Violent & Bloody AEW Matches That Made Us SICK!
8. Best Friends Vs. Santana & Ortiz - Dynamite,
Much latitude was extended to the closed-set Daily's Place era of AEW Dynamite.
It wasn't the same, at all, but people wanted it to be OK. In a weird sort of way, it worked. There was no alternative, which helped. Everybody was stuck, and to his immense credit, Austin Gunn was such a convincing super-fan plant. His energy at ringside was, in a not insignificant way, as important to AEW as some star signings.
The wrestlers-as-plants gimmick was never more convincing than during the first Parking Lot Fight between Best Friends and Santana and Ortiz. You could believe they were losing their collective minds because you were too. The layout - and the degree of violence - was astonishing.
It was a masterpiece, the absolute pinnacle of pandemic wrestling. Beyond the original Terry Funk Vs. Jerry Lawler Empty Arena match, it was the only closed-set spectacle that truly worked outside of that context.
It was a frenzied, disgusting brawl, one that deftly incorporated wrestling sequences without ever feeling even remotely contrived. The hybrid was seamless. Using the bumper of a pick-up truck as a platform for a tornado DDT was inspired, as was hiding a crowbar above the rim of a wheel. That DDT was taken on concrete, too. Absolutely brutal.
Every splatter into glass looked and sounded utterly vile. The echoey confines of the lot also lent an aural horror to the match: every metallic clink reverberated throughout your bones.
A triumph. An incredibly painful triumph.