

The progression was just right. Opening exchanges. Shine. Heat. Comeback. Chaos. Completion. All underpinned by contrast and character.

Sometimes a match can "just" be a match. That's not an insult. It can be wonderful. That doesn't mean it lacks story. It doesn't mean it doesn't draw you in. In some ways, it helps you let go and can draw you in all the more. It cuts out the distractions and lets you focus on the passion and the craft.

That doesn't mean there aren't things coming out of this I'd want to see too. We got a taste of Priest vs Moriarty. What does a Pure Title match between the two look like. We've seen Infantry vs Ortiz/Kingston once, but there's way more left on the bone. And yeah, Billington wanted to challenge himself against Shane Taylor. If he wants it that badly, I'd want to see him have the chance.

In a world without house shows, where the analytics of every quarter hour of TV is carefully examined, where fans are pushed by the algorithm to care most about lore, divisive arguments, and what's trending, a match like this can be a breath of fresh air.

I got the train for twelve minutes and just enjoyed myself. You can too. You'll be better off for it. A match like this is a gift, an increasingly rare gift. Log off for a bit and go open the present. 

You can be present. It's okay. The noise will be waiting for you whether you want it to be or not.

Enjoy the gift while you can. We don't get enough of them anymore.

Read more!