2023 Ongoing MOTY List: Danielson vs. Rush

 

2. Bryan Danielson vs. Rush AEW Dynamite 2/8/23

ER: Whatever happens in the future for AEW, whether they go on to have a TNA-length run - only with actual success - or something bad happens and they lose TNT/TBS and wind up on Freevee, I think it will always be impressive in hindsight that they were the ones who best captured the Dream Match phenomenon that founded ROH in 2002. The Dream Match is something that should have a limited shelf life - and surely does - but AEW has made it seem like a fresher concept than anything since those early super indy years. Their fans respond to Dream Matches, AEW themselves know how to present them as Dream Matches, and the growing number of actual cool first time/only time matches that have already happened there is a surprisingly resistant list. Danielson vs. Rush wasn't really a match I had considered as a Dream Match, even though I've championed each man since early on in each of their respective career's. But the second Danielson ran down to the ring and Rush started stomping him out in dazzling gold boots and black attire, this felt like a Dream Match that I've wanted to see for a decade.

It's great. It's excellent. It's a match I literally never thought once about happening, and the second it was happening I wanted to see nothing more. Some Danielson matches have the tendency to play like favorite matches from my own wrestling history. Whether or not that's because Danielson and I have similar tastes in wrestling or I'm just projecting my own favorites onto him, who's to say, but Rush walking away from Danielson's tope only to get hit past the ringpost with an even harder tope is like Danielson distinctly showing us he's recreating El Hijo del Santo vs. LA Park from Monterrey and I don't think that's accidental. Danielson taking an overhead belly to belly to the floor is like a classic NOAH big show main event spot, except Our Pillars were almost never dripping plasma the way Danielson was while flying off the apron and certainly never splashed said blood across the camera lens on the way down. Because you see, Danielson started bleeding a lot really early on after Rush kicked him into a chair and the guardrail. It's arguably not the most dickish thing Rush even did, as he also kicked a bunch at his kinesio tape and chopped away at Danielson's pectoral that's connected to the kinesio'd shoulder, and he knows how to look like a real ass while doing it.  

A fun thing about the best Dream Match wrestling matches is when they make you wonder things like "Is Danielson the hardest kicker Rush has ever faced?" Nakamura wasn't kicking him as hard as Danielson does here. Or, "Is Rush the hardest chopper Danielson has ever faced?" I sure haven't seen Danielson shying away from chops 10 minutes into a match the way he did here against Rush, although I guess I don't know how damaged his shoulder or body was in other matches. How about, "Is this the hardest Rush has ever gone after anyone?" Maybe a couple dozen LA Park matches are in contention here but at worst this is Rush "not holding back" to the level of his best Park fights. The headbutt exchange coming so many years - literal decades - after the earliest Danielson concussion worries plays almost surreally. I've gone through more than one phase of "I don't want to see Danielson wrestle anymore because I am worried about his health" that by this point I have ceased to worry and have just accepted him as a Randy the Ram who merely knows how to present himself as "smarter and more elevated than that". Thus, I am now unburdened, free to laugh like a sicko at the way Danielson collapses after Rush asks him to punch him in the neck, and Rush hits him back twice as hard. 

2023 MOTY MASTER LIST