AEW/CMLL Five Fingers of Death 4/1 - 4/7 Part 1: Danielson vs Panther

Bryan Danielson vs Blue Panther CMLL 4/5/24

MD: It's been a bit of an emotional few days over here. And there's something fitting during these few days and something that feels somehow forbidden about watching this match, of all matches, while Night 1 of Mania is going on. I don't say that to be daring or provocative or rebellious. I'm way too old for any of that. There was a time in my life that I said I was celebrating Humphrey Bogart's birthday on Christmas or going food shopping during the Superbowl and I was an annoying little shit and I'm too old for that. But at the end of the day, there is nothing more limiting than Vince McMahon's idea of what pro wrestling can and should be. I get that some of those binds are starting to fray and good. But this match? This was something so wildly different. It was an entirely different reality, a different religion, a different path, like every amazing possibility converging into one golden moment. 

We've seen Danielson vs Nagata and Danielson vs Akiyama over the last few months. We've seen Danielson vs Hechicero. We even saw the atomicos last week. None of that prepared us for this. This was the ultimate promise of any of those things fulfilled, what they might have been if they were actual dream matches instead of just cogs in the machine and stops on the road. But that said, were you to picture Danielson vs a 62 year old Blue Panther in Arena Mexico and were I to tell you that it would be as good as you could hope for in a scenario where no hair (or beard) was on the line (and there would be only one fall and no blood), well then this is still not what you would have expected. There is a really clear mental image we could all conjure of a dream match between the Danielson we've seen for the last few years, for the last ten years, for the last fifteen years, and even the very best that a re-masked Blue Panther might offer today. That wasn't this. 

Whatever this was, it was more wild and more spectacular than anything we would have imagined. Recently I've watched a decent amount of early career Danielson in ECCW in Canada. He was young, raw, but he played this charming over the top villain there, someone who pushed towards stereotypes, a cartoony pastiche of an American invader pro wrestler, someone loving every moment of that role. That's what he reminded me of here, just tempered by twenty+ years of growth and wisdom and experience. It felt like what Dragon Generalissimo Danielson might have felt like in Hustle. But then, at the same time, it was underpinned with him doing things that he almost never does. The matwork was full of stuff that reminded me more of French Catch (the headspin, the up and over into a cross armbreaker, for instance) than a lot of lucha. 

And then there was the milking of moments, the expressiveness. Oh, and Panther, maybe not the Blue Panther that you read about in the Observer in the 90s, but the Blue Panther who was always there and was overlooked because the sheet writers of the time valued so many of the wrong things that he did well anyway; I'm talking about the Blue Panther who was a stooging (often comedic) rudo in AAA trios matches, the one who contorted himself into an emotionally charged national hero against Love Machine, the one who had exhibition matches in England against Hijo del Santo in the early 00s, the one who as an old man (but not this old), was able to ham it up with Negro Casas like they were Matthau and Lemmon. This guy understands the power of building to a moment. Obviously so does Danielson. I've just never seen Danielson get the opportunity in front of a crowd like this to have a match where he could build to EVERY moment. He was tapping into something elemental, something primal, the most theatrical pro wrestling imaginable. And all the while, every single thing that he was building to felt monumental: each struggle to sit up out of a hold, every celebration after he managed to do so. From awe to cackling glee to begrudging respect to the absolute fury of underhanded, desperate stomps, he was alive, able to channel it all while never letting it seem fabricated or ridiculous. It felt true and real and vibrant and visceral. When he reversed the Nudo into a LeBell Lock attempt, it didn't feel like a spot; it felt like the culmination of a journey, a scenario that he had his entire life to prepare for. Meanwhile, Panther was riding the same sort of wave. When he struggled to get up around the twenty minute mark, showing age and fatigue, visibly sucking air, it was absolutely everything when he was, nonetheless, able to catch Danielson's foot and take him down, just like it was everything when Danielson jammed the hold and responded with those aforementioned vile stomps.

What a match. What an impossible, unlikely dream. What a way to make that dream reality through creativity and imagination and daring. Danielson could have played it safe. He could have played the hits, leaned into nostalgia. Instead he saw this as an opportunity not to play pretend, but instead to tap into all of the possibilities that Arena Mexico offered; he stretched himself in new directions and pulled a very willing, very aware, fully understanding Panther, not to mention a rowdy, appreciative crowd, along for the ride. And what makes it more amazing is that this is the same Bryan Danielson who just came off the Eddie Kingston match, the same Danielson who just had an outstanding babyface performance in the Righteous/Archer trios. Within the span of the month he was able to be all of these things in all of these places, serve all these purposes, play all of these roles. What a week to love professional wrestling. What a week to be alive.