Bryan Danielson vs. Ricky Starks Is the Match of the Year (So Far)

This match is a minor miracle.

Looking at who’s involved, that may not be a surprise, but until Bryan Danielson made his surprise return at Collision to accept Ricky Starks’ challenge for a strap match, the general vibe around Starks was that he was one of the most cursed wrestlers in All Elite Wrestling’s short history, always on the verge of a true breakthrough to the upper echelons of the company only to be the victim of injury or circumstance.

In this case, it was circumstance, with the high drama of the CM Punk/Jack Perry backstage fight at All In overshadowing the company’s biggest event, Punk’s suspension seemingly undoing everything they had turned Starks heel for, and Punk’s firing all but guaranteeing that there’d be no resolution to the central angle of AEW’s fledgling Saturday night show.

Oddly, it was CM Punk himself who presaged that someone else might avenge The Dragon, in a pre-Collision promo where he said that someone would step up to punish him. The question of who hung in the air though, along with every other doomer prediction about All Out, to the point that people were tweeting videos of a 2022 Steamboat match as evidence that he might be able to step up and make something of the situation.

I don’t doubt that he could have, but instead of The Dragon, we got The American Dragon, cleared for action an entire month (or more — reports were that his wrestling at WrestleDream on October 1 would be something of a photo finish) before anybody expected him to, and on incredibly short notice, so short that, according to Fightful, Starks didn’t know that Danielson was Punk’s replacement until Saturday. I wish I knew when Danielson knew he’d have to step up to the plate, one of wrestling’s sharpest minds looking at Starks plotting out what they might do in their first-ever matchup, under an incredible amount of scrutiny.

According to Danielson during the post-show press conference, the answer was to have Ricky carry him, relying on wrestling smoke and mirrors to throw fans off of maybe paying too much attention to the state of his arm and the fact that he doesn’t throw any strikes with it. “I’m good at some things,” he coyly said. “I’m good at firing up.”

It’s true, Bryan Danielson is good at firing up. One of the best, in fact. Here, in a strap match, that means bathing in blood first, as Starks punches him in the forehead with the prong of a belt buckle between his knuckles. It means getting whipped, endlessly, with a leather strap soaked in his own blood.

Starks is immaculate in control, mocking Danielson and focusing on making him bleed more, further drawing focus away from Danielson’s heavily wrapped right forearm by choking, punching, and whipping him in the face. When Danielson turns the tables on him, using the strap while Starks is tied up in the turnbuckles, he sells each shot like a jolt of electricity is coursing through his body. He doesn’t need much encouragement — Danielson whips him hard — but his body language and facials are broad and expressive. He opens his body up and screams in pain. When Danielson smushes his head against the ringpost, he looks like he’s straining against the possibility that his head might burst.

More than anybody AEW has allowed to brand themselves as the future of the business/company, it is Ricky Starks whose potential I believe in the most. He’s older than any of the so-called Four Pillars, but he’s also the most complete performer of his contemporaries. He’s a good babyface and a great heel. His promos have a consistency and logic to them that I often find lacking in MJF. He can dish out and absorb an incredible amount of punishment. His selling is grounded in the classic pro wrestling as opposed to the more acting-inflected work that is currently in style. He is frequently compared to The Rock due to his physical and verbal charisma, but there is no specter of imitation lingering in his game. He hasn’t been a star in the making so much as he’s been a star in waiting, someone fully formed and ready for the next level.

Maybe the originally planned strap match against CM Punk would have been the final nudge, serving the same purpose as Punk’s dog collar match against MJF. We’ll never know, obviously, but what we got on Sunday was out of this world good, a statement match from Danielson and a potentially career-making performance for Starks. The future is unknowable, but at this point if Starks doesn’t become brand-defining star for AEW, that’s on Tony Khan. You cannot take his performance, particularly in the closing seconds of this match, choking and gasping and straining against the leather strap to scream “NO!” until he passed out, and imagine anything less than a future built around him.

On short notice and working against the presumed limitation of Danielson’s injured arm, he and Starks turned in an absolute classic, the best match on what may be All Elite Wrestling’s best pay-per-view. As a strap match, one is tempted to compare it to the Sting/Vader White Castle of Fear match from SuperBrawl III, but outside of the brutality of the affair, you really can’t. The dynamic between Danielson and Starks is necessarily different — Danielson isn’t Sting and Starks isn’t Vader, and, beyond that, they have no history whereas Sting and Vader had a lot of water under the bridge by the time they were linked by 10 feet of leather.

They didn’t create this out of thin air. There’s the elation of Danielson’s return, the strange mix of sympathy and anticipation for what All Out meant for Starks’ future, and, perhaps most charmingly of all, Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat, who, at 70 years old, is still a master at engendering the sympathy of the crowd, as he did in attempting to stop Big Bill’s mid-match interference. I love the small details he added to the match, the backstory he imparted during the course of the match, the way he solemnly intoned “it’s what we do” when Nigel McGuinness asked if he regretted sending Danielson into battle on his behalf.

Best of all, after getting knocked over and returning to commentary, he wiped the blood off of his hands with a handkerchief and said “Got a little on my hands, that’s alright.” In a match where one of the few in-built storylines was Ricky Steamboat having someone else fight his battle, he got blood on his hands. It’s a perfect little accident, which is also how you could describe this match. When you tie two wrestlers together with a leather strap, nobody leaves clean.

Rating: *****