House of Black vs. CM Punk/FTR, AEW Collision (8/12/2023)

Commissions continue again, this one coming from frequent contributor Kai. You can be like them and pay me to write about all types of stuff. People tend to choose wrestling matches, but very little is entirely off the table, so long as I haven’t written about it before (and please, come prepared with a date or show name or something if it isn’t obvious). You can commission a piece of writing of your choosing by heading on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. The current rate is $5/match or thing or $10 for anything over an hour, and if you have some aim that cannot be figured out through simple multiplication, feel free to hit the DMs on Twitter or Ko-fi. 

This was for the spooky perverts’ AEW World Trios Titles.

When I encouraged someone, anyone, to just pay for all the 2023 CM Punk in AEW, and then got excited when it actually happened, this was not really a match that I was thinking even a little bit about.

It is not very good.

Mechanically, it is fine, but it’s never once interesting and lasts forever, proof that no one wrestler, team, show, or ideology ever gets it totally right forever.

For sure, the majority of that comes down to pure talent in the match. The House of Black is a loser act featuring maybe one and a half good wrestlers out of the three (not one of them is an entire good wrestler, unclear on where the percentages are at any given moment), on top of being bad stylistic fits for FTR, leading to them trying to force an epic to compensate. Punk also does the thing that he hadn’t done all that often in AEW up to this point too, enabling the worst aspects of somebody (outside of allowing a match where MJF tried to have a Great Wrestling Match), or in this case three to five other somebodies, in what is maybe not his WORST performance in AEW (although hell, maybe), but that is his worst intentioned one for simply going along with such incredibly dull juiceless pro wrestling.

It’s also twenty-six minutes long, which has a way of shining a much brighter light on just about every single one of those problems, and exists as if it has no idea that anything at all has to be made up for or fixed in any way, rolling this out as if this is the same as something like the first Collision main event.

Punk and Mal Black do sit criss-cross and stare at each other though, which was cool.

The best thing this match has to offer otherwise is the potential thought that Punk got into a fight to escape having to be in a House of Black feud.

Bad wrestling TV.

CM Punk/Ricky Starks/FTR vs. Bullet Club Gold (Jay White/Juice Robinson/The Gunn Club), AEW Collision (6/24/2023)

Commissions continue again, this one coming from friend of the program Kai, who paid for every CM Punk 2023 AEW match. You can be like them and pay me to write about all types of stuff. People tend to choose wrestling matches, but very little is entirely off the table, so long as I haven’t written about it before (and please, come prepared with a date or show name or something if it isn’t obvious). You can commission a piece of writing of your choosing by heading on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. The current rate is $5/match or $5/started half hour of a thing (example: an 89 minute movie is $15, a 92 minute one is $20), and if you have some aim that cannot be figured out through simple multiplication, feel free to hit the DMs on Twitter or Ko-fi. 

More of the real shit.

It is not the match the week prior, to be clear.

The loss of Samoa Joe to the formula (for good reason, tease Joe/Punk once and it rocks, keep showing it in a tag and it loses something) is not totally made up for with the addition of the Gunn Club and Ricky Starks. That’s not an insult to those guys at all, and Starks specifically adds a ton to this match, but it loses the sort of pure feeling as a result of (a) being the second Punk match back & (b) not having a real equal to him on the other side.

(No. Jay White doesn’t count. Be serious.)

What worked about the six man the week before also works here though.

Again, this very much has the feeling of one of those 2004-5 ROH tags, when both Punk and Joe were there along with Ricky Steamboat and a pre-insanity Jim Cornette backstage to help the kids with smaller detail work, in which they achieve multiple things. Not only delivering a great match, but succeeding also at building future matches. While not as impressive as the previous week’s Joe/Punk build, the work done both for the FTR/BCG and Punk/White match are so impressive, nevermind that the former wasn’t actually that good and that the latter never actually came to be.

The match itself, conceptually, is again pretty airtight.

It isn’t a short match at 20+ minutes and with this heel team I maybe wish it was shorter, but they get so much out of everyone involved.

Jay White delivers I think his best ever AEW performance in this match, primarily against Punk. First, opposite him unable to get anything going, and later, once the other three have him more beat up. So much of his AEW run up through the end of 2023 feels like he is unable to totally do what he was so good at in the 2010s in New Japan in terms of being a genuine shit heel while also doing some cool moves and then eating shit, but it works here, because the match also works with him. He is never in so long as to get dull, but the match shows the real fiber of his being in his big Punk runs. Capable and even with the best in the world, but at his core, a cheap shot artist who needs things set up for him. Annoying and good and a genuine delight to see brought down to Earth, first by Punk, and then off of the hot tag, Ricky Starks.

Everyone else on his team feels like a supplementary aspect next to the Knife Pervert, but they are all great or good in individual moments, and way more importantly, so unlikeable at all times.

The heroes are less obvious, save one, but they are all so good.

Less is asked of FTR here than usual, the focus very much on Jay, Punk, and Starks, but it benefits them in a way. Focusing on pure mechanics, and smaller runs of offense, each stands out a lot with no room to ever become annoying. Punk, now in more hostile territory, is again just the best. Playing into it while also never abandoning the real focus of the match. Selling well, slowly losing steam to put over the bad guys, managing to thread the needle between being a classical in-peril guy and also a top star in a way that nobody outside of maybe Bryan seems to totally understand anymore. It’s not just the star power of Punk that carries the middle of this match, but the performance, and unsurprisingly, nobody lays a better foundation.

Really though, the best guy here might be Ricky Starks.

As the hot tag at the end, so much of this is on his shoulders, and he is so great. Energetic, believably mad, the sort of explosive but just-barely-not-so-complex offense that is easy to root for. He is the exact sort of guy that this match kind of requires, likeable and cool and kicking just enough ass that it feels like some real bullshit when he loses, and it works. So many AEW bullshit losses do not feel like anything but the result of someone writing something down on paper and it being acted out (or plugged into TEW), but there’s a real “oh, you mother fucker” added onto this that helps it so so much in the end.

Starks runs through the boys, but Juice lands a cheap one through the ropes, and White hits the Blade Runner for the win.

It does not feel like the best anyone can do, pure bridge building at its best and most efficient, but it just fucking works.

Something of a stopgap, but as the match shows, that never has to be an insult.

***+

 

CM Punk/FTR vs. Samoa Joe/Jay White/Juice Robinson, AEW Collision (6/17/2023)

Commissions return again, this one coming from longtime reader Kai. You can be like them and pay me to write about all types of stuff. People tend to choose wrestling matches, but very little is entirely off the table, so long as I haven’t written about it before (and please, come prepared with a date or show name or something if it isn’t obvious). You can commission a piece of writing of your choosing by heading on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. The current rate is $5/match or $5/started half hour of a thing (example: an 89 minute movie is $15, a 92 minute one is $20), and if you have some aim that cannot be figured out through simple multiplication, feel free to hit the DMs on Twitter or Ko-fi. 

I don’t like to talk about a lot of current wrestling on here.

Most of the time, that’s because I prefer some distance from the moment to see how things hold up, whether that means if a match is more than pure fireworks, or if a particular emotion or feeling is a lasting one or a fleeting one, and I find it much easier to tell these things years removed. Feelings always change, but the time in between something happening and years later, at least for me, tends to be when they change the most. So, while I sort of encouraged someone to pay for a review of every CM Punk AEW match in his last run in the company, when someone actually stepped up with the money, I was sort of reticent to nail down any thoughts on the matter so close to everything happening.

However, as of November 28th, 2023, seeing him put out the most mailed-in talking of his career upon a return to the WWE, I am far more at peace with this as some kind of final experiment in actual pro wrestling, and so the series begins first, with at least at the time of writing, his second most recent return.

This is the real shit.

Real ass pro wrestling.

Emphasis where it is for a reason, right? Because that was the point of Collision. That is, beyond my conspiracy theories that it was put on a bad night with the design to fail while pretending to still try, tank his drawing power argument for being kept around, and make it easy for the people who never wanted him there to begin with to get rid of him. I mean, nominally speaking, this was The Wrestling Show, the one centered around the last true professional wrestler, the one for adults, all of that.

Outside of giving away something major on the first episode, given the talent available, this is about as great a match to sell that idea and make that point as one could imagine, to show just what The Wrestling Show could offer up.

CM Punk and his boys Gun and Bald take on some real actual bad guys, all-time great Punk opponent Samoa Joe at the helm, wormy little shit-eating partners Knife Pervert and Juice Robinson behind him, building up a handful of different matches and stories all at the same time.

To be clear, it’s not perfect.

Like a lot of the big Collision matches, it sometimes feels like it’s lasting too long simply to make a point (and in cases of some of the non-Punk Collision efforts, definitely would, no equivocation about it). You can lose the second of two control segments — this one on Cash — and not only lose very little, but tighten up the match and get rid of a slight lull in what is otherwise a steady series of high points. Jay White also feels sort of lost here in an older style match, not getting to add in cool moves and bullshit smoke and mirrors stuff that helps him as a singles guy, but also lacking the skill in getting everything out of small moments on screen like Juice has, and not being the focal point like Joe is. “Exposed” is maybe a strong term, but Jay White is a lot more like MJF than CM Punk, and it stands out here. There’s also what I experience now for the first time, being in the building as this happened, which is that Kevin Kelly is dogshit on commentary, and as Nigel McGuinness would shake off the WWEism to his game, he didn’t help things either. So, this is not a match entirely without flaw.

It still just gets so much right.

People have said it felt like old wrestling or compared it to territory work, but the old wrestling it feels like — and I really really really hate saying this, someone dig me a grave and put me in the ground — is the stuff Samoa Joe and CM Punk were involved with the last time they regularly wrestled in the same company.

Something that always appealed to me about Peak ROH — not so much at the time, experiencing it as a teenager, but in every look back at it since — was the way it was able to essentially approach wrestling in a serious Crockettesque way, but to also apply all of the cool moves and ideas of modern wrestling to it without every getting too much in the way of the presentation. For all of the nasty head drops or sick dives or pure violence out there, it felt like, more often than not, that there were reasons for everything happening, and that, at least in terms of the things that mattered, that this was a competition. It’s the thing people always talk about, but rarely ever seem to actually do, either getting too boring and rigid with it or too loose, and never getting the mixture exactly right.

This match came closer than most to finding that balance again.

Not only is the majority of this a kind of leap off the page exciting fast paced wrestling while still always feeling real enough to impress, but in its main main main goal — give CM Punk vs. Samoa Joe to audiences both new and old — it succeeds more than any other build up tag around it.

Punk and Joe do not share the ring for a terribly long time here (correct decision), but being two of the best ever, get every second of their time together correct. The large idea is the idea that Joe is someone Punk has never beaten and maybe does not know how to beat — a first in AEW — and they completely nail that. The near-submission at the end when Punk is being choked out before FTR can save is the part everyone zeroes in on, and for good reason, but in their exchange early on, they establish that with an immediacy and efficiency largely unmatched on this roster. That exchange also shows the other layer here, all the great little details for the older fans. Punk trying to show what he’s learned in the last eighteen years with kicking and a greater emphasis on striking, only for Joe to immediately shut it down with way better striking, leading to Punk going to the old standby in the headlock, and things of that nature.

Like the match itself, it’s a rare combination, teasing without coming all that close to giving away just yet, offering these great little fist-pumper moments for the oldheads (hello) but, seemingly based on experience in the arena, also something simple enough to hook just about anybody, a big killer who pretty much dominates the top babyface.

The match is also, mostly, really really well assembled.

Not only in the sense that, yes, they build to the Punk tag coming last in the rotation and they build to Punk vs. Joe, and once the teaser is over, they build to a longer run at the end, but more than that. The layout is — maybe less than totally necessary second control bit aside — pristine. Classical formula, but always with some real hard shot or cool move or sequence in there to keep the attention. Cut offs and transitions that aren’t always super obvious, great heel bullshit from Juice, FTR members struggling against the brute force of Joe to get that over even further, and a particularly great finishing run with, as previously mentioned, one of the great false finishes of the year without even the benefit of a kick out for the pop. The match is far from a full on fireworks show, and it is much better than being purely functional, and somewhere in the middle there is something close to exactly what I want a semi-lengthy television main event tag to be, the best of all worlds.

Following the Shatter Machine, Juice walks into the GTS, and Our Heroes (and their annoying podcaster friend) prevail.

Send ’em home happy.

Put them back in the hotel room that they got on relatively short notice down the street from a friend’s apartment, order some delivery, make them watch HAPPY TOGETHER (1997) for the fortieth time and then also HEAVY METAL PARKING LOT for the first time, pass out, enjoy the hotel gym and pool, and head home because shit, right, you have an opening shift on Monday, you gotta get some actual rest. That is maybe less universal than it is personal, but the beautiful thing about a match like this is that I think it offers both.

It’s ideal TV/non-major live event stuff. Long enough to feel substantial, like nobody got robbed by buying a ticket, but without giving anything too major away. A great match while still leaving room for so many more great matches to come, getting that the main point of this show is the catharsis of simply seeing the hero again. A match that attains its greatness through the quality of the craft on display, and less so because they aim for a Great Match (although they do). It’s a lost art, even for some of the guys in this match themselves, and even if they didn’t get the mixture entirely right, they had the right recipe, and it’s hard to fault them too much for a little experimentation. The goal, in a larger sense, is simply too admirable, on top of the match quality itself, to let the little things matter too much. Show people that it’s worth the time, attention, and in some cases, the money they spent on it, and hook them for more. I can’t say it worked on everyone, there are people who were and are too far gone for this to ever work on, the toothpaste is out of the tube in many respects, but for what Collision is, this was just about perfect, and I miss it already.

Famously now, in the in-ring promo that began this debut episode of the show, CM Punk said to anyone who felt wronged that he was sorry “the only people softer than you are the wrestlers you like”.

Watching this, and watching all that’s come since, I’m sorry too.

***1/4

DIY vs. The Revival, WWE NXT (1/11/2017)

This was for John Boy and Ciampa’s NXT Tag Team Titles.

It’s the forgotten match of their three title matches together (not just by you, but by me as well when initially putting together the 2017 watchlist), and not just because it was on weekly NXT at a point when a lot of people had stopped consuming this on a week-to-week basis, and also happening in front of a crowd once again burnt out by Full Sail tapings as opposed to white hot Brooklyn and Toronto crowds.

What’s here clearly lacks the ambition of those Takeover matches in 2016, the spirit of the thing feeling more like throwing one more out there to fill up a weekly main event slot, the house show version of the thing, rather than those other matches that clearly set out not only to deliver the best match on a significant show, but deliver something real special in a longer lasting sense. It’s not the greatest crime in the world, showing up to just have a great regular level television match, but it is pretty easy to see why it wound up forgotten about.

Still!

There’s a lot to like here, and as with the previous match ups, it’s a match that offers up the goods on a few different levels.

In a mechanical sense, they do it again.

For the third time, this is a match with so many cool little shifts and changes and cut offs and counters. It’s crisp and exciting, really well put together, and another victory for the entire idea of this match up. Gargano’s knee selling is also genuinely pretty good. Imperfect, of course, as he is who he is, but between resting off the tag and always hobbling in some way after that, it’s again a level of effort and care that goes a long way. This match isn’t really one for major nearfalls or high level dramatic moments, but what it does offer up is predictably great, and to their credit, all new.

Story wise, it’s another hit and the perfect ending to this series.

The Revival goes after John Boy’s leg within the first few minutes, not only going back to what worked in the match that they won, but no longer wasting time about it. There’s an urgency and meanness on a level that they didn’t quite show before. All the same, when Ciampa can get in and Gargano’s leg heals enough to help out, The Revival never seem like they have a real chance. The late match dirty tricks work, the Shatter Machine is cut off on top of every other double team they try, and the DIY Sandwich Boy shuts them down at the end, really coming off as a period at the end of a story in a match that had the potential to keep it going. For all that the previous matches had to say about Gargano and Ciampa’s struggles to get past The Revival, they’re past them now, and this feels like a match in which one team has the other totally figured out. The professional wrestling version of a fearsome offensive or defensive scheme totally solved after a big game finally broke it open.

The problem of the match, at least compared to the previous successes, is that something simple and good is all that they really aim for. The drama of the past matches isn’t quite there, they don’t aim as high in terms of what they’re doing on offense or the sheer amount of twists and turns thrown in. It’s an interesting approach, DIY having now totally figured this out and looking like the totally unquestioned dominant force in the division, and it’s an idea that does a lot for me as a result of how different it is from how these things often go. Still, it’s the more relaxed nature of the match that ultimately makes this the clear third of their three matches together.

Exactly what you’d expect, a neat television style rematch of one of the decade’s great large event pairings. Not quite one just for the completionists out there, still being a pretty great match, but definitely inessential despite its own greatness.

***

The Revival vs. American Alpha, WWE NXT Takeover Dallas (4/1/2016)

This was for The Revival’s NXT Tag Team Titles.

A lot of times, you’ll see many either incredibly particular or incredibly stupid people on the internet hate on The Revival/FTR for wearing their influences on their sleeves. We can go into a whole different thing about my problem with people who claim to love WCW but clearly never watched it, the whole Mance Warner thing, but it feels sort of related. It’s never been something that made a lot of sense to me outside of kind of being a little bit cheesy about it, unless you’re just so afraid of being earnest that you have to point and laugh and run away from it any time anything confronts you honestly. It’s no better or worse than anyone else, only really a tribute act if you’re looking for something to use as an insult, as if no other act has ever been influenced and taken cues from other great ones.

I begin with that because, of all the Revival or FTR matches ever (perhaps save their recent meeting with the RNRX) to try and add in older school spots and concepts, this match is their most overt and successful ode to tradition.

Largely, that’s because they have the perfect opponents for it. A lot of times, it’s a more modern team across the ring from them. That’s not always a bad thing, that can mean DIY as much as it can mean the Lucha Brothers, but you get a lot of meeting in the middle with those matches. Their best ever match, obviously later to come in 2016, is one such occasion. Chad Gable and Jason Jordan are just as old school as The Revival in their own way though, this pure whitest of meat superathletic legitimate background having babyface tag team. The best parts of The Steiners, combined with the likeability, vulnerability, and quickness of a Rock and Roll Express or if you want an even better tag team, The Fantastics.

They hit all the beats you’d associate with a match like this.

Stooging, cut off spots, hope spots, the hot tag, even that old JCP style mix of having enough nearfalls and finishing run spots to be more than a traditional match-ends-thirty-seconds-after-the-hot-tag Southern Tag, but never enough that it’s overwhelming or that you lose that hot tag excitement.

Every single one, and they’re all done perfectly.

The stooging is pristine. It’s so easy to get the wrong balance here, to make the heels look too weak so that the rest of the match isn’t totally believable. Teams that The Revival drew inspiration from have gotten it wrong themselves, the Andersons vs. Steiners matches in 1990 never seemed to totally find the right mix, but this match does. They also completely nail the idea of the attempted and failed cut off spot in transition, these heel tricks that initially fall short, leading to one that finally works. The result is not only that you gain a little respect for Gable and Jordan for not falling for the bullshit, but you also gain some for the Revival for finding something that does work. They create a real struggle as a result, shown how good both teams are, and the battle to try and outmaneuver each other and outthink each other, on top of the purely physical and mechanical. It’s such an impressive thing that they do there, this balancing act pulled off with as much grace and precision as you’ll ever see.

Everyone kills it in the back half of the match too. Both Jordan and Gable have these incredible hot tags full of fire and energy and all those other adjectives. Save one singular spot in the middle, everything is as crisp as it ever could be. Nearfalls and big moments come from remarkably simple spots. Corner dodges, counters into cradles, all in front of one of the hottest crowds of the entire decade. Once again, it’s so impressive, because you’ve seen in the years since how often this can fail or even just fail short of the marker set here.

American Alpha finally pulls off the Grand Amplitude for the win, capping off a run of nearfalls revolving around basics and pure science with one of the coolest and biggest tag finishers that there is. Another wonderful little touch to bring it home, capping off a match full of remarkable little touches.

The best 1986 NWA World Wide Wrestling match of 2016.

***1/4

CM Punk/Darby Allin/Sting vs. MJF/FTR, AEW Dynamite (12/22/2021)

A match close to my heart, not only as a weird WCW nostalgia thing, but also in the fact that on paper, even a year earlier, this is entirely ridiculous and seems 100% fake.

When I was a teenager, and a little bit more in my early twenties (I have never known when to give up a hobby. I run a blog after all.), I used to love to fantasy book on wrestling message boards. A lot of it has aged very poorly (most, I would imagine), as does almost anything half-creative that a teenager tries to do. Sometimes it would be an in-present-day co-op fed with someone else, like the WWE in the late 2000s, in which my only goal was to get a John Cena vs. CM Punk main event for the title at WrestleMania, knowing already how good it would be.

Other times, and these are the fun ones, totally removed from any reality. WCW in the 2000s if it won the war, turning WCW Saturday Night into its own universe where our heroes The Dick Butchers (a team of Dick Togo and Necro Butcher) fought the villainous Lee Marshall Family (a team that — and I absolutely refuse to go check — included Super Dragon, Buff Bagwell, CIMA, The Backseat Boyz, and probably others) in a feud ending with Dick Togo throwing Lee Marshall out the airlock and into space, as I made the call to take the old THE MOTHASHIP call as literally as possible. That’s the sort of stuff I look back fondly on years later and talk about a few times a year with old friends who once shared the same hobby before growing out of it as an adult, as truly, it is very silly and a waste of time once you no longer have all of the time in the world to waste. That’s what TEW is for, you know?

This match is home to exactly the sort of fantasy booking nonsense — CM Punk teaming with Sting against a heel supergroup, with Sting and Punk both playing tribute to the other with face paint and gear, and the match getting twenty five minutes on free TV — that we loved and imagined at our wildest states. It is unbelievably bizarre and wildly awesome to see leak out into the real world like this, in the vein of much of the best AEW stuff.

It also rules in real life.

The action itself is as great as always.

Darby is a generational pinball and a match is again better for only asking him to cover mechanical elements. Sting and Punk are both great hot tags, changing a lot as they’ve aged, but never losing the energy that’s at the root of all of these things succeeding. MJF takes the best bump of his career near the end, even if it’s one taken entirely on accident. The real big takeaway from this though is how obviously excited Punk and FTR were to get to wrestle each other for the first time, having a lot of really cool ideas against each other and creating a perfect combination. The match itself isn’t anything new, given that the bulk of it is a rematch from that all-time fun Dynamite Grand Slam tag, but it was a joy to see it all expanded upon.

Sting, Darby, and FTR’s perfect marriage from three months earlier is only bolstered by the additions of both CM Punk and the Punk/MJF feud as a whole.

Punk is on the same page as FTR in terms of the stuff they all love, but miles ahead in terms of being able to work it into matches in more organic ways, and helps them take it a step further. MJF is the least of the six in this, but to be entirely fair, that’s by design. He’s a pest constantly, running and hiding from CM Punk, and only occasionally getting in the match when Sting and Darby are being worked over. He still occasionally sometimes comes off as someone playing an old-school heel rather than being one (a criticism one could fairly levy at FTR on occasion, but not to the level that it often is), but guys like Punk and Sting help him out so much in this regard, knowing all the little beats and rhythms he’s trying to hit and helping him get there with a little more accuracy and a lot more believability. They also have the time to really play around with all the different ways MJF can avoid Punk, from classic refusals to tag in, to being chased around the building, to the ways he would hide during the ending run. The great almost-payoff comes at the end, when Punk finally has him in his sights, only for his policeman Dax to shove him out of harm’s way and take the bullet instead.

Dax takes the GTS, falls a step back into the Scorpion Death Drop, before Darby hits the Coffin Drop last for the win.

Brothers in Paint celebrate in Greensboro once again, everyone leaves smiling real big.

Another of those classic chunks of pro wrestling that sometimes breaks loose from AEW.

***

FTR vs. The Rock & Roll Express, Big Time Wrestling (1/22/2022)

This was a commissioned review from Chick Fritts. You too have the capability to pay me to watch any sorts of wrestling matches, shows, or other media interests over at www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. The starting rate is $5 a match, $7 if you want me to watch a match with the clear intent of making me suffer (your Fiend/Rollins HIAC matches and what have you), and if you want a full show or something else, hit the DMs and we can talk that through. As always, it’s very appreciated when you want to know what I thought about a match so much that you part with your hard-earned (probably) money to do that.

For anyone else interested and who doesn’t know how to find things for themselves, this is on Youtube. 

I loved this.

It felt genuinely great to watch, even as someone without, like, a ton of nostalgia.

This isn’t like, guys I grew up with hanging in there with modern masters or anything quite like that. Truth is, I didn’t grow up with them or anything like that. I came to the Rock and Roll Express, and also the Midnight Express and the Andersons and The Fantastics and the like relatively late in life. I’m thirty one, almost thirty two, and I wasn’t raised with this stuff. I had seen the big things and had hard opinions, like already preferring The Fantastics to the RNRX based entirely on the 1988 JCP/NWA stuff I had seen and on their All Japan Pro Wrestling work, or loving the Rockers vs. Arn/Tully series. For the most part though, I didn’t dig into the old JCP territory stuff until I was twenty five or twenty six. I don’t have childhood or coming of age sort of nostalgia here in the same way I do for like 2000s indies or anything, but it’s still something that holds a special place in my heart because fundamentally, something about it just feels right in the way so much other wrestling doesn’t.

Beyond just feeling really good, this is also a match that works on some fundamental mechanical level too.

Obviously, this is a match with limitations.

Ricky and Robert are old and slow. There’s a few moments here where seams become real apparent, like the classic piledriver block into a crossbody from the other partner off the ropes bit that Ricky takes a little long to get up to the top for and so they have to improvise on. Past their prime doesn’t really even begin to cover it, they’ve been past their prime since like 1988, but it doesn’t matter.

Like any act that’s lasted as long as it has, it was never about being young and athletic so much as always knowing what to do with everything.

Even at however old they are now, Ricky and Robert have these great little tricks that nobody else is doing. Rolls and counters and finding ways to hit old moves and basic pieces of offense that nobody else is doing. They’re also just so great at milking little things for all they’re worth, like taking a few tries to escape a hair pulling headlock and the like. All the basics are also as tight as ever. Perfect overhand rights, great knees, and with each man having at least one moment of being to perform at least one old thing surprisingly well, like Gibson’s headlock takeover/headscissors two-in-one and Morton’s hurricanrana. You get the sense that each man really only has the ability to do one sensational thing per match, but they get just so much out of them that it doesn’t matter all that much.

One main reason it doesn’t matter all that much is because FTR are just so great here.

It’s a really wonderful performance. Not one of the best matches of the year or anything like that, but just airtight and clearly something they cared so much about. Stooging isn’t their strongest suit, but they do one of their better jobs ever here. The first half of the match that’s all them bumping around and eating shit is a highlight, maybe even moreso than their work in control. When the match threatens to come apart as a result of the age of Ricky and Robert, both Dax and Cash are so so so great and finding ways to keep it together. For example, on the previously mentioned piledriver spot, Dax has to stall for time, but instead of wobbling around in the same place like an asshole, he stumbles around a few steps back and then forward, buying Ricky time to get to the top rope in a more natural feeling way.

Most impressively, they’re able to do all of this and have this match that is clearly deferential and reverent as hell, but without ever feeling like they’re not still these total and complete shit birds. The end result is a match that feels equal parts like some fitting final farewell for the Express, given Morton’s 2022 retirement tour, but also a road map on how to still make matches like this work in modern times.

One that, hopefully, gets a lot of use in the future.

Not to get too whatever here also, but it’s quite the damning statement that this team that is thirty plus years past their peak has a better match against FTR than anyone in AEW has for the last year and a half outside of the Sting/Darby team. Be it that they were unable to or unwilling too, it’s a statement for sure that this match is better than any of the three PPV tag title matches that they’ve had in AEW while being significantly shorter than any of them.

Am I saying that the 2022 version of the Rock & Roll Express is better than the Lucha Bros in 2021 or than the Omega/Page and Young Bucks teams were in 2020?

Well, actually yes.

Yes, I am absolutely saying that.

The feel good hit of the winter, both delivering the goods in a nostalgaic match, but showing how well this style can still work in a slightly more modern environment, on top of delivering a hilarious little statement at the end of it all as well.

***

 

FTR vs. Sting/Darby Allin, AEW Dynamite Grand Slam (9/22/2021)

Another one of these perfect little Sting and Darby tags, and outside of the cinematic, the best of the bunch. The match is an exceedingly good time in the way that all the Sting matches have been, but goes above and beyond even that.

In large part, that’s because instead of fighting a fun team that they can plug into some sort of a formula, they’re facing FTR.

This is not the blog for FTR/The Revival libel.

I’ll grant you that, like many others who seem to elude much of this criticism, they benefited significantly from the way NXT would allow people to practice matches before the big events. For the most part though, there’s been a very stupid backlash to them for a long time, as if being shoved into bad no-crowd 30:00 epics against Kenny/Hangman and then The Bucks, while having to acquiesce to that style of wrestling, was their fault and not just a bad idea in general (and one made worse by the terrible booking of both programs). Generally, you tend to get this from many of the dumbest people on the internet, but it’s the sort of thing that came to mind here. Some of the cosplay routines can get a bit lame, but for the most part, they’re still one of the best tag teams in the world. Everything that worked about them in NXT still works now. Adherents to all the classic routines, real clever about finding new ways to do things, great at everything mechanically, all of that. One of the little highlights of 2021 was them getting to show that again, even if they only got to do it in smaller doses as a jobber to the stars team, since they were almost definitely only ever hired to lose to The Young Bucks in the first place.

They’re perfect opponents for Sting and Darby.

It’s a match that calls for a tag team playing the hits, and nobody plays the old hits better than FTR. Awesome bumpers, great cut off spots, and yet again, they find fun new ways into old ideas. Every bit of offense or desperate cut off to Allin has some great little detail to it, like Dax going out of his way to get in front of Darby before pushing him back, or Cash reaching back to grab Allin’s hand while lifting him in the air, so that he couldn’t reach and tag Sting anyways. Given how unsympathetic Darby Allin is, it’s a major accomplishment that a control segment on him is as great as it is.

Darby, for his part, does everything he’s best at here. To be fair. That is to say, he dies a lot, lets Sting do the comeback, and then hits one super gross thing at the end. The match doesn’t ask me to cheer for him so much as it asks me to want to see Sting kick ass, and I want that in 2021 as much as I wanted it in 1998.

Sting kicks a ton of ass in this match.

Of all the AEW tags he’s had so far, Sting seems the most energetic and physical in this match, and it doesn’t feel particularly close. He’s never shown up to one of these and mailed it in, but in front of AEW’s biggest crowd and ever and with everyone in the match absolutely killing it, he seems to 100% feel some sort of extra motivation, and delivers his best performance of the year, which means it’s one of the best performances of the year period. It’s not just throwing hands and clotheslines and the signature, which given Sting’s age and condition, is more than fine. He’s sprinting around the ring here, he’s even coming off the top for an outstanding classic Sting style nearfall off of a crossbody to save a partner from a Piledriver.

The finish kicks a ton of ass too, as Sting dodges a set up chair spot in the corner to send Dax in, and goes into the Scorpion Deathlock. Cash tries to reach outside and pull him through, but something new interrupts the old playbook, as Allin crushes Cash with the Coffin Drop on the apron. Sting yanks his man back out, and that’s that. Our hero and his horrible son celebrate, everyone cheers, wrestling is the best.

One of the coolest matches of the year, which given what comprises one-quarter of it, is no small accomplishment.

***