7 Ups & 2 Downs From AEW Dynamite (23 Feb)

2. Bleed Together, Fight Together

Obviously, Bryan Danielson vs. Daniel Garcia was great.

Using Garcia the week after Lee Moriarty was a wise move. A more polished television wrestler than Moriarty, Garcia is also closer to Danielson in terms of aggression. Bryan doesn't need to impart as much violence upon Garcia because Garcia is already a nasty piece of work. He showed that here with a typically snarling showing melding technicality with ugly, pissy violence, from chop blocks to cutoffs.

The core story was similar to last week. Garcia is good (in many situations, good enough to counter and even control Danielson), but not yet at Danielson's level. He exerted control over the world's best in-ring wrestler by surgically targeting the knee. This proved his undoing towards the end, when his Dragon Screw was countered into Danielson's arm-trapped stomps, then the triangle choke. Of course, Danielson flexed while Garcia submitted, having seen the Dragon Screw coming, proving himself one step ahead of his opponent, who will emerge from this lesson stronger than before.

Jon Moxley came out afterwards, saving Danielson from 2point0 and Garcia, who ate a Paradigm Shift. As expected, they'll now wrestle at Revolution - though the prospect of sculpting the next generation of violence artists remains in play.