10 Ups & 1 Down From AEW WrestleDream

4. Darby Allin Proves Himself A Worthy PPV Headliner

The story here was beautifully told - just fantastic heel work on the part of Christian Cage.

In the build, he buried Darby as a stuntman unable to actually wrestle. Allin then outwrestled him in the first fall, won by hooking Cage's turtleneck over his head in a positively awesome moment of babyface intelligence. Cage, that hypocritical bastard, then slowly destroyed Allin in a garbage wrestling match because there are few better at actually invoking true disgust from the audience. Before that, in a great spot that furthered the story, Darby countered a Christian spear with a bulldog. That ruled: when it came to pure wrestling, Cage was literally Darby's bitch.

The match verged on the harrowing in the second and third falls, by which time Cage had removed the apron and padding from the ring. At long last, Darby's insanity appears to have caught up with him. He took a bump back and elbow-first into the ring steps from the apron. It looked horrific, and indeed was: per Allin, he took himself for an x-ray after completing his media obligations.

One small criticism: Cage thwarted the stretcher job by scaling the top turnbuckle and blasting Darby with a frog splash. This was a bit too close to the key spot in Page Vs. Swerve. Still, as a spectacle, this was very, very compelling, and the stretcher job allowed Cage to cut up the ring without dragging it out forever. That bit is usually far too long for its own good.

At the finish, after kicking out of a Killswitch on the exposed wooden boards, Nick Wayne turned on Darby, as foreshadowed on TV.

And then...