There's Only One Natural

Bryan Danielson v Dustin Rhodes (AEW Dynamite, 10/23/21)

I think I preferred Dustin/Punk by a little, but holy shit was this excellent. The Punk match is an interesting comparison, and I suppose an obvious one if you're a Dustin Rhodes fan. They're both kind of Dustin Rhodes dream matches, against guys who even a year ago you figured he'd probably missed the chance to stretch out with. Danielson is barely three years younger than Punk, but what made Punk/Dustin so cool is that Punk looked and worked like a man in his forties (meant in the best way possible). Danielson does not wrestle like a man in his forties. Danielson isn't trying to work his way back to his best before challenging for a title, or trying to gradually wrestle loose any ring rust. Danielson moves like he's always moved, like he's at the peak of his powers the same way he was in 2004 or 2013 or whenever else you want to argue he was at the peak of his powers. Even if Dustin is evergreen he's nowhere near his physical peak, and he wears his years and previous retirements less well than Danielson wears that distant memory of a sabbatical. What it meant was that this almost felt like a case of Dustin's ring awareness and positioning against Danielson's relentlessness. It was cool to see how Danielson would combat that size difference as well. At points he'd chop - sometimes literally - Dustin down to size, throwing kicks to the knee to set up kicks to the midsection to set up kicks to the head. In contrast, lots of Dustin's offence came through smart counters where he visibly drew Danielson in. The sidestepped tope, the powerslam where he let Danielson hit the ropes so he picked up his own momentum, the clothesline after dropping Danielson across the top rope, the lariat to counter the running knee. I'm not sure he ever put together much of an offensive run, but he picked his spots and they were all big ones. Danielson was a swarm, though. He would only be slowed, never stopped. I thought Dustin's selling in a broad sense was sensational, not so much in terms of limb selling or selling of a specific move or whatever, but of the accumulation of everything, the fight he was in and the weight of it on him -- the fuckin MAGNITUDE of it all if we can be melodramatic for a second. From the very beginning he was taking his time, not rushing into anything. Even after catching Danielson with an armdrag he was slow getting to his feet, while Danielson was already up and set and probably could've shot in to push the tempo if he really wanted to. When Danielson was peppering Dustin with shots early on it felt like a mismatch, where you figured Dustin would need to do something soon or he'd be overrun, then Danielson lowered his head a split second too early and Dustin almost savoured the moment before dropping down and hitting the big uppercut. It's just that the longer it went the greater the toll on him. After the superplex it looked like he tried to float over into a cover Barry Windham style but couldn't quite manage it, and Danielson was up first again, groggy as he was. Dustin unzipping the vest after he'd had enough of being kicked up and down the place was the perfect Lawler dropping the strap moment, though maybe you wondered if that was about all he had left. That ring positioning comes into play when Danielson has him in an armbar and Dustin can use those long legs to force the rope break, but then Danielson seizes the moment by throwing himself at Dustin and clinging to him like a limpet with the guillotine. I now wait patiently for Dustin v Eddie Kingston.