Miro v Eddie Kingston
This was badass as fuck. By god what an Eddie Kingston performance. Excalibur basically says it outright on commentary anyway, but this was clearly Kingston doing 90s All Japan, just not in the corny way with him hitting yer big Orange Crush Bombs and Burning Hammers. He wears his influences on his sleeve right next to his heart and this was him doing Kawada if Kawada one day decided he wanted to EMOTE like Kobashi. The strikes, the selling, the comebacks - those that failed and those that were successful - were all magic, had perfect timing and he had pretty much everyone on strings the whole match. Lots of amazing little moments from him as well, like when Miro booted him in the face and Kingston started blinking away tears like his nose was broken. The little delayed staggers after getting rocked, the struggle over moves, just great. I'm honestly neither here nor there on Miro and I don't recall ever having much of a stance on him one way or the other, but this was as surly as I've ever seen him and he was basically the perfect foil for a man who would die on his sword. Thought the finish with the exposed turnbuckle stuff and desperation low blow came off great. Kingston honest to god might be better now than he was 15 years ago.
Young Bucks v Lucha Brothers (Cage Match)
Well this was certainly something. Look, you know it'll never totally be my jam, but for some reason I want to persevere with the stuff I generally don't like because I'm actually really enjoying everything else. And this was what it was. I am not the audience they're trying to appeal to and it feels like the audience they ARE trying to appeal to went home thrilled, so fair fucks to them for collaring that corner of the market. The second half I mostly quite liked, in fact. I mean it was a tag team cage match from 2021 and not 1981 so I was probably never going to LOVE it, but I already knew that so at least I wasn't likely to be disappointed. First half was more or less a series of one team doing a bunch of cool things followed by the other team doing the same, and there were no real transitions and it was sort of obvious that they were bouncing momentum back and forth because that's how they'd rehearsed the exchanges, but the stuff they were actually doing was mostly impressive. Like, I was a gymnast in my prime and fancied myself as quite a good one but I'll be fucked if I could pull off most of this shit so they have my deepest respect that I'm sure all four of them covet. But, you know, just like...do a proper transition maybe once or something. In the second half they dropped the pace and I thought it was way better for it, but then of course I would think that because I'm old and set in my ways. I'll level with you, I kind of loved the stupid thumbtack shoe. Then Penta got his Arena Mexico on and bled like fuck and Fenix had his mask all torn up and obviously that will resonate with a thing such as I. Revenge shots came off well and I dug Matt gettin' some colour to even things up. Fenix with the dive off the cage was loony toon but then the twenty superkick bit was maybe the worst thing I've ever seen and I once saw a man get kicked in the head by a horse but then the finish felt like a fucking gigantic moment and so we take the good with the dooky, as my grandmother would say. I enjoyed some of this, even if I wouldn't say I enjoyed it in totality.
CM Punk v Darby Allin
This is the sort of thing that probably isn't a five star match in the traditional sense, but for what I figure they were going for and the circumstances under which they wrestled it, I thought it was pretty much perfect. And even in the traditional sense of "is this a great wrestling match?" I honestly thought it was superb. Like, one of the three or four best matches I've watched so far. Both guys ruled. What I like most about what I've seen in this Punk run so far is that, even though he's one of the guys most responsible for the predominant wrestling style in America right now, he wrestles very differently from just about everyone else in the company. Most of the AEW roster wrestle some stylistic approximation - or evolution? - of what 2005 CM Punk was doing, but 2021/22 CM Punk had been retired for seven years and had a whole bunch of miles on the clock even before then, and he wrestled this match like a 40-something-year-old from 1995, forget 2005. He slowed down the pace because how the hell was he supposed to know if he had the engine to go long on a PPV yet, especially against a maniac like Allin? A fuckin abdominal stretch?! In 2021 AEW? Awesome. Then there were the little things that he's always been good at, like when he threw Darby into the corner so hard that he landed face down on the mat himself (and Darby's ring post bump is GOAT tier). The grin when he realised Darby's spine might be mangled, then immediately going for the bow and arrow. There were points as well where Darby would string together some offence and Punk would sort of huddle in the corner like "boy they were not hitting this hard in 2014 WWE, not even Ryback who didn't know how not to." I don't know if it was intentional or not but even the way he took that flip Stunner from Darby made him look like a guy who wasn't used to eating flip Stunners from tiny wildmen, how he landed almost flat on his stomach rather than how everyone else I've seen take it would. That's a 2021 move and Punk's still going off 2014 fumes. I guess that's pretty META~, but what is AEW if not meta and I really wouldn't be surprised if he did it on purpose. Know yer audience and all that. The GTS has also never looked better and the first one was all Darby leaning face-first into and falling dead weight through the ropes, but I loved Punk reacting like he really would've preferred for the wee fella to have landed in the ring so he could've put a cap on this thing. I'm hyped to watch Danielson stretch out and be the American Dragon again, but I think I'm more excited about watching Punk work as the one-time indie revolutionary who's been dropped into a future he's almost out of place in despite helping create it to begin with.
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