MD: Brief programming note. We'll have Found Footage Friday up on Saturday or Sunday this week as a one time thing. It's worth the wait. We've got some fun stuff you've almost certainly never seen before. Also, thanks to everyone for the support this week (even Max.....). If you haven't seen it, I'm back up at https://x.com/mattd_sc/ now, so give me a follow.
AEW Dynamite 10/8/24
Bryan Danielson/Wheeler Yuta vs Claudio Castagnoli/PAC
MD: What put this over the top for me was the characterization at play. Let's break it down. Danielson's motivations have been all over the place in his last few matches, but believably so. He's a man haunted by betrayal, carrying the weight of destiny, knowing the Sword of Damocles is over his head, knowing that he's on borrowed time, but also knowing that paradise awaits. Instead of being conflicted, he's of singular vision. There is no conflict within him, only before him. He was detached against Nigel and frustrated but engaged against Okada. Here he was consumed by the need to punish Claudio for his transgressions. Yuta's the opposite, a six man champion at odds with his partners, split between two mentors. He chose his side but now he has to live with it and it's easier to die for someone than to live for them (and despite how I'm going to end this review, I'm not convinced he doesn't have reason to doubt his choices after having seen Danielson so blinded by rage). Claudio was cool, collected. Bryan would throw himself at him. Claudio is a constant. Eventually, Claudio would catch him, bend him, break him, soften him up for Moxley. And Yuta? Claudio is confident in his cause, comfortable with his decisions. He'll lean on Yuta until he understands. He has the luxury in a match like this. That leaves PAC: PAC just wants to see the world burn. He finally has a purpose, finally has a home, finally is surrounded by people who aren't just posing and preening, finally with people who will let him light the match. Maybe Moxley wants to burn it all down to build it back up again. Frankly, PAC doesn't care. He just want to see the glow of the embers and feel the heat on his cheeks.
It all played out in the match, with Danielson bursting forth, looking away from PAC and crashing into Claudio on the outside, with Yuta and Danielson, in matching gear, with matching dives. It made me wish we had a few more months of them together, that we could see them against FTR or in a dominant 8 minute tag against Nese/Daivari. That's not the world we live in though; this is, and here, everything is coming apart at the seams. Danielson had not been reckless against Okada, not even with a time limit counting down. He had not been reckless against Nigel, no matter how badly McGuinness deserved it. Here though, he was nothing but reckless. Yuta was poised, focused, driven, and locked PAC in the Cattle Mutilation. Claudio casually, patiently walked over and broke the hold. Danielson was incensed. He dove at Claudio once more, but this time Claudio caught him.
With Danielson Neutralized (literally) on the floor, the dynamic changed. Now Yuta had to live with his decision in the most painful of ways, as a face-in-peril with a partner who had, for all intents and purposes, taken himself out of the match. He fought valiantly, but the odds were against him. Even if Claudio wasn't actively trying to hurt him, that didn't mean he couldn't punish him, couldn't teach him a lesson, and PAC, who lately has been wielding a hug like another man might wield a battle axe, well.. he had no qualms about hurting Yuta: lesson, punishment, none of the above; it was all good to him. But Yuta fought on, even made it to the corner, made it to the corner only to find Bryan not there, not yet recovered.
It was a moment of heartbreak, a stark, symbolic reminder of what is ahead of us all. Pretty soon, Bryan will not be there. Maybe he beats Moxley, but if you watched him here, driven by rage, out of balance for the first time since the Eddie Kingston match earlier this year where he found peace in defeat... you don't get the sense that he can beat Moxley. You can't beat Jon Moxley with the World Title on the line with rage. There's not enough rage in the world for that. Maybe he's lying about his injury. He does that, right? I don't think he is. What I think is that after Wrestledream, we won't see Bryan Danielson for a good long while. We're going to reach out for that tag on a Wednesday Night in cold, dark December, like we've been able to do for the last three years, and he's not going to be there.
So Yuta crumbled, suffered. Hope started to leave him. Then he felt it, the hand come down upon his back, a tag so blind that he couldn't even have imagined its arrival. Because that's the thing, for those of us who have known the love of pro wrestling in this century, Bryan Danielson will always be there. He's part of what it means for us to love this, whether it's him helping to define a brand new style in the early 00s, him demanding the full five count from a ref, him kicking someone's head in, him bursting through glass ceilings that were supposed to be impenetrable, him goofing around (on a Saturday morning kid's show, on the JBL and Cole show as the Dazzler, or at a Dark taping in a lucha mask), or him defining his last year of pro wrestling by facing every compelling opponent imaginable, he's never going to be far from our memories of pro wrestling, and I speak for everyone reading this that we think about pro wrestling way too much.
So some day a few months from now when things seem bleak in the dead of winter, you're going to take a breath, pull up some random ECCW match on YouTube, or find the 2/3 falls Sheamus match from Extreme Rules 2011, or hop onto Honor Club and watch him against Morishima, or HOPEFULLY by that point, be able to watch the RUSH match from Dynamite on Max. And you'll feel that slap on the back, and he'll tag in, and you'll get twenty minutes where everything feels just a little bit better, because that's the power of pro wrestling, and no one who made his home primarily in this current century of ours could wield it quite like Bryan Danielson.
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