Moxley vs Cassidy (AEW Five Fingers of Death (And Friends) 9/28 - 10/4 Part 1)

AEW Dynamite 9/30/26

Jon Moxley vs Orange Cassidy

MD: Wrestling is art and art is in the eye of the beholder. Authorial intent matters to a degree, but only to the degree you, as the observer, want it to matter, and only as it affects the ultimate execution. 

Which brings us immediately to the character of Jon Moxley.

Look, there's definitely one way you can view Mox's last few years. It's a way that I felt was important given consequence and weight to actions, important given the world we live in. Jon Moxley, the bandit king, the emperor with no clothes, a man who says one thing and does another and the, after the fact, says a third, a man who claims to want to save to the world when he really wants to loot it and hoard all of its wealth. 

You can see him as someone for which might makes right, because there's no other right he can claim; a wolf with his back against the wall, who desperately snatched success out of the maw of defeat in the C2 and saved himself for at least another day. A roiling, seething, lost man, a fallen hero upon a throne of lies. All that. 

The joy of stories is that you can look at them multiple ways. We're all too caught up in canon and lore and fictional truth. There are story points and it's up to us as viewers to connect them in ways that resonate.

So here's another way to look at the character of Jon Moxley. Maybe everything he said was true. Maybe he meant it all. He formed the BCC with Danielson because the next generation was moving in a direction that wasn't focused or driven enough for him. He turned on Danielson because he saw his friend breaking down, saw him reach the pinnacle but be unable to carry the load, and he had to send him home the only way that would keep. Maybe even more than that, he knew Bryan, with his good heart, wouldn't be able to take the steps necessary, so he took the choice out of his hands.

He transformed the BCC into the Death Riders to send a shock through the system. He didn't give praise or acknowledge Private Party when they won the world titles because they WON THE WORLD TITLES. That was enough. They didn't need a headpat from him. They needed to rise to their mantle like men. He became the villain doing horrific things because that was the only way to inspire heroes.

And he inspired Hangman Page to push past his own darkness and find his own light.

Then, his mission complete, he wandered lost for a few months. He gave Darby another mountain to climb, inspired O'Reilly to be something more. Then, he found his place, off to the side, a monolith for wrestlers to challenge themselves against when he won the Continental Championship. And when Will Ospreay came back, he was there to guide him towards greatness.

Maybe that was the story all along. 

And maybe it's that Jon Moxley that stood across the ring from Orange Cassidy to do homage to a fallen warrior, rival, compatriot. 

Maybe Jon Moxley is one of the only wrestlers to be able to push Orange Cassidy to be as much as he could possibly be, and more than he would want to be. Maybe he does that with everyone, a modern day Stan Hansen, a grindstone to sharpen all steel.

Cassidy might have won a match against Moxley by becoming more like him, tougher, meaner, angrier, harder. But he never truly defeated Jon Moxley that way. I think here, on the other side of so many encounters, he finally understands that. He can only defeat Jon Moxley by being as true to himself as possible.

That's how he approached this match. Moxley tried for a hammerlock early and Cassidy almost playfully refused to try to counter back and kept lunging for the ropes instead. He was then fluid, like water, redirecting Mox this way and that. 

Mox, of course, wasn't going to stand for that for long. He bludgeoned Cassidy, battered him on the floor, held him up for a long, extended pile driver. He leaned into his man-of-the-people persona with a ten count, but Cassidy returned favor slamming Moxley's head into the turnbuckle over and over. 

Moxley dropkicked him to the floor and Cassidy? Well, he decided it was time to unleash his true weapon. The mind games. 

What followed was a beautiful example of Orange Cassidy as the trickster archetype, rolling away from Mox again and again, casually, aggravatingly, staying out of reach. It all built to the moment of payoff, when Mox, disoriented and frustrated marched around the ring to get an advantage and found himself vulnerable to Cassidy's dive. 

I think something clicked in Mox there, that he realized, finally, that Cassidy had his own well of power, his own strength, his own talent, that he could achieve his own way, so long as he was entirely committed to it, so long as he put everything that he had into it. He didn't have to do things Moxley's way. 

And that let Mox be playful with him, rolling as well. It meant when he threw big forearms and Cassidy returned fire with his playful, listless kicks, Mox could play along. I think in that moment, maybe he saw Orange Cassidy not for who he wanted him to be, but for who Orange Cassidy really, truly was, and he saw his worth. 

Though not enough that he was going to put his hands in his pockets, of course.

They fought towards a finish. When Moxley put on the Brutalizer, it was with PAC in his heart (as it had been when he hit PAC's lariat), yes, but it was also a good move for the moment, capitalizing on a vulnerability. 

When Cassidy reversed it and positioned Moxley around, it was a mistake. He could have locked in the seatbelt or mousetrap at that point and might have even won, but he let sentiment get the better of him.

Of course he did. That's the secret of the character of Orange Cassidy. It's not that his antics are all mind games. Anyone who tries even a little to look past their own biases can see that. 

It's that despite all appearances, the character of Orange Cassidy cares. He cares so much. He cares more than anyone. He cares every moment of every day. Every match. Every exchange. Every triumph. Every defeat. It's all he can do to shove that down and hide it behind the sunglasses, because otherwise it'd burst out and drown the world. 

Here, he cared too much and he made a mistake. 

Mox? Mox cares too, but he cares about doing his job, even his job truly is to save pro wrestling. Here, he did his job, refocusing, reframing, hitting the Death Rider, winning.

But Cassidy, just like Moxley, stayed true to himself, and maybe, in losing as himself, in losing by caring too much, he won an even greater victory, one that he could share with Jon Moxley, and share with us all.

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And that's the text. 

There are so many different ways to engage with it, to put the pieces together, to find meaning and messages in pro wrestling, ones that can help us through our days and help us find clarity, that can entertain us and make us think and make us feel all sorts of things.

You could watch this match and get a completely different conclusion from it, and that's part of what makes all of this so beautiful.

It's their job to create. It's our job to engage. It's our job to keep an open mind and to open our hearts to what they're presenting. It's our job to figure out how it makes us feel and either hold that close inside or to let it out to tell the world. That means we can agree with it and disagree with it and hold it to standards and occasionally even give it a pass.

There's no right answer except for caring. That's their job. That's our job. That's their privilege and that's our pleasure. 

And as heartbreaking as it can sometimes be because of the costs that come along with it, it is a hell of a thing, and we're lucky to have it, to have them, and to have each other.