AEW Five Fingers of Death Part 2: AEW Revolution 3/6/22

AEW Revolution 3/6

Eddie Kingston vs. Chris Jericho - EPIC

MD: I wondered how Jericho was going to handle this one. There were limitations due to the card. In a world without MJF vs Punk they could have done a bloody brawl or something more cinematic. In a world without Danielson vs Mox, they could have had an absolute slugfest. What we got instead was the most in shape Jericho has been in years and him pushing himself to the limit physically to work a Kingston match. That meant the perfect mix of hard strikes, big selling, and nasty bombs.

Eddie was going to be Eddie. He's a constant, always on, always filling the gap, always thinking, always acting, always hitting as hard as he can and leaning into everyone else's shots to make them twice as resonant. Jericho, however, was absolutely present, selling the emotion of the match, responding to the fans' chants, getting into it with Aubrey to get more heat after a near-fall. He started out from a deficit, getting caught with the half and half immediately. The hole was only going to get deeper when the striking shot because he couldn't match Eddie's chops (in fact, no amount of leaning in that Eddie did could fully justify how much he was selling for Jericho on them).

What he did instead was acutely target Eddie's orbital bone with pinpoint shots. That paid out throughout the match. When he wanted to hit the top rope frankensteiner, he'd shoot a palm strike up first. When he wanted to cut off Eddie in the corner, it would be with a jab to the eye. Of course, Eddie was Eddie and would shoot a poke right back at Jericho. Likewise, Jericho was Jericho and instead of leaning wholly into his strengths, he had to try to outsuplex Eddie with a number of Germans and one amazing Foley-like bump from Kingston off the apron to the floor. It all built to Eddie surviving the Walls, Jericho surviving the backfist, then almost winning by hitting a first codebreaker onto the orbital bone. Eddie bumped for a second codebreaker as hard anyone ever took it, but Jericho's ego and spite won out. He went for a Judas Effect to crush Eddie's face instead of going for the pin and Eddie was able to capitalize with two backfists and the world's most over the top stretch plum. Eddie's match is a hell of a thing, something that wears all of its influences on its sleeve but while making everything matter and everything hit emotionally, and Jericho jumped headlong into it better than anyone could have expected.

PAS:  Eddie just delivers every time in big matches. This was Kingston Road Eddie, which isn't always my favorite style of his, but it was a great version of it. As always Eddie elevates the match over a regular All Japan pastiche by his amazing selling, loved all of the stuff around the eye, and how vicious Jericho was. Potato shot Jericho isn't the way he normally works, but it is my favorite version of him, and he was matching Eddie with every blow, some of those suplexes were really sick, and good on old man Jericho for taking those head drops, and it made total sense for his old crickly neck to be the thing that did him in with the Stretch Plum.

CM Punk vs. MJF

MD: I've watched this one twice now and I appreciate the work and the effort certainly. I appreciate the thought put into it. Nothing is in there without a reason. Everything builds from something else, whether something from four decades ago, two decades ago, or two months ago. The announcers did a fairly heroic job in connecting the dots and laying everything out for the audience, on the understanding that the fans in the crowd would be the most hardcore possible and would know enough to begin with to follow along for most of it. And overall, I did think it worked.

There were things I outright loved. I loved the build early on to the chain being used as a punch-enhancing weapon. I'm a proponent of the gimmick immediately being present and having an indirect impact on what happens in a match but also being built up for an early payoff. That's true with a cage or barbed wire or a chain. Here it impacted movement and was used indirectly and the punch was teased a few times, but when it paid off, it was on MJF's hand and led to Punk gushing. That followed, by the way, MJF using the chain to block Punk's bulldog out of the corner, so it was the ultimate indirect use of the chain leading to the first meaningful direct use of it, which, in turn, led to the blood. By the way, the corner bulldog would come up again twice later, first Punk hitting it with the chain wrapped to avoid the indirect counter and then MJF trying it onto the thumbtacks, which was him, once again, showing his hubris and needing to vanquish Punk with his own move.

Once Punk's gusher started, we got what I thought was the most important moment of the match and the entire feud, when Max took the mic and reiterated that Punk abandoned and betrayed him. Even after the victory in Chicago, even after the ambush last week, even after bloodying him with the chain, Punk was in MJF's head, he had no catharsis, and he lashed out at the fans for not going along with him and seeing him as the hero of his own story. This is pro wrestling and one feud has to move on to the next and Wardlow was waiting in the wings, but that was the moment that signified that no matter how else everything played out in the match itself, the feud could end and Punk could win it. In many ways, it proved he already had.

Still, the match had to get there, and I think it moved along fairly well, through the crushing of the hand, through the submission attempts, through the wrapped knee opening MJF up, through Punk dragging Max around the ring (though that felt a little too collaborative to me), through Punk shattering his knee on the stairs, right up until the tombstone on the apron. That's when things veered off a bit. It was one too many clever spots in a match that could be allowed to be clever, but only up to the point where that ingenuity didn't get in the way of the visceral violence. To me, the tombstone and the thumbtacks that followed ended up as one too many spots from the head when they should have been laying it into each other down the stretch instead. Maybe it's okay because Max had already lost himself the war. Maybe it's okay because he'd already bled (though not nearly enough). Maybe it's okay because Wardlow had learned his worth and was about to show it to the world, but maybe okay isn't what the match was going for and maybe that final patch of being okay snatched away just a touch of greatness. Just a touch though, since there was still a lot of greatness to be found.

Bryan Danielson vs. Jon Moxley

PAS: Wrote this up for The Ringer  . Easily one my favorite matches of the year.

MD: Phil's covered this already and at length, but I'll lead with this: with Punk and MJF, I saw the strings. I appreciated the work and effort put into them. I liked most (but not all of them), but there was never a moment in the match that they weren't clear for everyone to see. It's 2022. That's ok. But.

There were definitely strings in Mox vs Danielson. There were parallels. Mox went for the big clothesline twice before hitting it. Danielson focused on the ribs for a time. They had parallels towards the end with the submissions and the specific flip over counters. They had Danielson and Moxley both use the hammer and anvil elbows and the repeated kicks to the face. There was thought put into this, but there were also absolutely zero gaps to be found.

There were strings because there had to be strings because not all of it could have just been intuitive, but you have to exhume them after the fact, a dry listed out post-mortem at the brains behind the heart. Because this match was all heart and all emotion and all intensity. Every second of it had both guys completely on, completely in the moment, driving forward. If Kingston vs Jericho were a series of moves and moments that all fit the character and all made sense and all hit hard, this was a twenty minute primal scream, airtight blood, and violence, and technique. Danielson, over the last few weeks in interviews, likened this level of intensity to being as close to god as he could possibly be.

Mox wrote an entire book that espouses his philosophy on wrestling and life and you can watch it play out on screen in his matches. With Mox, it was the early egging on, hands behind his back, the headbutts, the burst of energy when he finally hit the clothesline. With Danielson, it was that moment after Mox kicked out of the flying knee, when he just shook his head again and again and again, horrified that he didn't win but elated that there was more to come. Horror and elation sums this one up pretty well as a viewer too.

Darby Allin/Sammy Guevara/Sting vs. Andrade/Isiah Kassidy/Matt Hardy

PAS: Perfect palate cleansing match in between the Moxley vs. Danielson and title match. Just 13 minutes of car crash spots, including two of the crazier garbage spots I can remember (and shockingly neither included Darby, the rare match where he is out nutsed). The stage dive Spanish fly through two tables was so psycho that it really should have been saved for a different match where it could stand out, the level of difficulty on that spot was wild, one one wrong inch could have gone very wrong. Of course Sting diving off of a balcony through two tables was totally wild, the stacked tables meant he didn't have to fall as a far, but that is an insane thing for a 60 year old guy to do, what a treat this Sting run has been, he has just been perfect.