AEW Five Fingers of Death 1/29 - 2/4

AEW Collision 2/3/24

Eddie Kingston vs. Bryan Keith

MD: I'm pretty sure I first encountered Keith back in '21 with the Kevin Ku match. I'm almost certain that was DEAN's doing, because he, in his retirement, was watching literally everything there was to watch and he'd force certain things everyone's way and who were we to say no? That was an excess-laden spectacle where they simply wouldn't bend or break. They kept coming at one another, escalating the violence more and more. I've not heard enough interviews with him to fully understand his influences, but between noting how important his recent (first) tour of Japan was personally and the fact that his finisher is the Emerald Tiger Driver, well, you get some sense of it, right?

It's a testament to both men that this didn't feel performative or like a pale shadow. Instead, these were two fully fleshed out characters (people even; let's go with people, characters only in the narrative sense), who were looking for any advantage they could get in the moment. It was organic and natural and uncooperative in the best of ways. You could see it right from the opening; Keith slapped Eddie even though no one had really been able to break him lately. He blocked the Uraken, ran right through a chop. He wasn't trying to break Eddie, not really, just throw him enough that he wouldn't be able to tell which way he'd come at him next. Keith was strong and tough enough to stand with Eddie, but he couldn't take him down that way. He didn't have to. He just had to last long enough to see an opening, going low with a dropkick to open Eddie's face up for a kick. He'd spend the whole match enduring punishment to find that opportune moment; that was Kingston's own trick. 

In some ways, it was like Eddie was facing a version of himself from a year or two ago, which is what made this so compelling. That and the selling. Yes, there was plenty of fighting spirit to go around. Yes they pushed through strike exchanges and throws. Yes, Eddie kicked out of the Emerald Tiger Driver even, and that was with a couple of minutes left to go in the match (thankfully, Keith had Diamond Dust in his back pocket so there was still a potential point of escalation left for him). But they were registering each and every shot. When Keith absorbed three to hit one (the only way he was going to hit that one), you could see the cost on his face and in his movement. In this regard, being slightly distanced from that true "purity" of the source material allowed them to take a more hybrid approach and the match resonated more for it.

Bryan Danielson vs. Hechicero

MD: The height of me getting into lucha was 2014. And when I say lucha, yes I primarily mean CMLL and certain indies. That's when I started writing on the blog. That's when I was writing up three matches a week to try to make sense of it all. I was watching while exercising and while laying on the floor of a toddler who wouldn't go to sleep if I wasn't there, and I was sneaking the live streams on the laptop while the TV was going before bed like the stereotypical kid slipping a magazine into his textbook at school. There was a wealth of riches: RUSH coming into his own and dragging Sombra and Mascara with him; Casas and Shocker standing tall as beloved rudos; Virus defending the Lightweight title; Porky comedy matches; Toro Bill and Rey Apocalipsis undercard matches on Monday nights, and so on and so forth. But there was the 2014 Busca too, with such a class, including Cavernario, Cachorro, Dragon Lee. And yes, Hechicero. It was always a little weird as they did mix young guys with guys who had been wrestling for over a decade, but that's CMLL for you. In some ways it felt like Danielson or Low Ki in the original NXT, guys that you never expected to make it in the mainstream filling out a side full of guys the company wanted to support.

Coming out of that, when everyone was, probably rightfully, focused on Dragon Lee vs Kamaitachi, I was just glad Hechicero was still drinking his cup of coffee and getting his payday. It already took a certain sort of obstinance to follow CMLL in the first place, but to follow it and then focus on a guy who they'd probably never push was just setting yourself up for headache if maybe not heartache. And he's made a good career of it, a nice reliable hand with the right amount of balance and flourish and crowd interaction that you could put with guys with names like Mephisto and Luciferno and Ephesto in a post Averno world, someone who can base for midcarders and show a tenth of what he can actually do but still be effective nonetheless. He was even a pandemic champion with a title that never means as much as it should which I think he got to defend in over a year's time maybe twice? I'll admit that I haven't followed as closely over the last few years. If you read the blog, you see what I'm watching and I'm pretty full up. In a world where I didn't get so into AEW in 2021, I probably would have been following along more with the CMLL resurgence of the last few years, but it sure got pretty depressing in the few years before that. I'm glad that people are enjoying it now. I'm always going to have a soft spot for it.

Here's where I'm heading: being a Hechicero fan, while a no brainer for some, was a niche of a niche. He was a guy who could show you something amazing on the indies but that would rarely get to do it on a bigger stage. You were glad for his steady paycheck and the ability to see him a bit more easily or more frequently but sad that he wasn't out there being an absolute artist on a weekly basis. There are dream matches we all have in our head. Obviously for years it was Blue Panther vs Danielson. There are matches that are possible and matches that are maybe probable and matches that are just so out there and so outlandish that you couldn't even imagine them. Extrapolating back to 2014, when you could watch a handful of Hechicero matches against Caifan or into 2015 when you could see him against Navarro or Black Terry thanks to Black Terry, Jr., and when Danielson was absolutely on top of the world and main eventing Mania, it was a wild fever dream. Even if Danielson got free and ended up in the wild, even if he ended up at Arena Mexico, there's no way they'd book him against Hechicero. Most likely we'd get the Volador match which would look like a lot of the other Volador matches we've seen. Big spots, quick action, rote exchanges, good execution, something you could so easily imagine in your head that you'd never actually have to watch it. 

It's hard to criticize Bryan Danielson. When you make the "greatest wrestler ever" argument, he's got such an amazing case that it's hard to chip away at him. One of the angles to potentially try, however, is that sometimes he let's his opponent define too much of the match without putting his own stamp on it. That doesn't mean that he gives his opponent too much of the offense, more that he seems to let his opponent shine in a way that doesn't feel like the merging of two worlds to create something more special than either world could be on its own. On some level, for instance, I though the Bandido match didn't take enough advantage of what it might look like if someone with Bandido's unique style and skillset met someone with the mythos and presence of Bryan Danielson. You really got to see what Bandido could do but a lot of Danielson's contribution in interacting with lucha spots came off as predictable in their own way, of Danielson playing in a different pond but in the most predictable ways. The alchemy isn't there necessarily. It doesn't make for a bad match by any means, but it doesn't raise to the level of uniqueness or specialness that you'd want someone who is potentially the greatest wrestler ever to distill from this sort of a once-in-a-lifetime pairing. Again, that's the problem with thinking critically about Danielson. Opportunity was left on the table. You have to hold him to almost impossible (Bockwinkel-ian) standards because of the discourse around him. 

That's part of what made the Hechicero match so special. The alchemy was there (maybe not surprising given that a very self-aware alchemist was facing Danielson). What made this work, more than anything else, was that Danielson drove so much of it. That's not to say he was in control offense-wise . He wasn't, but he was always active, always creating motion, always pushing things further with what makes him come off as formidable. He wasn't a cipher in this match. He was every bit his legendary self. And he had Hechicero counter him time after time after time. If he had given anything less than his best and if he didn't react with such abject desperation, this wouldn't have mattered nearly as much. Instead, he used up all of his pro wrestling capital to get the skill of Hechicero over. (I always point back to Demolition Ax begging off from Bret Hart getting a hot tag at Summerslam 88 when heel Demolition hadn't backed down from anyone in over a year as a great example of this; Hart was smaller but needed to be established as a babyface threat and by backpeddling for the first time in a year, Eadie made him come off as a huge threat in the eyes of the fans. There are plenty of examples though).

It started simple and Danielson was able to hang. The fans chanted lucha libre. They didn't fully know what they were getting into. Hechicero escalated into more advanced but still familiar exchanges, putting little twists on them, like rolling with the tapitia instead of just holding it as Danielson did. He had simple answers for Danielson's complex problems. As they went down into the stretch, starting with Hechicero catching Danielson out of the diving headbutt attempt, Hechicero turned the complexity up to max. Suddenly the fans and Danielson both were left with gaping jaws as limbs were contorted in ways that defied the laws of human anatomy. The match built to this. It didn't lead with it. That's what made the dramatic moment of Danielson reaching his wits' end so effective. He was able to sneak a win that didn't at all feel like one and live to fight another day but the emotional damage that he suffered in being unable to lean into his traditional strength along the way did so much to get Hechicero over. 

In the reactions, it was great to see so many people note that the match expanded their idea of what lucha libre can be. I hope at least subconsciously they recognize the emotion at play and don't just substitute the idea of tricked-out matwork for tricked-out highspots in their mind. We're not quite there to the point where everyone realizes the true wonder and joy of lucha libre can really and truly be in the momentum shifts and the emotion underlying the pairings, and that all of the spots and the contortions and the dives are just means to the emotional end. It'll take undoing two and a half decades of conditioning for that, but the more they see a CMLL presence, the more hope I have that they'll get there. That's saying quite a bit actually considering this encounter was for years absolutely beyond my wildest hope.