Matt D

I’m pretty sure we’re heading towards the titles getting vacated myself.

Loved May’s spinning side slam. She sure makes the most of the space between moves. Got a kick out of Gunn outsmarting Uno with the foot toss neck breaker counter. Curry Man taunt is self explanatory. Sydal might quietly be a top ten guy in the company. Great Garcia performance. Really nice to see him interact with other people, be it working Strong or Cage or fist bumping Hook after clearing the ring.

Jeff Jarrett is the hero of his own story.

SWS continuation would be next. I'm dying to get back to Tenryu; this is true. That said, I was kind of looking forward to Choshu and this NOW vs NEW stuff though. I'll figure it out next week when I'm back to 100%. I could theoretically shift things around so AEW watching is on the treadmill and NJPW is on the laptop for a bit. We shall see. I'll bury this here, but we've got a new SC project starting up on Weds too. All the watchable 70s Joshi that we know exists on tape. So that'll take up some time too. Regardless, I appreciate anyone who takes the time to read. This does keep me inspired to stay in shape and while I am doing it for me, people checking in does help.

Far more true for Dax than Cash, I thought. Especially when Cash was in there with Mox. Cash wrestles like a guy about to be in a road rage incident.

I’d learn to finally figure out how to tell Villano IV from Villano V just from how they wrestle.

Wow. I forgot that match even happened. They put out a ton of content.

I've danced around this lately, but I do want to state it clearly and directly. The Bucks reinvention/gimmick change has gone about as well as it could have possibly gone. It's basically the shift from "Young Bucks" to "Old Bucks" that they've needed for a while. They're still not my choice for Sting's last match but I came in expecting the worst based, if nothing else, on their last few feuds, and I've come off pretty satisfied with it. We always knew they'd bump around for Sting and create the motion (w/Darby) but there's enough of an emotional underpinning now that, give a huge hot crowd, that I believe they'll lean into the gravitas instead of ironically squandering it. Let me put it this way: I'm planning on actually watching the match even if I don't want to actually write it up.

They ran that on Saturday. That was the purpose (or the combo of purposes). That's the "bar" AEW generally has. They almost never run a match just for the sake of running a match. On ROH, they do. On Dynamite and Collision, no way. On Rampage, most of the time, no. I'm not saying it's always bad faith actors making the complaint as unimaginative people, maybe? Thankfully very few people on the Board are unimaginative.

Let's see where you fall on something then. Bryan Keith vs Malakai Black. It's a way to get Keith out there in another singles match against a "name" to show that he can hold his own, a way to quell some of the complaints about Black not getting singles matches, a way for Black to re-establish himself further in that arena with a win on TV, a big bomb fest that will get the crowd chanting This is Awesome in the last moments. But primarily, it's a means to the end of having Black win and then Briscoe to come after him post-match with the spike only to have his vengeance cut off as the rest of the House of Black charge in. Another stop on the road to whatever blowoff eventually happens there. Is there enough meat on the bone there to make you happy or are you thumbs down on Keith vs Black because there wasn't enough purpose in them wrestling?

Also "random legend" being Akiyama probably isn't a draw for whatever a casual fan might be. They have Scott Taylor coaching now. I imagine Scotty 2 Hotty vs Danielson would have been more of a draw to "casual fans" than Akiyama was. But I don't know if this is a productive conversation really.

Just a quick update to anyone following along. I had to catch up on some current stuff to keep track. Then I ended up with a cold, which I have now. And now, I've just found out that NJPW is doing copyright strikes on youtube for things still in draft format, which I've never seen before. Usually you have to make them at least "unlisted" or "private" for that to happen but you can still upload them and watch them on your phone if they're in "draft" format. So that's going to hinder my watching most likely. I'll keep poking at it but I expect my burner account to go down shortly as two strikes popped up out of nowhere.

So I wrote a bunch of words about the story. Not to cross-post my stuff but... http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2024/02/aew-five-fingers-of-death-219-225.html Now, that said, I only spend about a paragraph on the match itself because the story isn't Danielson vs Akiyama, it's Danielson vs Kingston, and having an Akiyama/Danielson match is a cog in the machine. AEW does that a lot. Danielson vs Thatcher was a cog in the machine on the road to Danielson vs MJF, for instance. It's, to a degree, how AEW books outside talent when they're on the run up to a PPV and a PPV match. I think this was a pretty important match in the ongoing Danielson vs Kingston story, however. Sometimes you will get a throwaway match, like Orange Cassidy vs Kushida or Shibata, for instance (and you could argue those were to help define the nature of the International Belt, but.. eh). This was different than that. Does that mean that maybe there could have been a moment to build up Akiyama vs Danielson as a legendary dream match instead of a match that served a purpose of supporting two regulars about to wrestle? Yeah, probably, but they can come back to it now that there's some track laid. More than that, they're just running out of time with Danielson so there's only so much you can do and so many masters you can serve. I though that this navigated things pretty well, all things considered. It wasn't a cold match. It served a purpose. It was essential to the overarching story heading towards the PPV a week later.

My take on Akiyama vs Danielson: http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2024/02/aew-five-fingers-of-death-219-225.html?m=1

Moriarty is really shining as the little dog with a big bark that hides behind Taylor.

I just hope both teams have fun.

Take a minute and watch Jimmy Valiant do...well, whatever this is.

Bryan Keith is 32. Why do they keep calling him a young man?

To be fair, it was Bucks vs Kingdom vs reDRagon which is not just "the Bucks."

Holy crap, it's a Malakai Black singles match.

This is a really good card so far. I'm a proponent that not everything on a card should be for me, which is a necessity with AEW. I can't imagine actually watching Ospreay vs Takeshita unless I lose a bet, but I imagine more than half of you are excited for it. They've done the best possible build for Sting/Darby vs Bucks imaginable. Still not the choice I would have made for Sting's last match but at least the execution has been good. They announced or started building towards things earlier than usual and it's been a net positive all around. It almost has a Sting Stampede 94 vibe where the promotion is about to change heavily (Mercedes. Ospreay, Okada coming in during March) and we're getting a last blast of what the company has been on the way out. Though I imagine we're getting some wild tag tournament out the other end of this, so it won't be changing too much. And hey, look, while the personal issues at play might have made it more tolerable than usual, if Hangman's injured, it's not the end of the world as triple threats are almost always inherently terrible. Anyway, Garcia vs Christian and BCC vs FTR II are great in-ring additions. That is all.

Taking Cena on face value, he's in contact with Vince and telling him that "he has a big hill to climb." With some of the other people making terrible statements, I imagine they're not actually in contact with Vince, but Cena seems to be. I just don't get how WME, which represents him, doesn't have him better prepped to answer these questions.

Probably because Danielson prefers to work Collision? Or Akiyama scheduling issues. The Nagata match came together quickly for instance.

Here’s why there isn’t a more fleshed out card:

Unless BCC vs FTR is going 45, we need to get that run up to Dynamite new match announcement.