It’s another piece of commission work, this time from friend of the blog, Alistair. You too have the ability to pay me to watch any sort of wrestling (provided I haven’t written on it already), or whatever else I guess, and write however many words I feel like writing about it. You can do that over at www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. The going rate is currently $5 a match, and an extra $3 if you just want me to suffer, because fuck you, I’m going to milk you for more for that.
This was for Starks’ FTW Title.
It’s a lot of fun.
The match is largely what you would expect when great wrestlers are thrown together for a midcard TV match, and when only one is presented as a star. Sydal’s made a lot out of TV matches where his job is to get the other guy over, but they usually get to be a little bit more than this was and/or he was presented in a stronger way than he has been in AEW, resulting in a few actually believable nearfalls (I’m thinking of his mid 2010s ROH run here), so we’re kind of stuck with the match that they had here.
If never the ideal version of this thing, it is chock full of a kind of undeniable QUALITY.
Both wrestlers have so much cool stuff to do to each other. There’s not a moment in this that I don’t think is good on some level. Sydal’s offense maybe doesn’t have the snap that it did when he was at his very best, but few wrestlers ever have possessed the snap that Sydal did in those moments. What he has is still a lot of fun, and what of that that he gets to show here is a blast. Nasty kicks to the legs, unique looking head kicks, great mid-level flying, and these wonderful bumps. Ricky gets less of this, sometimes even seeming like he could be the face-in-peril if not for his own moments of showmanship, but he’s just as good. It feels like a cop-out to write something like “Ricky feels like a star“, but god damn, Ricky Starks feels like such a star. He’s cool and hateable at once, and above all, always feels worth watching. Like his partner in Team Taz, Powerhouse Hobbs, when he’s on the screen, I just want to keep watching, and it only helps that he’s capable of performances that are this much fun.
Particularly impressive is that, despite it not lasting all that long and this match never requiring it, Starks decides to sell Sydal’s habitual kicks to the left thigh until the very end. It impedes him from hitting his finish once, giving him a thing to fight through, before hitting the Rochambeaux on his second try for the win. It’s a wonderful balancing act Ricky does here too, overcoming something and coming off tougher for it, but still being just enough of an unlikeable prick that one comes away with zero sympathy or admiration gained for the guy.
An especially impressive accomplishment, given how many top guys in AEW who have tried and failed to achieve the same sort of thing.
Not quite great, but a sort of eternally satisfying chunk of television wrestling.
Meat and potatoes, personified.
HANDWERK 