10 Ups & 1 Down From AEW WrestleDream

1. Considerably More Than A Dream Match

You could watch Bryan Danielson Vs. Zack Sabre, Jr. spoiled, and still believe that Danielson will lose. You could watch the match countless times and still hold a sense of doubt over the outcome. That's how incredible it was. That's how phenomenal Danielson's selling was.

Beyond the obvious - precious moments with your loved ones and all that b*llocks - this is what the professional wrestling fan lives for. There is no better feeling than watching a match one expects to be a classic and it exceeding those expectations within seconds. This was a five-star match before the first strike was thrown.

The sheer depth of strategy here was transcendent. The actual application of technique was glorious, obviously, but the small moments of panic, of regrouping, of finding a limb to reverse or neutralise the pressure: that's what made this a masterpiece. It was impossible to watch this match and not believe professional wrestling to be real. If the purpose of the form is to make the audience suspend their disbelief, this match perfected the form.

It mutated into a grotesquely violent strike-heavy affair deeper into the runtime, but even the technical exchanges were disgusting. How can you best Hiroshi Tanahashi's dragon screw, for crying out loud?

The American Dragon managed it. Christ almighty, the selling here was out of this world. You could almost hear ZSJ's ACL rupturing, and yet the man was merely selling the illusion of pain.

The tenor of the match changed when ZSJ won the mental portion of the chess game by baiting Danielson into using his barely repaired right arm. Jon Moxley was outstanding on commentary, and received most of the plaudits, but Nigel McGuinness entered the performance of a lifetime. He sold the threat of Danielson even exposing that right arm as a career-ender of a strategic error. And then Danielson sold it himself, lulling fans into the match entirely.

It was perfect. That's the only apt word.

It somehow felt like a performance and an anti-performance at the same time. Consider the use (or not) of Danielson's Cattle Mutilation. ZSJ - deepening the ultra-realistic idea that he had prepped for this over a span of years - evaded it almost the second Danielson had applied it. This deep cut from the Dragon's repertoire was sacrificed for the immersive feeling that this match was real.

To use an analogy, imagine a popular rock band teasing the audience with a wildly popular cult favourite song that they never play, playing only the opening bar of a riff, and that audience going nutsregardless. The match, unlike few others in the history of the medium, was bold enough to sacrifice every easy dramatic principle in service of an idealised state of realism - and yet it wasn't remotely pretentious or up its own backside. Danielson won with a second Busaiku knee. A submission did not win it. Zack should point this out and demand 500 rematches, all of which should be held under a two-hour time limit. The first 499 should go to a draw.

That is hyperbole, obviously, but these two could probably do something in the 500th that nobody could anticipate.

Intricate, horrifying, dramatic, realistic, passionate, vile: this was otherworldly.