I Just Wasn't Made for These Times (AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 8/10 - 8/16)

AEW Dynamite 8/12/26

Kevin Knight vs (Chris) Jericho 

When I was a kid, my favorite band was the Beach Boys. Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m old, but I’m not THAT old. My parents are though, and I am old enough that when you were in a car, you listened to the radio. They controlled the radio and listened to Oldies 103.3 so that’s what I heard. 

I have no idea why I gravitated towards the Beach Boys in particular. We were in Massachusetts far from any sort of surfing scene. I’m pretty tone deaf so I couldn’t exactly appreciate layered harmonies. Maybe they were just fun to sing to despite that. Get Around is 2 minutes and 12 seconds and it’s perfect for a kid. 

I had Pet Sounds on cassette too though I don’t think I fully appreciated it until I got older. Nor did I understand Brian Wilson’s struggles until I was older. I probably had a few chances to see various forms of the band over the years, but I never went for it. It just always seemed off or wrong for reasons one might imagine (many of which having to do with Mike Love). 

Still, one of the better birthday presents I’ve gotten in my life is when my wife arranged for us to see Wilson (aged 74) with a few remaining band members and associates perform the album in Atlantic City in 2016. 

Almost everyone there seemed to be my parents’ age and they blissfully bobbed their heads and sang along, happy and oblivious, but I just couldn’t look away from Wilson. I’d never had a concert experience quite like this. He’d lived a hard life, one full of many different forms of abuse, and one might question the motivation for him to even be on the stage at that point, even if, very likely, it was more earnest than previous tours. 

But when he performed, there was every sense that he wanted to hit the notes, that he wanted to sing loud and be proud of what he had created in front of an audience that wanted to hear it. Founding guitarist Al Jardine was with him, and it was Jardine’s son who ended up doing most of the heavy lifting on vocals, Wilson cutting out at points of almost every song. He just couldn’t hit the notes, couldn’t sustain. 

But yet he always came back, trying, striving. It felt more like an athlete pushing himself down the stretch than a singer playing the hits. It should have, perhaps, been sad and maybe for some there actually paying attention it was, but there was something undeniably valiant about it. The effort somehow transcended the result and it left me uncomfortable in some ways, but moved in others.

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Chris Jericho was my favorite wrestler in my later teenage years. I had come back to wrestling after a few years away during the back half of the Monday Night Wars. A scrawny kid growing up, I had loved the idea of WCW and GWF’s light heavyweight divisions (though maybe not the execution), so it was great to see a Cruiserweight division flourishing. As a scrawny kid, I was a bit of a smartass too, so to see Jericho out there, utilizing clever bits and scenarios at every turn (even if he often was made the fool in them), well, that was great to see too. 

The only official wrestling shirt I ever bought was a Y2J one (having missed my chance at a Monday Night Jericho one). That’s how big a fan I was. In-ring, he played a cruiseweight bully well, doing moves that he’d have a harder time doing against bigger opponents and he was well protected through that year. Having some great opponents didn’t hurt. 

As I got older, I don’t think his work resonated with me quite as much. I appreciated his penchant for adapting and refreshing his act, but what I got the most enjoyment out of was his Bockwinkel-esque turn in the late 00s (even if I hadn’t fully learned to love Bock yet) and the bits with the List a few years later, not necessarily what he did in ring. I think he had a very strong 2022 though. I’ll stand by the Kingston match, for instance.

He was always a very self-aware worker in some ways, prone to building to spots that he knew would have a big impact, but he was online enough to react with thin skin if they perhaps did not get quite the credit that he thought they deserved.

Moreover, he always had a bigger eye than stomach when it came to his own athleticism. He couldn’t always quite do what he wanted, but he’d go for it nonetheless. On some level, that’s admirable. On another level, it leaves someone with a broken arm after trying and failing to hit a shooting star press or, to a lesser extent, with a match which may have worked out better in his head than on the screen.

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I’m not sure there was as important an “event” for me when it comes to pro wrestling in the last fifteen years than the Houston Footage ending up on NWA On Demand. That’s what really took me down another rabbit hole of seeking out lost footage (we cover new matches every week with New/Found Friday and have for years and years now). It was amazing to see 80s arena footage that no one had seen since it first happened in great quality with interesting and varied talents. 

Of all those talents, maybe none made quite the impression as Jose Lothario. He was a figure most of us only knew from his ill-fated WWF run as Shawn’s trainer. To see him even in the back third of his active in-ring career was eye-opening, however. He was “Supersock,” with one of the best worked punches in history and had such a special connection with the crowd. On his comebacks, he’d be able to hold court in the center of the ring, have his opponent create the motion for him, and through his perfect timing, execution, and performative instincts, he’d make the crowd go wild. 

It was one of the most impressive things I’d ever seen because he was able to do so, so much with so, so little and have it feel more gripping and immersive than what most people are able to do with ten times more. If you were to watch late 2010s Jerry Lawler, he was able to do much of the same, though with a few more tricks, bells, and whistles. In both cases, it was a blueprint for how to age not just gracefully but greatly as a pro wrestler.

Likewise, we’ve spent the last couple of years watching Blue Panther do his thing. The highlight reels will show you the dives, and given his age, the dives are impressive, but it’s how he hypes the crowd up and frames them that makes them work even more than the idea of a 65 year old actually hitting them. So much of what makes Blue Panther stand out as special is his crowd control, not the moments that make it into the gifs. 

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Which brings us to Jericho. No Chris. Just Jericho. I have no idea what he’s doing with this run, except for that he wants to wrestle new people and in new ways. Maybe he’s running out the clock on injury time. Maybe he wants to make sure to keep himself relevant in case he wants to jump. Maybe he just can’t give up the ghost. 

We’re past the self-aware Jericho Vortex stuff. He got what heat he could out of it. I’ve been under the opinion for a while that he should be transitioning into Paul Jones, more of a manager who occasionally wrestles than a wrestler himself, ideally positioned against a Jimmy Valiant type figure (Mark Briscoe or Eddie Kingston for instance?) but I assure you (Chris) Jericho doesn’t care what I think. I absolutely believe the ROH Title feud with Bandido would have served everyone better if Jericho was managing a monster Big Bill for it. But then again, Bill’s gone, so who knows.

But, if he’s not going to do that, then he should lean harder into his charisma and follow Jose Lothario’s lesson. He should be wrestling people who can create the motion for him. He can follow Blue Panther’s lesson too. He can hit those few big spots, but only properly built to and when they’ll mean the most, and maybe leaning more on the anticipation than the actual payoff. 

And on paper, there’s been some of that. His first feud was with Ricochet, someone perfect to create motion for him. But he still felt the need to do more than his share (and to carry more of the load than was advisable), and they turned a quite good twelve minute match into a very dubious nineteen minute one. 

It’s interesting to think why he’s not adapting. It follows a career-long trend of overestimating his own physical abilities, sure, but I think it’s more about incentives than anything else. He could have a far better match that would be far simpler where his opponent created the motion and he created the emotion, and not only would he not be rewarded for it, even if it got over with the crowd, he’d probably be actively punished for it in certain critical circles. And at this stage of his career, he literally cannot afford to be punished. Instead, so long as he does enough stuff, and contributes enough stuff of his own, no matter how well it hits, he’s going to be more rewarded for that.

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Which, finally, leads us to the Kevin Knight TNT Title match on Dynamite.

A match he was rewarded for, not by conventional wisdom which was instantaneously frustrated by it, but by instead the unconventional wise man that matters more to the people that matter most.

There were things about the match that clearly worked. One tricky part about having a heel opponent that creates motion is that the fans may decide to back them. Jericho is, of course, a pro at playing to the crowd and continuously fighting back so they have reasons to root for him, but Knight did his best to keep himself reviled. He ambushed to start. On the floor, when he took over, he mocked Paul Wight who was on commentary with the Big Show hand raise. Callis snuck in a cheap shot when the ref was distracted. On a backslide, Knight used his athleticism not to further the hold but to reach blatantly to the rope for leverage with his foot. They went out of their way to draw clear lines.

But then, there was Jericho’s awkward dive to the floor. There was, of course, the baffling spot with Callis interfering during the Walls. There was Knight’s need to cheat not just early on to establish roles or later to control, but on the finish, when really, the damage had already been done and Jericho, who doesn’t need to be protected like this anyway, had already been protected.

But most of all, the image that will stick with me, the reason why I brought up Brian Wilson in the first place, were those ten count punches. Jericho straddled Knight on the top rope. His legs were splayed oddly, not without reason as we would soon see, but to bizarre visual effect. He hung on to Knight with one hand as he threw the strangest worked punches, coming in at totally askew angles, creating an illusion of connecting right up until they didn’t, which was far too soon. It was all to set up the top rope rana (for he apparently would not be able to get his legs where they needed to be otherwise), which hit clean, but in the meantime, we were left with the image of a man who was not punishing an opponent, but instead seemed afraid.

Afraid of falling, afraid of aging, afraid of irrelevance, afraid of being undervalued, afraid of one critic and every critic, afraid of not living up to his own self-image, unable to work himself and unwilling to do what it took to work everyone else, so all that was left was embracing the real, athletic elements of pro wrestling that his body could no longer manage.

Jericho, this amazingly self-aware, incredibly delusional wrestler, who has somehow spent an entire career balancing those two impulses to incredible and frankly, unbelievable, success, could likely find one last grasp at it were he to admit who he was now, admit what he was, and lean hard into it. He made me feel something as he perched up on that top rope. He could spend a whole match making a crowd feel that and come out, once again, against all odds, on top. 

But it would be admitting a vulnerability that he could never come back from. It would be his greatest strength, his last great strength, one that he might even be able to carry for years, carny that he is, but one that would never let him be the in-ring rock star that he’s seen himself as. God only knows what he could accomplish if he could admit it and embrace it.

But he can’t, and so he won’t. So instead, we have this, a wrestler trapped in a purgatory of his own making and forcing us all along for the ride. And as I watch it, I do not see something valiant and inspirational as I did that day in Atlantic City ten years ago. Mostly? Mostly, I just feel sad.