Trying to recover a crashed DB

[Matthew Murdock]

the issue: the RHEL 8.10 server was pegged (the sys average was 897). So I rebooted the server to get the system usable. Now Mysql will not start.
I moved the /var/lib/mysql to a mysql.bak folder. So i have the database safe, I hope.

So im now trying to get mysqld to start up with systemctl start mysqld,
Cannot get it going. been googling and trying stuff for a wweek now.
as I try to run, found this from another post here,

mysqld --defaults-file=/etc/my.cnf -u root
This works, however it attaches to the terminal (with the empty database). I can at least run mysql and it connects to the empty mysql instance.

So,
1) can I move the original mysql directory back to original location and hope it fixes the DB upon startup, I do have the innodb_force_recovery =3 set.
2) what Do i need to do to get systemctl start mysqld to work?