This was the finals of a #1 Contender’s tournament.
It’s a great match.
The match largely succeeds through through individual performances, as both Bryan and Miro are pretty great here.
Bryan is the greatest of all time an the best in the world and just about everything here is awesome. Big bumps, nasty shots thrown back, and able to occasionally throw in these moments of desperate action that did a lot for Miro. On his end, I’m not sure Miro wasn’t even better here. It’s a harder role, threading the needle between whipping ass but also selling a lot, and Miro does a tremendous job. His leg selling, when the match asks it of him, is pretty good. All of his offense is nasty, and his striking is getting better and better on a more minute basis. Miro shows off some real gnarly overhand rights here that I’m not sure he had in him a year ago, for example. He’s not quite able to build himself into a mountain for Bryan to climb, although that’s not exactly Miro’s fault entirely.
Sadly, I don’t think this worked exactly like they hoped for, or wound up as great as it could have been or as it seemed like it should have been, given the years both had.
More than anything, this feels like a match that isn’t quite sure what it wants to be.
Bryan projects bigger in AEW than in the WWE, both because of competition and also because JR and Tony aren’t constantly shouting at you about how small he is every thirty seconds, and so that element doesn’t totally get to work like it did in their previous meetings. Miro is a great bruiser, but Bryan maybe trades a little too well with him for that to work. They also don’t totally nail any longer term focus either, with Bryan occasionally working the left leg (in addition to Miro’s taped up right thigh), but it’s not something that feels present enough throughout the match. Bryan also wins with a neck lock at the end, which would be a great play on Miro’s bad neck from months earlier, if that was something that was brought up much at all, be it in the match or on commentary.
In retrospect, it’s something I kind of like, at least in a larger sense. Bryan preparing for his heel run in the heavyweight division by not doing the thing against a big guy that he spent the last decade doing. He works more evenly and controls a little more and doesn’t have to struggle quite so much. It’s a strong win and given that Miro was put out of action for three months and counting (EDITOR’S NOTE — written on February 3rd, 2022), it’s one that definitely serves a purpose there. It’s a strong win, decidedly NOT an underdog conquering a big guy, and it’s something I have a greater appreciation for than I did watching it in real time.
There’s a lot to this, and while I like all of those pieces and like the individual performances in this, I don’t think it’s something that entirely comes together as well as it could have, succeeding through raw talent and effort moreso than any one cohesive element about the match itself.
If you’re going to succeed through force of talent though, it helps to have more of it than just about anybody.