AEW Five Fingers of Death 10/30 - 11/5 (BONUS)

Ring of Honor 11/2/23

Athena vs Mercedes Martinez

MD: One part of AEW's booking I am absolutely vibing with is what Athena's up to in Ring of Honor. A week ago this time, I thought I'd be writing about her vs Mercedes on Monday but then they snuck a few matches in on Collision and I'm not going to say no to Dustin. That said, I thought I'd add in a bonus this week. The only reason that Athena, given the generational run that she's on, isn't the fifth Finger is that I just think my reviews of her matches would be repetitive. It's me, not them. She's great. There are variations in opponents, even just down to how and when she works the magic forearm into the matches or how her opponents deal with the left handed handshake that she starts every match with, those things, but the general story would be the same: she's an amazing midpoint between character and athleticism. There's only so many ways I can say that, but I haven't said it for a while, so let me do it here.

I never knew quite what to make of Ember Moon. She had that athleticism. She was smooth, wrestled hard, had a cool finisher, but I just never had a sense of who she was supposed to be. I know exactly who 2023 Athena is. The character jumps off the screen with the sort of magnetic unpredictability and sheer verve for life and thirst for chaos of a Terry Funk or Negro Casas. She mentions porcelain hussies, but it's almost as if some ancient statue developed a hairline crack in transit and a primal force of nature was released upon the world. One of the most frustrating parts of trying to rate or list wrestlers is that so much is based on opportunity. On some level, talent should drive opportunity. On another, it's all driven by a fickle power imbalance. The character of Athena was forged by the pressure of that talent constrained and confined, potential energy massing, volcanic forces building, until she was unleashed unto an environment where talent was simply undeniable, modern ROH.

2023 Ring of Honor is wrestling for the sake of wrestling put together by people who love wrestling for people who love wrestling. You don't end up watching Ring of Honor by accident. You're not a casual fan if you watch Ring of Honor. Unconstrained by the pressures of quarterly ratings, ad breaks, and demographic trends, it has steady storytelling and gets to showcase a variety of different styles. On any given show you're likely to see a crazy four way spotfest, three women's matches, a couple of squashes, a pure rules match, and a bunch of enjoyable backstage interviews. It took a bit for things to come back into focus once the show left the studio, but the last month or two has been pretty solid. Yes, being taped after Collision means that it's a smaller crowd, but it's a crowd that packs down towards ringside and that really wants to be there. 

And it's the home to the best story in the company, Athena's mentoring of Billie Starkz. Billie, having just turned 19, has found herself under Athena's wing. She forced herself there through persistence and pluck, through being sharp and intelligent but holding none of the wisdom of age or experience (though she has more matches under her belt than quite a few members of the roster, even if I kind of wish she'd scale back on that early match German suplex she does, sorry). She's gifted and ambitious and carries with her a positivity that lets her see the best in every opportunity. She has a courage that is blind but in showing no fear, has yet to incur the wrath of Athena; by nature, a predator strikes out first against those that fear it.

I'll admit that I worried that the pairing might soften the dangerous unpredictability inherent in Athena's character. The skits are legitimately funny (and as an aside, Lexie is exceptional in them, showing more depth every week not just in those but also in of her backstage interviews). But then Terry Funk was funny. Roddy Piper was funny. They could balance it because you never knew when things would turn. You never knew when something benign might be seen as a slight. You never knew with jovial acceptance might turn into homicidal rage. Every time Billie saves an opponent from a post match belt-planting, every time she refuses to cheat, it becomes a game of Russian Roulette played by a woman young enough to think erroneously that she'll live forever. 

Meanwhile, in search of acceptance, Billie continues to edge more and more over lines that she wouldn't have imagined crossing just a few months before. And it makes sense. She's gifted. She achieved great success early on. She's the valedictorian thrust into a world of adults, the kid who stumbles into a grad school class proclaiming that she got a 5 on the AP Exam. And why wouldn't she want to learn from the pinnacle, from the one of the most dominant ROH champions ever? So she learns lessons that change her just a little, one after the next. She becomes better and stronger, enduring gaslighting and bullying, not seeing that success will make her not just an eventual threat to Athena, but maybe even a monster herself. We're all just watching and waiting, teased and tempted by the hope that everything might turn out okay but secretly yearning for the railroad crash ahead down the tunnel. We're wrestling fans. It's what we do.

And then there's Mercedes Martinez, finally winning a belt that didn't even exist when she was making her mark. I saw Mercedes wrestle Sumie Sakai back in NECW in 2002. That's a foundational indy wrestling memory for me. In some ways, she's the perfect opponent for Athena; absolute confidence in the ring, the same sort of reactive presence in the moment, a shared history between them, every bit of offense looking credible and nasty. The run that Athena's on now? That should have been Mercedes' run, except for the opportunity that exists now didn't exist then. Their first ROH match was Athena's coronation, Mercedes a victim of the Texas location as much as anything else. For this one she had the homestate advantage, down to her sister being in the crowd. She had the momentum, Billie having eaten a fall in a tag match to create the first blemish on Athena's ROH record to set this up. 

The match itself went around fifteen, hard-hitting with an epic feel despite not wearing out its welcome. You can have a back and forth title match but it needs a few things to ensure coherence: competiveness, sharp and meaningful transitions, selling that creates consequence. I'll talk about the first two within the confines of the match but let me spend a moment with the last one; it's important because it's easier to build a narrative around a long stretch of control, or using shine/heat/comeback as a structure, and a match like this doesn't lean on those. When the match goes back and forth, it becomes all the more important to show that each move, even if chunked into smaller bits or decentralized throughout the match, still somehow matters. Selling allows that to happen. 

This nailed all three. The transitions were great. Athena turned the handshake into an opportunity for the magic forearm. Mercedes took over on the outside when Athena ripped up her sister's sign. Athena came back by landing on her feet out of a spider German. Mercedes used Diamante as a distraction multiple times, both to set up transitions and to protect big bombs that were going to be used as false finishes down the stretch. Athena came back by turning the chair-assisted double stomp attempt on the floor into a gnarly superplex off the guardrail. And then they sold, milking the 20 count on the outside. When they came back in throwing fists and forearms and kicks, there was a deliberate staggering after each one. This exchange wasn't just to show fighting spirit but to create a sense of violence manifesting the idea that they were trying to hurt one another and get an advantage. They weren't trying to prove their toughness; they were trying to prove that their forearm could go through the other wrestler's face. 

All of that built to a finishing stretch which took full advantage of the large arsenal of each wrestler. Even though finishers were kicked out of either due to resolve or distraction (or when it came to blocking the Brass City Sleeper, sharp teeth), there was always a bit of escalation they were leaving in their deep, deep pockets that avoided the need for repetition. The finish itself weaved everything back to the overarching story. Billie redeemed herself and got recognition and praise (even if not the specific love she sought). In doing so she crossed yet another line, the sharpest and reddest one yet. What she wants may be what she needs to be great (as opposed to losing matches on Rampage as Athena noted), but in obtaining it, will Billie Starkz realize that she's not Space Jesus but instead Icarus, flying far too close to the burning sun that is the Fallen Goddess? ROH TV allows for a steady deliberate pace. Given how well the slow drip of development is going and that they're just starting to milk this other side of Athena's compelling tweener persona (a heel so committed to the act and so undeniable that the crowd gets behind her even though she hasn't changed a single thing about herself), there's still so much meat on the bone. Supercard of Honor feels like a better destination than Final Battle so long as they can find a compelling enough match for Athena next month. Given the dubious way she lost, I wouldn't mind them going back to Mercedes, just with a literal chain instead of a figurative one between them.

I wrote about this a bit when talking about MJF and the Righteous but I feel like we got the balance all wrong as a community over the decades. Workrate became our false idol and we lost sight of the point. Character and narrative are the starting points; they're the "need to have"s. Workrate, athleticism, those are the nice to haves. Once you have the foundation, you can build upon it. The very best wrestlers, the greatest wrestlers, the top of the top, are the ones who tap into both sides of the balance, that grip hearts and minds with how deeply they submerge themselves into their personas and the stories that they're telling, and then can execute those stories with precision and intensity enough to create the most thrilling suspension of disbelief imaginable. If you have just one side of it, you have something seamless but potentially lifeless. With just the other, you're left with excitement that's hollow and quickly forgotten. With Athena, you get that perfect blend of alchemy, the component elements coming together to create something more than the sum of their parts, that ideal mix that makes professional wrestling unique and compelling.