This was pretty good in about the stupidest way possible. Suzuki's whole bit was long in the tooth for me a while back and every time I've watched him over the last few years the less I really care about it, but he's settled into a touring formula that really works for him (and the vast majority of his audiences). If nothing else I like wrestlers making stupid faces, so there's that too. You can tell this is the type of match Danielson left WWE to have and I'm not sure he threw more than five strikes there that landed harder than the lightest one here. Look, I'm over the modern strike exchange. "You hit me while I stand here and then I'll hit you while you stand there, and we'll both do it as hard as possible" is not in the least bit compelling to me at this point. Yes, I am a miserable grouch. But I guess Danielson's history of having his brains scrambled gave this an edge that most modern strike exchanges don't really have, and from a character standpoint I buy him engaging in this sort of sadism just to prove a point. From a character standpoint you obviously buy Suzuki engaging in it. "It's their character!" is an argument you can use to explain away all sorts of dumb shit in wrestling, but this is literally Minoru Suzuki now. He's a crackpot and for better or worse it's what he does. They certainly took the jaw off each other and Danielson's sell of that first big forearm was phenomenal, so I suppose rote 2020s strike exchanges is something else I can add to the list of things Bryan Danielson will make tolerable in the year 2022. When they got to the grappling I loved it. Clearly Danielson's stylistic preference is to work some approximation of modern New Japan, but this was a reminder of how amazing he'd be at working UWF or Battlarts or even 2010s IWRG matches (Battlarts might be too high on the scrambled brains scale). All of the struggles over holds, the joint manipulation, the way they milked escapes, these were two guys who knew they could stretch out without needing to hold the other's hand. I'll also say that this never felt like it went 20 minutes, which is impressive because I've seen similar matches go 12 and could swear they went 30.
Bryan Danielson v Bobby Fish (AEW Dynamite, 10/16/21)
A very different affair. It was really good and for the most part I thought Danielson was great in it. Fish was a mean wee bastard and went after the leg in pretty nasty ways, as seems to be his wont in AEW. Danielson didn't sell it HUGE and a few years ago I'd have wanted him to really draw attention to it, if for no reason other than him being really good at that sort of thing. But that part wasn't what impressed me anyway; it was that this match took place not but 24 hours after Danielson and Suzuki obliterated each other and Danielson wasn't about to let you forget that he was banged up. He started much slower than he had in every other match before this, could never quite get anything going, then in an awesome bit on the floor he tried to hoist Fish onto his shoulders to roll him back in the ring and was visibly struggling to even manage it. This was a guy who'd played 120 minutes against a team of bastards the night before, who'd been kicked up and down the pitch, who was now being thrown into a high-intensity training session the next day even though the sport scientist pleaded with the head coach to rest him and the head coach wouldn't listen so the sport scientist was the one copping all the shit as usual and you could tell Danielson was struggling. When he manages to get a foothold he does it by going after Fish's leg and we get some nice revenge spots of him wrapping it around the post. Finish is tremendous. They're both fighting over the kneebar close to the ropes, both down-kicking each other in the face, then Danielson reels off about five and Fish has to cover up before he loses all his teeth through his wee gumshield. Danielson gets up, drags him away from the ropes, and sinks into a truly vile heel hook that about dislocates Fish's patella on the way down. Just an amazing "enough of this shit" moment from a guy who plainly had had enough.
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