This eventually led to Danielson and Kingston brawling, Moxley getting thrown into a sheet of barbed wire, and Danielson falling to the numbers game and getting choked out by the ring rope. Eddie splashed gasoline on both Jericho and Danielson and tried to light Jericho on fire, only for Danielson to tackle him and save Jericho’s life. It was one of the great visuals in wrestling history. Danielson had Jericho tied up in the LeBell lock, and Eddie came staggering down the aisle, covered in gore, holding a gas can looking like the last survivor of the Texas Chain Saw Massacre. The end of the match saw Moxley and Danielson isolating Jericho and Hager in the ring, ready to finish them off.
“I drink to drown my demons, but they know how to swim,” he said, and he wrestled this match like a man going through a dissociative episode. My God, what a moment for Eddie Kingston-on the preshow he cut an all-time promo when he discussed how this feud with Jericho has derailed him emotionally.
Daniel Garcia is the youngest guy in the match and fought like a jacked-up kid, intense, fast and reckless-he hasn’t paid the wages of war like the other guys in this match, and he still had the brashness of someone with the best parts of life ahead of him. Jericho wasn’t the flashiest performer in this match, but he was tremendous as the aging egomaniac who found himself floundering in deep waters, and he had a constant look of aghast befuddlement on his face as he watched the havoc he’d wrought. The viewer never got settled-a new horror was right around every corner. The camera would shift constantly from Chris Jericho trying to jab Moxley’s eye out with the stem of a pair of sunglasses, to Garcia dragging Kingston around the concourse by a belt around his neck, to Santana and Ortiz setting up a crazy table spot.
The match was filmed like an epic battle scene from a movie, like the Battle of Aqaba in Lawrence of Arabia. Bryan Danielson put in his application later in the match, when it looked like a mafia barber tried to slice his neck with a straight razor, and by the end of the match Eddie Kingston looked like he was stumbling away from a train derailment.
Matt Menard broke out to an early lead after getting a fork jabbed in his head-he looked like he’d bobbed for apples in a bucket full of marinara sauce. The match quickly turned into a race to see who could donate the most blood to their clothes and the arena floor. I also adored the ECW-era New Jack tribute with “Wild Thing” playing on repeat for the first 10 minutes of the match-it really gave the match a wild energy, amped the crowd up, and gave Jericho a big heel moment when he ripped out the soundboard to stop the song. I got excited when I saw the Jericho Appreciation Society come out for the match in their all-white matching Backstreet Boys “I Want It That Way” video outfits-it was a great veteran move by Jericho to wear white to an abattoir. In this match, every wrestler kept every second violent. When matches like this fail, guys are walking around the arena holding each other by the hair, setting up whatever big stunt they planned out with big pauses before the moments. All 10 wrestlers approached this like they were fighting for their lives, and they kept that intensity throughout. There’s a long history of anything-goes brawls that spill out into the crowd (and beyond), and this delivered perfectly. Blackpool Combat Club (Bryan Danielson/Jon Moxley), Eddie Kingston, Santana and OrtizĪEW Double or Nothing, Anarchy in the Arena match, May 29Ī five-on-five brawl throughout the stadium, with weapons, copious amounts of blood, and carefully stage-managed chaos-in some sense it was barely a wrestling match, but in another sense it was exactly what a wrestling match should be. Jericho Appreciation Society (Chris Jericho/Jake Hager/Matt Menard/Angelo Parker/Daniel Garcia) vs.
So The Ringer brings you a regular cheat sheet with the three best matches of the past week-one from WWE, one from AEW, and one from the rest of the immense wrestling world.
There’s more great pro wrestling in 2022 than we know what to do with.