Tuesday 19 April 2022

Whiskey & Wrestling Gets All Elite

I don't think I've written a single word about AEW on this thing up until now. To be fair, I've watched about as many minutes of AEW as I have written words about it, so that'll be why. But my brother has a subscription to that Fite TV thing and in a very cool turn of events I can simply steal it from him and have access to basically every bit of AEW television. There are plenty of wrestlers in AEW that I don't really care about and those are the folk I won't watch much of as I jump into this, but there also now plenty of wrestlers I do care about and I'll watch stuff and write about some of it. I might even try my hand at some of those wrestlers I don't usually like and we'll see what's what. Eventually my plan is to basically pick up from the All Out PPV last September (Punk's debut match) and go through stuff chronologically until the present day. I imagine that idea will be dropped before its completion, but it's at least useful to have goals in life. Before then I've just been jumping around catching up with stuff that either sounds interesting or that other people who have similar preferences have talked up. It's mostly the Darby Allin stuff. 


Jon Moxley v Darby Allin (AEW Dynamite, 11/20/19) 

This is one I've been meaning to watch for a while now (about two and a half years, I guess). I think basically every person I regularly talk to about wrestling who has a decent idea of what I like has told me I would enjoy this, and sure enough they were very correct. This is actually one of my favourite Moxley performances and I thought he looked - if you'll excuse the pun - dynamite. Thought he managed to look vulnerable enough while still coming across as tough, gave Allin plenty and got surly as a bastard when necessary. Allin catching him with the surprise tope at the beginning ruled and nobody has a better tope in current day American wrestling than Darby Allin. Every tope in WWE these days looks full on dog muck because guys are obviously told to lead with their hands, so it looks like a diving shove and it quite frankly spits in the face of Ciclon Ramirez and Sangre Chicana who would tope someone with the crown of the head directly into somewhere between chest and chin and send the recipient several rows deep and into a pensioner's lap. Darby does not lead with his hands and just torpedoes folk at a hunner miles an hour, as it should be. At another point he flies off the top with a crossbody and I love that he just bounced clean off Moxley, who braced for contact and went full Colossus in metal form. Also loved Darby biting and stomping on Moxley's fingers, a couple times as a sort of desperation cut off spot to prevent Moxley from almost certainly dropping him on his skull. When Moxley put Allin in the body bag Darby brought to the ring I got a wee bit worried because I thought for sure he was going to powerbomb him or some nonsense, and even for a fella who routinely takes bumps with his hands literally tied behind his back a body bag powerbomb seemed more dangerous than it was worth. Ultimately he didn't do anything of the sort and I figured Darby was escaping without taking a potential crippling, but then Moxley went and absolutely fucking obliterated him with one of the wildest top rope DDTs I've ever seen. Darby is certifiable and this was great.

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