AEW Five Fingers of Death 11/27 - 12/3

AEW Collision 12/2/23

Bryan Danielson vs. Eddie Kingston

MD: As reviewers, critics even, it's not our job to find absolute truth. There are always going to be things we'll never know when it comes to input. This is pro wrestling, a carny, manipulative, secretive brotherhood, right? And that's ok. We're not going for absolute truth; we're going for relative truth. We're putting this match in context of its peers and of every other match we've ever come across. We're going for personal truth. We're trying to express what the match meant to us, what sensation it created. This is one place we're at odds with Dave, who tends to look at only the moment and for the moment. We're not looking for absolute truth but that doesn't mean there aren't patterns over time, even since the beginning of time, and that doesn't mean there aren't universal truths. We're not even looking to get as close to perfect or true as possible, but every truth we can discern or reasonably and consistently contrive can create a wedge that we can use to force understanding and meaning. It's a messy and dirty business where we are the blind men touching the elephant, but that doesn't make the exercise futile. That's art for you, right?

Any bits of input that we do come up with, or any lens that we are given to help see things through, is overall helpful. Regal's podcast, much like his AEW run, now feels like a fever dream, but it happened. It was quirky and meandering and often repetitive, but occasionally you'd get bits of real wisdom and which, as someone who writes about this stuff, can help to interpret it. Everything helps. In this case, he explained his idea of selling, which wasn't necessarily selling at all, but "reacting," the notion that if he is well enough trained and experienced and his opponent is the same, they can just go out there and naturally react to one another and create a match.

After Kingston vs. Danielson, I saw a lot of comments about how this was the twilight of an era and that we wouldn't see the likes of these two again. I also saw people going so far as to break down the strategy of the match, like I might do, and I just don't think there's the need here. This was entirely about two fully formed, three-dimensional, entirely fleshed out entities or characters or human beings reacting to one another. You can look at any single exchange, simple or complicated, from the initial feeling out kicks (and goading move to the ropes) by Danielson to Eddie's huge chop to Danielson's double leg, all the way to the more complex bits of the finishing stretch like Danielson going for the knee but slowed down by having to adjust his eyepatch or Kingston being unable to finish his escalating end sequence by being unable to hit the power bomb and having to go for the Uraken again.

At every single one of those moments, you can see the emotion driving it in the faces of the wrestlers. It's five hundred individual decisions, shaped by the entirety of their lives, by how they feel about one another, by how they feel in this moment, by their position in the tournament, by what they have to lose and what they have to gain. Every single decision they make in the ring is shaped by Danielson coming off of two injuries and living on borrowed time for his career due to the promise to his child and in a tournament they made for him and by Kingston who had reached his goal and now had put his belts on the line in order to create something beautiful that should have forever been beyond his reach only to now be in a hole and increasingly desperate. Every decision was driven by all of that, and so much more, including Danielson's feelings about Kingston and his comments and Kingston's feelings about Danielson, which were strong but not as strong as his feelings about Claudio or Punk or Hero, but now, coming out of this match, will be so much more so. And of course, it all evolved throughout the match by what was happening in the match itself.

Here's the cool thing for me. I think that every single member of the roster in AEW should study this, and guys on the cusp, like Swerve, or guys in a true moment of transition in their lives, like Copeland, should study it more than anyone else, despite their experience and success. I think that, and I study it too, but I have no idea how they do it. You can understand how someone tucks their head in on a spot or how they open themselves up to a reversal in a shootstyle hold. But channeling all that you are into a match like this? It's the middle ground between method acting, a complicated dance routine, and pure audience driven improv. It's a contradiction by definition. How do they tap into so much humanity, have it feel so honest and earnest, and still have it be coherent and compelling and meaningful? One some level, it's implicit logic, the notion that if these characters are real and they make the decision they would make in the moment at any moment, then a compelling story would naturally present itself. But you can just read that and see how flimsy it is. It's not plotting or planning. It's not performing or emotion. It's not dancing and reacting. It's magic. And I can't wait for the next one and there better be a next one.

Ring of Honor 10/30/23

Eddie Kingston vs. Lee Johnson

MD: This was taped before both of Kingston's tournament matches, if I'm not mistaken, and it was a fun proving ground match with "ace" Kingston against an up and comer. We got those same sort of reactions out of Eddie for the initial handshake, when Johnson got an armdrag or a dropkick out of nowhere, when he got a two-count on him deep in the match, in the most match handshake when Johnson kind of came in for a hug. You could see it on Eddie's face and hear it in his silent voice. "Yeah, ok, sure, we're doing this I guess."

What I liked about it most of all, however, was the way that he carried his mass and controlled the center of the ring. Johnson had to come to him. Sometimes it worked like with that dropkick or the jumping DDT. A lot of times, he ran right into a belly to belly or into the half and half that set up the Uraken at the end. It's what Jose Lothario did. It's what Lawler often did, holding court in the center of the ring like a force of nature. Eddie, in a lot of these proving ground matches, is bigger than his opponent, both in stature and in star-power and it allows him to control the match in an interesting way.