2023: Enter the American Dragon

On September 2nd, 2023, a day before AEW’s flagship All Out event, owner Tony Khan announced that he had fired wrestler CM Punk following a physical altercation at the last weekend’s All In show.

There was a sense of doom and gloom surrounding AEW Collision that evening for the hours leading up to it. 

For one, it would be without the top star that necessitated the show’s existence in the first place, and for two, it was taking place in Chicago, Illinois, which is firmly Punk territory. If they really were going to fire the incensed star, how would the crowd react to the news?

While there were and would be many losers in this whole debacle, notably the fans, perhaps nobody got a shorter end of the stick than Ricky Starks.

Punk built Collision around a select group of talent, and from the start Ricky Starks seemed like a wrestler he was really interested in making a prominent star in the promotion. He put Starks over in the finals of the Owen Hart tournament, then narrowly etched out a victory against him for his AEW Real World’s Title on television weeks later. Starks would turn heel after the former bout, disrespecting and even physically assaulting wrestling legends such as Jushin Liger and Ricky Steamboat along the way in order to really get heat on himself during the feud… and it worked.

Despite an arguably forced turn against a guy drawing, to be charitable, mixed reactions from crowds every week, it did seem like the feud with the then 44-year-old star was helping Starks build momentum in a way that his last couple of programs had not. While Punk would be facing career rival Samoa Joe at Wembley, the expectation was that he would be facing Starks in a big blowoff stipulation match in his hometown the next weekend.

Lee South Ricky Starks vs CM Punk Calgary, AB AEW Collision July 15, 2023

This did not come to be.

With Punk being let go from the company, one can understandably see how this put Starks in a disadvantageous position. With a few stop/start pushes along the way, it finally seemed like this would be the opportunity for him to cement his place at or near the upper card of AEW, similar to how MJF would in his program with Punk in 2022. Now, the Louisianan native seemed shit out of luck; even if he was on the All Out card, who could fill the shoes of the man he just spent months antagonizing? Who could step in on such short notice to deliver proper justice to the man that dare put his hands on Ricky The Dragon Steamboat?

Enter the American Dragon.

If 2005-2006 Ring of Honor and 2014 WWE were any indication, the best way to fill a void left by the departure of CM Punk is simply to throw Bryan Danielson at it. No matter the fact that he broke his arm in June, the moment his theme music hit in the United Center, all felt right with the company at that moment. It’s still just as surreal now as it was then, seeing him with a cast on his undoubtedly still healing arm. It’s too ridiculous to put into words, the chain events that led to Bryan Danielson stepping in for a 70-year-old Steamboat to take part in a PPV strap match, but here we are.

Weeks prior to All Out, Windham Lawrence Rotunda, otherwise known to the wrestling world as Bray Wyatt, tragically passed away from a heart attack. As a friend of Rotunda, and someone he shared the ring with on multiple occasions, Danielson chose to dedicate his pre-match promo to him in the only way that he knew how.

It’s with this mentality that Danielson goes into war to the tune of a familiar theme, knowing that it would physically be one of the toughest battles he ever had to fight.

In a year with as much to talk about as Bryan Danielson’s 2023, one might ask themselves why I picked this match to write about in particular. I could have written about the incredible Rush TV brawl, or the long-awaited Zack Sabre Jr. rematch in Washington, or the Okada epic that wasn’t to be, or even the quasi-dream match with Timothy Thatcher on Dynamite. I could have written about any of these matches, but I chose to write about this one in particular because I have a personal connection to it as a fan of Ricky Starks, and someone with a vested interest in his success.

When I really started getting into AEW in 2022, Starks was one of the first talents that popped out at me, along with​ his former Team Taz member Powerhouse Hobbs. Here’s a guy that looks great, can talk his ass off, could play either the brash heel or the cocky babyface with aplomb, and could really work on top of all that. It boggled my mind how this guy wasn’t getting pushed like his contemporaries were, and if I’m being honest it still doesn’t make much sense to me as we sit here a year later. I’ve been invested in him since I started watching the company, and I was cautiously optimistic that he would knock it out of the park with a wrestler that I consider to be the greatest of all time.

Boy, did he ever. 

I’m going to be gushing a lot about Dragon here momentarily, but I really want to express how great Starks was in this bout. From the very start he’s on his game, stalling for a minute to deny the fans any joy at seeing him get punished for his actions before cheapshotting his hurt opponent. He plays dirty throughout the early part of this, whipping Bryan with his weight belt and then wrapping it around his hand before punching him with it, busting him up in the process. He’s urgent but arrogant in his approach, throwing Dragon around and letting the visual of his bleeding face speak for itself as he revels in the crowd’s jeering. There’s a viciousness to his use of the strap, whipping Dragon with it mercilessly and wrapping it around his neck in brutal fashion. There’s zero hint of the sympathetic babyface he portrayed a year ago; this is an irredeemable man that deserves to eat shit in exceeding measure.

And eat shit he does! Dragon’s one of the great ass-kickers of the 21st century, and it’s a testament to Starks that he can take such an immense beating from him when it’s his turn to be on the Blackfoot whilst never feeling sympathetic with his selling. Additionally, he knows exactly when to feed in to Bryan’s attack and when to fire up in acts of defiance, so that it feels earned when he gets choked out at the end rather than tap out from the pain.

I write all of this essentially to say that this isn’t a carryjob.

It can be so easy to write off a match as good as this one is by saying “GOAT did GOAT things, young wrestler was along for the ride also”, but that simply just is not the case here. This match is as great as it is in large part due to the performance of Starks, who really proved his worth not just here but throughout the entire summer as a wrester AEW should build around rather than let him saunter in the midcard with little direction. If you can believe Danielson himself, it was he who was being carried (physically, of course) and not the other way around.

With that being said, it’s still Bryan fucking Danielson.

No matter how humble the man wants to be, nobody on earth could get a match this great out of this situation. Whereas Punk approached his matches with Starks through games of one-upsmanship and cheating, Danielson eschews these concepts in favor of sheer brutality and punishment. The sound that the leather strapping tying both men to each other makes as it strikes Starks’s flesh is awful, a perfect indicator of the reality that for as bad as the kid thinks he is, he just fucked with the wrong one. The way that he fires up when Starks whacks him with the strap, yelling at him to bring it on is the exact kind of babyface fire that makes him one of the best to ever do it.

Courtesy of All Elite Wrestling

I would be remiss to not talk about the best worker in this match, either, as ole Steamer takes off his headset and takes it to the 6’10 Big Bill with chops to stop him from interfering on behalf of his shithead business partner. Considering Steamboat’s role in this feud, I not only didn’t mind this part of the match as I thought it fit what they were going for, but I am also unashamedly a Steamboat mark so take that for what you will.

Considering the end goal of this match, and the match that was planned prior to All In, was to get Ricky Starks over in defeat, the finish to this truly is perfect, as Starks passes out with a rope-assisted Lebell lock to give Bryan the win but make his opponent look like a million bucks in the process. Finishes like these often run the risk of feeling too cutesy, but given the brutality these two both endured, I’d say they earned it by the end. The best Bret Hart tribute in AEW history.

A miracle of a match, put together at the last minute due to emergency circumstances and still managed to be one of the very best the company has had to offer. As of this moment there are numerous reports surrounding Starks’s future in AEW, and bad faith actors are quick to pretend that he simply wasn’t good enough or couldn’t get himself over after chance over chance given. As such, I think this match is a nice reminder of the time he delivered in extraordinary fashion against the Greatest of All Time, as well as a reminder of why Danielson is as revered as he is in our circles.