This review was commissioned by mu_iwakura over on my Ko-fi account.
I didn’t hate all of it.
In case that sounds like damning with faint praise, let it be known that there’s over two hours of footage where I find most of this match inoffensive, and several points of it somewhat worthy of praise as well.
Broadly speaking, I quite like Will Ospreay’s shoulder selling in this. Ospreay’s bad shoulder is the centerpoint of maybe half of the runtime’s drama, and he’s uncharacteristically mindful about it. The transition into the arm work might be some of the best stuff in the match too. The champion goes for an Oscutter on the apron but MJF gets out of dodge, the succeeding bump tweaking Ospreay’s shoulder and creating a target that the challenger is happy to exploit. MJF’s arm work itself is fairly focused and Ospreay seems genuinely handicapped at multiple moments of the match. He can’t quite hit a powerbomb with as much force, it visibly pains him to reverse and nail Irish whips, and he also can’t get quite the right grip on a second rope Styles Clash. There’s consequence to the damage he’s suffered–for the most part, but we’ll get to that–and it remains present through much of the runtime. Again, accuse me of being a forum-poisoned, limbwork merchant, you’re probably not far off, but when Ospreay cares to sell the shoulder he does it well and it adds necessary support to a very lofty structure.
At the same time, one can see the ambition for classical storytelling techniques that MJF often strives for. It’s long been known that he counts classic American heels like your Flairs and Pipers as chief influences, it’s always just been in the deployment of such ideas that he might struggle. I once accused MJF of knowing all the notes but none of the music, but every now and then dissonant chords hit the ear just right. There’s multiple moments here where Max clearly understand the general shape of how things work. He gloats, wastes time, and eats shit for it. Perhaps no better spot highlights this better than standing outside the ring, bragging about being the smartest wrestler on the planet, and being just in the right spot for Will Ospreay to nail him with a diving Hidden Blade to the outside. In a better world, might just be the finish to a perfectly good TV match.
This is not that world.
While far from the most putrescent and awful wrestling I’ve ever seen, what ends up being produced is bad in a more banal way. There’s a lot of good mostly because there’s just a lot. With so much content and time to fill and two athletically fit and capable pro wrestlers on a high stage, law of averages works out in their favor.
What ends up damning this match instead is something of a death by a thousand cuts. Some tiny nicks like when I needle at the sequencing of moments here. Like, really, the Tommy Young abdominal stretch spot 50 minutes in after we’ve already done an elbow through a table and multiple apron spots? There’s also the occasional repetition that goes nowhere. Take Max’s leg injury feint which he utilizes twice against Ospreay but never receives any direct comeuppance for, thus making it read a little more like going back to the well to fill the immense space demanded of them. Or how it’s somehow in the last ten minutes that we get that classic super indie trope of trading nearfalls back and forth only without the charm of Cabana and Punk losing track of their score in an Iron Man match. Those little choices annoy just enough in the moment but can be forgotten with enough time. Taken with the match in totality though and they contribute to this overblown affair being so much less than the sum of its parts.
Which is to say that the worst of their choices get exacerbated by the smaller ones. And there’s lots of blame to share here between the two.
For one, we have some classic Ospreayisms at work. Despite my initial praise for his shoulder work, which I still contend might be the best overall creative choice of the match, there’s moments when he’s just infuriating about it. Fairly early into the arm work, but not so early that Ospreay isn’t already expressing the damage done to his shoulder, Ospreay transitions into a comeback with a handspring twisting kick, happily placing his body weight on the bad shoulder. And that’s annoying to me, but it gets rage-inducing when seconds later he nails a one-handed backspring without letting his bad arm touch the canvas. Which means he could have just fucking done that instead but he just had to get that goddamn handspring in anyway. It’s so difficult being asked to accept a lesser choice when a far more correct one is presented in such close proximity. Just do the good thing! You showed us all you could fucking do it, why couldn’t you just do it!
Then there’s the doctor spot. Valiant, brave, courageous hero Will Ospreay calling the doctor over to deal with his ouchie shoulder (we know which one it is because he points at it incessantly). The generous read here is that this is an attempt at worked shoot. By calling Dr. Sampson over to check on his shoulder, the general idea is that it adds legitimacy to Ospreay’s injury. They play off the potential for a match stoppage here, but the character signals are just so mixed. The exact same effect could have been achieved with Bryce stopping to check in on Ospreay instead of Ospreay looking a little too vulnerable by asking for the doctor himself. How many babyfaces do you recall wanting to cheer for after they call for a timeout to get checked on? That feels so directly opposed to decades of historical precedent and character tradition that it can’t help as read as anything as a gigantic waste of time (and there’s a lot of it to waste!). Note too that this moment occurs during an ad break, positioning itself as inessential and inconsequential. In fact, Ospreay continues to sell the shoulder afterwards, meaning if the entire was just excised from the match, absolutely nothing would have changed.
Also, if I’m being really mean, just pop it in yourself, Will. If we’re just talking kayfabe here, many, many, many people have done that before you. And it reads as a failure on your part as a character to not be able to suck it up and do it yourself. Grow some fucking hair on your chest and ram your shoulder into the turnbuckle like a real fucking wrestler.
Then there’s leg work too. What leg work, Joseph?! I don’t blame you for forgetting, cause these fucking guys certainly did!
And you know what, let’s really get into the weeds with this one. Because this is a shocking example of Will Ospreay selling too much and hurting the match as a whole. One of MJF’s early strategies is to attack Ospreay’s leg. Immediately, bad idea. Just why try? We know he has to get his shit in so one way or another, this is going to fall by the wayside. But the way that happens here is especially fucking annoying. Because Ospreay lulls into a false sense of quality by actually selling the leg for a while. It’s not perfect, and he’ll still go for a springboard or two, but for about ten minutes, he puts some emphasis on being hobbled. So much so, in fact, that he hits two Kawada-style crumble sells when whipped out of the corner. So beat up are his legs that he struggles to keep any weight on them, but it’ll be okay in the end because Dangerous O will be just fine.
But don’t worry, good ole Billy Boy heals up real fast and when it’s time to start doing moves, it’s time to start doing moves, baby. Leg work, schmeg work, amirite? A big strong wrestler like Will Ospreay never let the narratives in a match get in the way of hitting some super sick shit that makes everybody go OOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. That same Will Ospreay that just can’t get to his feet is absolutely nailing Spanish Flies and multiple variations of running Hidden Blades and multiple (and god so fucking many) poisonranas and landing on his feet after getting ranaed off the top because if we’ve seen a cool GIF once, you know that we should see it all the fucking time. That’s how we keep things special, right? By just doing it again over and over and over?
When this match really takes a turn is in the final ten minutes though. And it’s here that a lot of the attempted creativity of the match really does fly out the window. Like I said, this becomes bad in a more banal way. The big gestures towards a more modern epic style of pro wrestling just is not for me, even with Max’s occasional attempts at incorporating a more old school approach to heel work mixed in. Those two ideas as presented in this match mix like oil and water. Sure, Max will get clocked for wasting time to pose, but then he’ll just spring right back forward to keep nailing strikes and trading with Ospreay because he can’t just be a stooge, he must also be a Genuine Pro Wrestling Threat to Will Ospreay.
The final moments come out in an absolute rush of movement, as one expects of the general AEW house style. It takes an awful detour in the literal final moment though, when upon hearing the one minute call, Ospreay decides to agonize over the morality of hitting the Tiger Driver–which he had previously injured Bryan Danielson with–instead of using any of his million other moves to try and get the win. It’s a built in character flaw of Ospreay’s, but the breadth of his offensive arsenal makes this hesitation read as schmultzy melodrama as opposed to an actual dramatic hook. You don’t want to do the Tiger Driver? Fine. Just use any of the other things you’ve won matches with constantly for years.
The hesitation costs Ospreay though and one ref bump and a Dynamite Diamond Ring shot later, Max wins the belt at 59:58. Two seconds shy of the one hour mark.
The runtime itself didn’t end up upsetting as much as I’d assumed. With matches like these, the kind that have a reputation of badness at least as far as my circles go, it’s easy to mythologize it in the mind. But distance has actually done it some favors. I’m not sitting and watching Dynamite at 8 AM in the morning, coming to the slow realization they’re actually going to an hour. I’m years separated, seeing how their creative choices informed that hour, and the truth is that most of it was genuinely and truly just fine. The finish is a little bit of a contrived heel bit, the kind of thing that probably belongs in e-fed booking or a TEW save, but in execution isn’t all that awful. I get the idea at the very least, Ospreay gets so close to a draw, but his indecision allows the opportunistic snake to crush his dream literally seconds away from salvation. It’s a very lofty goal, and one that I think is undercut by how the final moments of the match are wrestled, but on paper is maybe the least offensive thing about the match.
Despite every misgiving though, and despite my general history with both workers, I would say this is far from either man’s worst work. Other than the last few minutes or so, I wasn’t exactly frothing at the mouth with rage. And even in hindsight, the sins of this match by the end are a lot more palatable than some of the dreck I’ve had to see. At the end of the day, it’s really just an AEW main event-style epic that goes too long and reaches too far with its finishing stretch.
And aren’t those just a dime a dozen?
Rating: **¼
