AEW Five Fingers of Death 10/5 - 10/11

AEW Dynamite 10/7/26

Darby Allin vs Kyle Fletcher

MD: Darby Allin is an attraction. In all the history of modern televised wrestling, he's one of the only attractions I can think of that wrestled every week. You can argue that peak Goldberg or Rock would be up there. Which is not to say he's an attraction on the magnitude of either. Maybe you could argue Sabu as the closest comparison point. Maybe peak Jeff Hardy as well. Hell, maybe Mistico at either of his peaks too. He's something to see. He's going to do something spectacular. You're going to regret missing it. Wrestling is a three-ring circus and he's in at least two of the rings and the sideshow to boot: the death-defying stuntman riding a motorcycle through fire, the acrobat up on the tightrope, the skeletal geek who can survive incredible amounts of pain.

There's been some pretty tedious discourse the last few weeks about how well he's been protected this year too. Yes, Darby wins a lot. Yes, he survives a lot. But the attention to detail is almost there. We'll get to that at the end of this one. Wrestling is more than just stats on a spreadsheet. It's more than wins and losses. Wins and losses matter, but they only matter in so much as the journey matters too. With Darby, the whole point is HOW he wins, HOW he survives, HOW he overcomes the odds. That's what makes wrestling worth watching. He's protected so that the emotional tether is there when he somehow survives. He's protected so when someone actually figures out a way to put him down, it matters more. 

Some fans today seem to want fairness and parity. But there have to be stars and the stars have to be protected. It's not what someone deserves. It's about what moves hearts and minds, and if you're not letting yourself go along with a story because you're more worried about some wrestler getting what they deserve, you're doing both the wrestlers (including that wrestler) and yourself a disservice. The effort has to be there. The level of detail has to be there. But at some point you have to open yourself to go on the journey they're trying to take you on. Maybe you'll like the ride, maybe you won't, but if you constantly want to be on another ride instead, then you're never going to enjoy yourself unless you get exactly what you want, and trust me, that gets real old real quick.

So the question then becomes How. How does Darby Allin overcome? And what makes it interesting is the variance in opponents, a variance made all the more interesting by Darby's specific skills and his specific weaknesses. His deficits. And how some of his strengths end up being deficits as well. 

Styles make fights, sure, but so do body types and disparities between wrestlers. You put Darby up against a Mark Davis or Jake Doyle or Wardlow or Brody King and he has different challenges and different opportunities than if you put him up against a Kevin Knight or Myron Reed. The former may be explosive at times, but they are bigger, stronger, quick but not nearly as quick as Darby. The latter can't leverage a huge strength advantage against him but Darby can't outquick them either.

Kyle Fletcher presents a unique threat for Darby though, and that's what made this interesting. Kyle is strong, yes, muscular as can be, but he's also relatively lean compared to the mentioned monsters. He's quicker than them, not as quick a Darby but quick enough to recover a split second sooner, to be ready to counter. The strength and size advantage isn't as much as the monsters, but it's enough. It gives him an answer to some of the questions that Darby forces upon both the monsters and the flyers and allows him to force plenty of his own upon Darby himself. And those questions are what make pro wrestling interesting (if you allow yourself to engage with them, that is).

Here, Darby came right at Fletcher but Fletcher could push him back. Darby shot himself towards Fletcher instead, but Fletcher was ready to catch him and toss him. It was an ebb and flow, one where Darby had to push himself more and more earlier in the match in order to do damage. he put them both through a table very early on because nothing else was working. He continued to take the risks like he so often does, but Fletcher was better suited to catch him and back body drop him from one announce table to the next. 

Darby is, of course, a cockroach, and with every moment he survives, he finds opportunities to strike. It could be as simple as a line of blood running down Fletcher's back (from that first table break) and Darby running his nails down the spine to counter a top rope move. But again, Fletcher is a uniquely dangerous opponent for him, constantly grasping and straining himself. In this case, as he was getting pulled over, he snatched at the top turnbuckle pad and yanked it off. 

It built to a point of escalation. Darby threw his best shots at Fletcher, hitting him with multiple Code Reds, but when that didn't work and Darby had to escalate further he missed a Coffin Drop on the apron. Fletcher capitalized and hit a Brainbuster, but it wasn't enough. He went up to the top and crushed Darby with the Avalanche Brainbuster onto the exposed turnbuckle. That was, perhaps overkill. The effort not only sent Darby out of the ring to the floor (where he could not be pinned for the title) but hurt Fletcher's leg instead. By the time that Fletcher was able to get the bloody husk of Darby Allin back into the ring, it was too late. Darby had recovered just enough to kick out. Attention to detail. It's everything. Yes, Darby survived Fletcher's very well protected finisher but there were any number of mitigating circumstances. This matters. If this doesn't matter, nothing matters, and if nothing matters, then there's no point anyway. Then you're just looking at the spreadsheet and there's no soul to what you're watching. You might as well not watch at all.

Fletcher went for a power bomb. Darby escaped and redirected him face first into the exposed turnbuckle. He honed in on the legs with the Deathlock. Fletcher survived but was vulnerable for two Coffin Drops. People say we've seen the sudden Coffin Drops too much as well, but they almost never work the same way twice. Or they work in multiple different ways appropriate for the moment. That variance matters. Those details matter. I'd argue they're only the same if you list them out on paper. In the moment, in the match, they feel as organic and opportunistic as can be.

Look, you can have favorites. You can hope someone gets pushed. You can even get frustrated that someone you don't want to see pushed is getting pushed (and yeah, I get that Darby has some historical personal issues but most of the arguments I am countering are not people talking about that, but instead about ANY wrestler being protected as a bad thing, a desire for parity, and his finishing sequence). That's all valid to a degree. But it's also something completely outside of your control. We've had one Yes Movement in twenty six years of wrestling this decade. 

You should not just eat what they're feeding you. You should be critical. You should question things. You should look for patterns. You can disagree with me. You can disagree with the company. You're not obliged to watch every match. You can pick and choose. It's better if you pick and choose. Trust me. But you should also question yourself and try to figure out why you feel the way that you feel. 

Yes, outcomes should matter. Yes, they shouldn't always be predictable, but pro wrestling has (almost) always been best when there is hierarchy and there are people clearly pushed. Outcomes matter, but the journey matters as much as the destination, maybe even more so because the destination is pre-decided. 

It's the How (... and the Who and the Why and even the Where and the When) that makes pro wrestling interesting, far more so than the What. And the questions around How for Darby Allin continue to be fascinating for me week in and week out.