Hangman vs Ospreay, and Intimacy

I am a big critic the US style of TV wrestling, but I also still watch it. I can enjoy it. I enjoyu the performers. In that sense, Double or Nothing provided everything I could expect and ask for. Mina vs Toni was great for an AEW womens match, Mark Briscoe vs Ricochet gave beautiful bloodshed with a bit of that TV Wrestling comic book tone. Anarchy in the Arena was the enjoyable shitshow it always is, sitting playfully on the fence between stupidly indulgent and great.

The Main Event though was something else entirely.

I hate the idea of a buffer match, the idea that you can sacrifice a "midcard match" after a crazy match to act as a buffer for the main event. They did that here, with the fear that the crowd might be quiet after tiring out on Anarchy in the Arena. Despite that, the crowd was still quiet. Silent even. So silent it made the crowd uncomfortable. They tried to make noise, awkwardly, and ineffectually.

Ospreay and Hangman did not care. They know that there are two kinds of quiet. While the crowd was uncomfortable with intimate silence, they were not. They knew it was not the silence of disinterest or exhaustion. It was the silence of attention. The deepest silence.

They moved slow, took there time. They had no fear about 'capturing the crowd'. The two had been the best thing on AEW TV for the last month, they knew they had them. In the moment to a friend, I said that this felt like, suddenly at the end of the card, we had a Japanese Main Event, with a Japanese crowd. But that is an oversimplification. The pacing was different, the emotion was different... not about physical stoicism, but emotional stoicism, and the cracks and weaknesses there in. The weight of their emotions hung so heavy in the air that the crowd, for the first time in a long time, realized that the show is not about them, but about the two wrestlers in the ring that they are being privileged enough to see live. They were in sync with the performers in the ring. This didn't feel like a Japanese match-brought state side, or the modern idea of a main event, but some 3rd thing. A style that feels lost in the modern US scene, from a world without decades of WWE conquest. A story told in the ring, without the ironic, self aware shield of the modern wrestling. This was an emotionally vulnerable crowd, communicating with two of the best performers, honestly and intimately. It felt unlike anything else on the rest of the show, or really any show I've seen on US soil.

While this was an important, character defining match for Hangman, Ospreay was truly the one who had to prove himself. Hangman did what all of us Hangman believers knew he could do. We know he can bask in silence. Hangman's face and eyes alone could match Ospreay's passionate promos. We know he wrestles from the heart. Ospreay showed a new gear, a lower gear, slower and without his usual excesses. Maybe he can't accel in what Hangman does, but by god he can meet him half way. He could slow down, while saying more.

The low points made the highs shine. This was one of the best paced, well structured matches I feel like I've ever had the joy of watching. I need time to truly see how this match lasts in my heart, but in the moment I feel like this is the best US match I've seen in years.

See you at All-In, Hangman.

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(dropkickd)