AEW Five Fingers of Death 3/11 - 3/17

AEW Dynamite 3/13/24

Darby Allin vs Jay White

MD: Obviously now, a few days after the match we're well aware of the injury that happened very early when Darby hit a dive and hurt his foot. Definitely a strange occurence considering that there was a post match ankle injury angle to write him off. I'm all for guys being written off but it was maybe a little weird considering he was climbing Everest. It should give White plenty of heat doing a "I Broke Darby's Foot" or, alternatively "I Shattered Darby's Dreams" deal. Given the weighty promo Darby made they've been walking a fine line where they admit that it was on the dive but also point out the post match chair shattering. This is rare ground; it's not every day someone gets hurt in the same place that they were supposed to get hurt to be written off screen and put heat on the heels, while also substituting the reason why they were written off for the actual injury. And it's not every day that the reason they were originally written off is due to climbing a dangerous mountain. Wrestling is at its most serene when it's at its most honestly bizarre sometimes, I guess?

Originally, I was going to write about consequence, focusing on the injured/lacerated back and how great a job they did making what happened to Darby against the Bucks resonate. That was present right from the get go. Darby, of course, has a history with headlock takeovers, but the one that White hit him with at the start was made to seem particularly devastating. This is a good thing. If wrestling is trying to create a suspension of disbelief over time, then having consequences last after one match and into the other is not just something to aim and strive for, but also actively helpful in situations like this where you have people of similar hierarchy and want to realistically put one over the other while still protecting the loser. It was presented as valiant (and crazy) that Darby was out there at all. He was bandaged. Every slam or bump or crash into the corner or prone press to the mat for a pin attempt was presented as painful. We'd seen the blood. We see the bandages. We could imagine the pain. Wrestling getting us to imagine pain is a great way to help us to suspend disbelief and more thoroughly immerse ourselves in what we're watching.

What's astounding here is how thoroughly they leaned into it even after the foot injury. Immediately thereafter, Darby hobbled across the ring to hit the tope. He followed it up by eating the half and half into the chair. I think back to Danielson/Okada one and how they adapted with the injury. Here, they didn't, and that felt like the right move since they were still selling the weight of a spot-of-the-year type crash through glass. The overarching story was that Darby was already a step slow. It made sense that as the match went on, he might be two steps slow. One injury creates the possibility of another. Vulnerability begets vulnerability. This is all basic pro wrestling storytelling; it can be done more or less gracefully, but early work on one body part so often opens things up to shift to what the wrestler really wants to work on. It's all a matter of whether it is coherent and compelling. This wasn't quite that as White never targeted the foot/ankle, but after comeback attempts and cutoffs and multiple times dodging the Blade Runner, Darby took too long to hit the coffin drop and then missed entirely when he tried to course correct once White rolled to the apron. That was basically the finish, as Darby valiantly beat the count only to get hit by the Blade Runner. I don't necessarily know if I have a unified thesis here other than the notion that Darby's one of the best in the world at portraying that most important element of pro wrestling, consequence, and here it was multiplied multifold considering the bump through the glass preceding the match, the weight of Everest over their heads, the legitimate injury early on, and the injury angle post match. In that regard, it was an unquestionable counterbalance to...

Eddie Kingston/PENTA/PAC vs Young Bucks/Kazuchika Okada

MD: Hey, did you guys see the PENTA vs Action Andretti match from Rampage a week or two ago? It was like there was a metal plate in Andretti's head and a giant magnet in PENTA's boot. He just kept zooming headlong into superkicks. It was the funniest match I've seen in a while. It's amazing when you think about it, that someone trained their body to be strong and fast and supple enough to twist and fly and contort all to the end of crashing into someone else's foot seven times in one match. Pro wrestling is the wackiest thing, really.

AEW Collision 3/16/24

Bryan Danielson vs Katsuyori Shibata

MD: The biggest red flag in this match is the strike exchange. It's at the end and we're at the beginning, so let's leave it ahead of us for now. There's a sort of comforting, lazy casualness to putting these dream matches on Saturday nights on free TV. They're all X amount of years after they should be (even, arguably, the Hechicero match! We were watching him fight Black Terry in 2014!). The stakes are low. Ultimately, there's a level of pride, the fear that this won't be enough, the worry of injury. On the other side of the scale is perspective; we understand that it's a near-miracle that we're getting these matches at all. And they continue to be interspersed in Danielson's 2024 journey, one where he is finding peace with himself and the path before him.

This match could never give us everything we hoped for. By its very nature, it made us hope for too much. What it did give us, however, was wonderful parallels and, truthfully, so, so much of what we were looking for. It certainly gave us what we needed and only a little that we likely didn't. Considering we were dreading shoot headbutts between the two, the match ended up not just a miracle and a joy but also an absolute relief.

They started out with a feeling out process and some matwork that was tight and gritty and based around opportunities and openings while still feeling tricked out. It felt like it was bordering on shoot style at times, not quite UWF but more UWF in 86 NJPW with that firm pro wrestling patina. Everything felt earned and it was all interesting. They played into the parallels (first on commentary mentioning the head injuries and then in the match itself) with both wrestlers getting bow and arrows.Danielson went to strikes first but that just let Shibata play stoic in the corner. More often than not, it's Danielson going into that well, not his opponent, so this let him play up against a different sort of paragon. Danielson realized he wasn't going to win in a standup at this stage of the match and went to the leg. That opened up the arm and other holds, including him stomping on the elbow. Shibata was able to get him out and hit a PK on the apron though, sending things to the break.

During the break, Shibata pressed the advantage on the floor, but Danielson trapped him in a chair and hit him with a running dropkick. He wasn't able to press it back in the ring, because Shibata, trapped in the corner, turned it around and started throwing these killer pokey Tenryu-esque punches. In his control, he was able to dropkick Danielson in the corner and step on his elbow. Parallels abound.

They went into a false finishing stretch there. Shibata wins matches with the sleeper into the PK and he tried the sleeper here. Danielson fought out and they traded ankle locks, with Danielson turning it into his ankle-hooked German, followed by a Shibata STO. This really felt like a finishing stretch, with both wrestlers down, Shibata recovering for the death valley driver, and Danielson reversing the ripcord forearm attempt into the Busaiku Knee and the LeBell Lock.

It doesn't work though. You see false finishes, but you rarely see a false finishing stretch that feels so fully formed. AEW house style often has a shine/heat/a finisher teased right before they go to the commercial break, but this went further than that. In doing so, it made the strike exchange that was to come more palatable to me. Yes, they'd ultimately be asking to get hit, but it was after they brought the match to a logical conclusion and it simply wouldn't end. Yes, I say this fully understanding why strike exchanges like this happen, the cultural significance, how they played out in the 2010s. I still don't love them. I get that fans want them. I get that they're expected. Later in the show, during the Keith/O'Riley and Claudio/Archer matches, they were even more egregious because this one felt like it was a special moment and it ended up being not even a once-in-the-night (or twice-in-the-night moment; guys were asking their opponent to hit them all night!).

But I won't punish this match for what came later. Here, at least, it did feel special, with Shibata sitting cross-legged first, with the two trading boots after he rolled to his feet, with Danielson dropping down and showing that they were equals, with both cross-legged and firing away. There is no rule of wrestling so universal that there isn't some situation where it makes sense to break it. For strike exchanges where people just ask for it, this was probably it. Danielson won it (when he couldn't earlier) and to me, it was because he had already hit the knee once. That's when they went into the real finish, with Danielson failing on his second knee, Shibata locking the Octopus, and the two going into roll ups. Maybe it was my own expectations. With these two, I was expecting that extra level of excess and we only got the normal level of it, placed at the right point in the right match to make it resonate. If they had worked the whole match that way, it would have frustrated me, but a couple of minutes of the ultimate parallel, the willing strike exchange, in a match built upon the notion of two so equally matched mirror-image wrestlers, well, what can I say? It worked for me.