10 Ups & 0 Downs From AEW Dynamite (25 Jan - Review)
1. The Main Event
"A celebration of a husband, a father...a hero to his younger brother Mark".
These were the words uttered by Ian Riccaboni as Mark Briscoe Vs Jay Lethal kicked off amidst just about every emotion human beings are capable of experiencing. These were the things that defined Jamin Pugh with or without the persona of Jay Briscoe. Jay Briscoe was for others beyond himself, and those others let his brother know exactly how much he meant to them the second he emerged on the stage.
The Lexington, Kentucky crowd blew the roof off for Briscoe, who veered between in-character machismo and the screams of a man grappling with the brutal complexities of the life the best way he knows how. His bravery was apparent the second the graphic dropped 24 hours earlier, but it was only when the spotlight shone brightest did the gravity of everything at play truly hit home.
Lethal and ring announcer Bobby Cruise visibly fought back tears during the introductions, and the wrestlers wrestled as wrestlers do in a match that was superb out of its own difficult context and unbelievably fantastic in the circumstances. This was an immaculately paced fight that meshed pro wrestling drama with shared real life trauma so well you couldn't see the joins until the ending actively asked you to.
This is the magic, of course, if it's not terse to use that word here. The two men out there did the thing they were best at, lost themselves and others in the art of it, then knotted everything together in such a way that the gravity of their courageous displays could be immortalised like the memory of their fallen brother. The match will be remembered most for the Froggy Bow through the table and the match-winning Jay Driller - the former for the ultimate act of temporary escapism, and the latter for giving everybody pause to remember to tackle this devastating tragedy however they see fit.
AEW and especially the unfathomably broad-shouldered Mark Briscoe couldn't have done a better job of helping aid this heartbreaking healing process.
(Donate to the Pugh family's GiveSendGo here. Buy his commemorative t-shirt (all proceeds go to the Pugh family) here.)