AEW Five Fingers of Death 2/26 - 3/3

AEW Dynamite 2/28/24

FTR/Eddie Kingston vs. Bryan Danielson/Claudio Castagnoli/Jon Moxley

MD: If this wasn't on a PPV week, I'd give it more words. Let me go quickly. Structurally, it had to cover a lot of ground. Two commercial breaks. Two feuds. Double heat. Guys who never teamed together. A rare chance to do Danielson vs FTR. Needing to make the faces look strong even though you were putting over the heels. A lot of ground to cover. There was a wonkiness to the timing of the commercials too. They teased Danielson vs Kingston before having Bryan heel it up and avoid contact. A brief exchange or two lately and they were brawling on the floor to lead into the first break. The match probably would have been stronger with clearer pairings and exchanges but you have to factor in the masters the match was trying to serve. At least I think you do. Maybe that's why I don't do star ratings. 

First heat was on Cash and the second on Dax. The Cash/Moxley interactions were molten lava. There are a few guys in the company (RUSH) that Mox just syncs with perfectly and while you might not think Cash would be in that category, you'd be wrong. There's something roiling underneath with him that he can channel in the best way. I'm very sympathetic to Dax. He wants everything to make sense. He wants everything to fit. He thinks about consequences. He strings together complex narratives. I blame myself for this for listening to the podcast and him breaking down his own matches, but I do occasionally see those strings in ways I might not have otherwise. On the one hand, it's fascinating. On the other, it takes me out of the match a little. I don't have that problem with Cash. Anyway, this built and built until it was Danielson and Kingston in the ring finally, which is how you want a match like this to go. We'll probably forget about this one in a few months but it worked very well in the moment.

AEW Revolution 3/3/24

Bryan Danielson vs. Eddie Kingston

MD: I don't think we're going to forget about this one. That said, AEW puts out so many great matches on an almost weekly (if not weekly basis), and we have big stops ahead of us for both Danielson and Kingston in the months to come, I wanted to memorialize it. More than not forgetting it, I barely have to write anything. The match spoke for itself. Excalibur has been on the top of his game with these matches, hitting the high points during the matches themselves, and if you don't get it there, there's always the Danielson post-match interview where he lays it all out after Eddie leaves. But again, life moves quickly, so best to at least try to do this justice.

Much of 2023 was about Eddie Kingston's journey to become his best self. As this year goes on, he'll continue to serve as a whetstone to sharpen those around him and eventually, at some point, will have to deal with cracks in his own armor for even the best Eddie Kingston is still Eddie Kingston. For now, though, he's a constant, a paragon, consistent, stalwart. Danielson, on the other hand, is coming to grips with his own mortality the fact that his life as a full-time wrestler is winding down. You can draw a direct line through Danielson's last few big matches. He lost to Kingston in the finals of the Blue League bracket of the Continental Classic; he sought to break Eddie, was sure he could break Eddie. He could not. He defeated Hechicero, yes, but only after getting stretched and humiliated for the entirely of the match. Therefore, when he came out against Sabre, Jr., he wasn't his usual reactive, passive, opportunistic self. Instead he was aggressive, taking much of the match, even in a losing effort (one where, maybe, he had psyched himself out at the very end). I think he needed that performance against Sabre to reconfirm to himself just how good he was. This isn't a straight line. He came out weaker after the win against Hechicero and stronger after the loss to Sabre. It put him in a headspace where he could wrestle the match he wanted to wrestle against Kingston though, one where he was no longer going to try to break him mentally but to lay in wait for the right opportunity and dismantle him physically instead.

The problem for Danielson, however, is that Eddie Kingston is just a special sort of wrestler. Even though Danielson's plan played out perfectly, the benefit was limited and the struggle incessant. Danielson wrestled defensively. Usually it's more of a subtle thing, an almost Fujiwaran element to how he wrestles. Here, it was overt. His hands kept popping up to try to snatch a limb off of a Kingston strike. The problem was that Eddie was just too good at striking. It took Danielson goading him on the apron, both of them slightly off balance, to force a mistake; Eddie chopped the post and Danielson would have a wedge to pry his guard open for the rest of the match. With almost any other wrestler or even any other version of Kingston, this would be enough for Danielson to achieve his goal. It would be an academic dissection of a body part over the span of minutes. This version of Kingston, however, was just too much. It gave Danielson an edge (Kingston's shots weren't hitting as hard and he had to pause to recover in certain moments) but while it created an imbalance, Eddie was able to wrestle or tough his way out of any attempt to deepen the damage. 

Danielson is endlessly adaptable, though, and he moved with fluidity from one opportunity to another. It meant that he controlled much of the match, and when Eddie came back, it even meant that he did everything right in cutting him off, in opening him up, in creating exactly what he needed, like when he kicked the hand away so that he could hit his first knee. It was just that Eddie, on this night, in this moment, was too good. For much of the duration, Danielson wrestled a perfect match. For Bryan Danielson, of all people, to wrestle a perfect match, his perfect match, and to not be able to keep someone down? Of course it drove him to distraction. Eddie had been lured into a mistake early. Danielson, disgruntled, allowed himself to make one late, getting into a striking contest with Eddie. Even one handed, the jabs and out of nowhere shots that Kingston was able to throw were heartstopping. They weren't enough to put away Danielson though. This was almost a case where both wrestlers were simply too good, a battle of attrition, trench warfare where they fought to gain inches on a map. Danielson's mistake was just a bit too late in the match. Eddie just had a bit more down the stretch. On this night, he was just slightly, ever so slightly, the better man.

But Danielson wrestled a match without regret. He had wrestled his best match, not one where he got in his own way due to preconceived biases. This time around, Danielson did not defeat himself. He gave it his all and was beaten fair and square by the best wrestler in the world today, the AEW Continental Champion, the holder of the modern Triple Crown. And you could see it after the match, as Danielson came to grips with it, and in the post-match promo after Eddie left. By losing against this wrestler after a match where he gave it everything he had, Danielson ended this small journey of his own, a journey that started and ended with Kingston, and with Okada, Hechicero, Nagata, Sabre, and Akiyama along the way. As he winds down the last half-year of his fully active career as a wrestler, he can move forward with a restored peace (and openness) of mind. And Eddie Kingston can walk forth, head held high, dragging his titles behind him, the respect of his peers warning in his beaten and battered heart.