AEW Five Fingers of Death 9/2 - 9/8 Part 2

MD: This was a jarring enough experience that Tim Livingston is tagging with me on it. His thoughts are below mine

AEW All Out 9/7/24

Bryan Danielson vs Jack Perry

MD: This is not necessarily the match I would have booked, but it was the match that we had. And this match had to carry weight. It had to carry more weight than matches I would have probably preferred. It did so admirably, valiantly even. This match had to lower the guard of nine thousand people in an arena and tens of thousands of people at home. It had to provide them with something meaningful, believable, understandable, acceptable, leaving them absolutely and completely unprepared for what was to come. It had to be conventional, predictable. Maybe it even had to carry its own flaws proudly, like a badge of honor. It had to manage this while following an emotional war in MJF vs Garcia, multiple spotfests that shot for the stars, and a physical war in Statlander vs Willow, plus Mone vs Shida which may or may not have hit as intended. It had to precede the angle, yes, but also the sickening spectacle of Hangman vs Swerve. It had to create a mood of complacency right in the middle of all of this.

Let's break down what this match seemed to be and what people's expectations for it were. On paper, looking at just the straight text, the TNT champion, much like the International Champion earlier this year, was challenging for the AEW World Title. Danielson had more or less made an open challenge. Perry was more than ready for it. I don't think anyone thought that Perry was going to beat Danielson, however. The subtext, outside of kayfabe, as it was, is that this was not the main event. Swerve vs Hangman was main eventing. It was a way to help keep Danielson active, to potentially give Perry some rub, maybe even to prove if he could hang on this level. People suspect that part of Perry's push was due to the reaction he got for the NJPW Strong show in Chicago. If this was somewhere else, maybe he wouldn't be in this spot. There was the usual chatter about Danielson being selfless and wanting to highlight new talent, etc., to help support the people that would be there after he was gone, and so on.

So that was the text and the subtext leading into this. Of course the context is that it had to set the stage for the angle at the end while taking advantage of the biggest thing the angle had going for it, the element of shock and surprise. Given all that, they treated it as if the subtext was really all that mattered. People knew that Perry didn't have a chance, so the match couldn't be just about Danielson beating him. The drama and the tension had to come from something else. Here it was Perry getting his comeuppance at Danielson's hands. Look at the first couple of minutes. The fans chanted for Perry right from the start but that wouldn't last long. He was quick to rush forth, to get an armdrag, to muss Danielson's hair, to be as insufferable as possible. He actually won the first exchanges but when Danielson rushed in to try to undo that, Perry escaped to the floor. In some ways this was even more insufferable than if Danielson had gotten an armdrag back before the escape because Perry wasn't even allowing him the chance at it. He took the tiniest of wins and scampered. Quickly Danielson DID catch him, reversing a hold and leaning hard, capturing him in La Tapatia so that he couldn't escape and going for what would become the central throughline of the match, the ultimate goal, to stomp Perry's f'n head in with the hands trapped. Here, though, in the first act, Perry slipped out beginning a dance of denial that would drive the proceedings moving forward.

Instead, Perry ate some feet to the face and Danielson's end-of-career flip dive but Perry rolled through the ring and caught him on the other side. The fans knew they had been denied the stomps, and now Perry would lean on Danielson in his irritating manner. That meant focusing on the neck, sure, but also false ten count punches in the corner, eyerake cutoffs, and plenty of posing and preening. Danielson came back with a huge belly to back off the top and got a modicum of revenge, but Perry snuck his way back into control with the Snaretrap, again being as irritating as possible with Cattle Mutilation and a couple of dragon suplexes. Danielson would even the odds with another huge suplex, this time a butterfly suplex off the apron, but they'd repeat it with another Snaretrap and escape to set up the ref bump. Maybe it was all a little bit long but everyone expected that to give Perry a chance to shine as much as possible. Normally a ref bump is about covering up a false finish. Here though, it was to deny the crowd Danielson stomping Perry's head in once again. Before he could the Bucks ran in. After they did their damage, Claudio and Yuta ran in, which made extra amounts of sense given they faced off earlier in the show. All of this set up a finishing stretch, full of Perry pushing Danielson too far and paying for it, and maybe one too many kickouts from Perry, which met well the suspected subtext of making him look strong in defeat Finally, the head did get kicked in, not once but twice, and to the tune of the Yes Chants, and Perry, all but asking for it, got wiped out by a third knee.

All of this met expectations perfectly. The match was set up in a way so that the crowd got satisfaction not through Danielson's victory but instead through Perry's comeuppance. It went long on a show that had already drowned people in sensation, but that worked well enough with the misdirecting post match angle: Killswitch attacking, Perry having a moment with him, Christian coming down to cash in. Moxley showing himself. It all would have been enough to push the ball a little further. In and out, nice and neat, Christian lurking in the wings, ready to prey upon Danielson's fatherhood as only he could. And how long could Moxley, up to whatever he was up to, coexist with Bryan? Both the text and the subtext were satisfied, closed off. Expectations, both positive and negative, were met. People sang along to the Final Countdown, were glad to see Moxley and Danielson reunited, were ready to move on to the gory finale of the main event. AEW is plagued by Excalibur (through no fault of his own), quickly transitioning to the next thing with a "But what about..." and there was no reason to think we weren't headed into a video package here. They burned down a house after all.

I don't think a shorter match would have worked quite as well. I don't think a different match could have worked quite as well. It had to be this, something people begrudged but accepted, something that was worked smartly and provided satisfaction in the moment even it was a little contentious just how much satisfaction that turned out to be, something that seemed to accomplish multiple things, that set up a perfectly conventional post-match that we were all too familiar with but were ultimately okay with.

I can't imagine anything that could have understood us as an audience more or brought our guards down more effectively. In this, our familiarity and our complacency were our undoing.

TL: As we tend to do with big setting AEW matches, the meta speaks much louder than the story trying to be told. This is (sadly) not a new phenomenon for the company, but it becomes weirder when the meta context rewrites or even overwrites what’s presented to the viewer. There’s little doubt here as to the result, and there’s no doubt at all as to the perceived gap in talent and stature between Bryan and Perry, even with Perry’s in-company position as the #2 guy with the title he’s holding. For three years, it’s been a guarantee that Bryan was the better wrestler in any match he was in; the challenge was always how to overcome that perception and tell a story that grabs. The larger the perceived gap, the seemingly more impossible the challenge. It just so happens to be a challenge Bryan relishes.

The setting had a few things going for it; Perry is absolutely loathed in Chicago for obvious reasons, is considered a failson even though his dad never wrestled, and he’s not above going low to get to his destination, as has been his MO for the last year. Fans are also happy to see Jack eat shit, slip on the proverbial banana peel, all the comeuppance tropes you’d want to see a heel take. To Perry’s credit, he's smart enough to troll, even if it’s the easy way out. It’s one thing to do the Cattle Mutilation to Bryan in a title match, or even do the Snapdragon Suplexes to show up Bryan’s first AEW showcase opponent and the man he usurped in The Elite, but he also does the charging corner lariat and reverse neckbreaker combo in Chicago, which is an easter egg for the sickos and an attention to detail that goes above and beyond what is usually the case for AEW house style references.

However, I feel the best thing it has going for it is it’s a Bryan title defense. For all the types of matches Bryan gets celebrated for, and all the matches he’s had in what’s becoming a career-defining run, it’s become a rarity for him to be The Man holding off a challenger. His last WWE title run was hit or miss save an all-timer of a reign ender, and while the ROH house style at the time of his monumental reign was 10-15 minutes too long on the regular, that run was rightfully celebrated for its breadth and depth given the quality of opponents was so varied. There are fewer matches sweeter than a Bryan title defense; he gets to show off a mean streak when he wants to, his technical superiority, counter wrestling smarts, all the beats that make him the all-timer he is. 

Put it all together, and while it’s probably not the match we wanted for Bryan’s first title defense in a half-decade, what we got was exactly what it should have been. Bryan hit all the beats expected of him; he hit the familiar high spots to harken back to his heyday, laid it in stupendously to the point where he was downright mean at times (the chops, the kicks/knees to the prone arm, the torque/technique on all his suplexes), played to the crowd even when they knew the result was inevitable; how do you not get involved in a match when someone is so earnestly making sure you pay attention?  Perry was given every opportunity to shine in ways that made sense, and on top of that, decided to bump like a madman in key moments. Say what you will about Perry, but his self-awareness has become one of his biggest strengths, if not his biggest. He knew when to stooge, knew when to gloat, knew when to die.

The post-match, though…5-year-old me should have never seen the Clash VIII post match during the awesome 1989 NWA Main Event two-hour Year in Review special when it aired that New Year’s Eve. Subconsciously, it’s difficult to shake, as you might imagine. So now imagine having that deep in your memory recesses, getting shocked to your core initially with the Claudio uppercut, the look on Bryan’s face in a close-up (one of the great AEW production moments), and then the plastic bag from Mox (making it THE great AEW production moment), all in the span of about five seconds. Now throw in Yuta crying helplessly while Claudio and Marina hold everyone at bay while Mox holds the bag over Bryan’s head for way longer than you’d expect.

Yuta unwillingly became an avatar of my now 35-year-old trauma being reawakened. I had to pause and walk away on my rewatch right after the BCC jumped the rail to stare away the Patriarchy cash-in attempt, right when my heart started trying to leap out of my chest. Bryan got me in Wembley by pulling at my heartstrings. I don’t think I can go back and rewatch the match because it is one of my favorite wrestling memories ever, and I want it to stay unaltered. Maybe when my own daughter comes of age (if she even becomes a wrestling fan) and I show it to her as an example of why it’s important to have balance between your dreams and family, hoping as we watch that it somehow grows in stature. 

Yet I went back and watched this match and angle until literally my brain told me danger was lurking around the corner and I needed to get away or something very bad was going to happen. You appreciate the story they’re trying to tell, but what it uncovers about yourself in the process might literally bring hidden demons into the light. The Sport of Kings remains, always and forever, undefeated.