AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 11/20/19

What Worked

-I like the idea of throwing a Buck into a singles match. I don't think I've ever seen either in a singles match before (and scanning quickly doesn't look like something that's happened in at least 3 years), so it's a fun idea. The match had several moments that didn't make a lot of sense, and the pacing meant that they were up trading superkicks seconds after Fenix absolutely flattened Nick's chest with a full force top rope swanton. But they clearly went all out, Fenix tried rope tricks that he appeared to be making up on the spot, Nick took a couple of major spills, we got a good nearfall, it was fun. I think they could have done the same moves and laid it out WAY more effectively, but that sentence feels like something I will just be writing about at least one AEW match a week.

-Britt Baker got busted open early with something, and that is how you make a Britt Baker match slightly more interesting.

-Battle Royal was good, had plenty of the elements that make for a good battle royal. There were guys I wish were in it far longer (Sonny Kiss really should be more of a featured player, though I laughed when I think I caught Orange Cassidy lowering his sunglasses in the corner while Kiss shook his ass), Chuck Taylor hit an actual awesome knee out of the corner, Orange Cassidy got amusingly launched by Billy Gunn, somebody hit a wicked tope (I think it was Kip Sabian, but the promotion is batting 1.000 so far on missing at least one big dive per episode), Kiss took a big elimination bump, and they kept the pace up. A fine battle royal.

-Jack Swagger looks like a guy wearing four different rows of Invisalign, but damn if AEW doesn't know exactly how to use Swagger. He looks like an imposing goof, they use him like an imposing goof.

-Jericho promo before SCU came out was my least favorite Jericho AEW promo so far, but once he had Scorpio Sky to play off of I think it picked up real nicely, liked a few of their exchanges and liked how Jericho did his promo as if he was both Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd.

-Two weeks in a row and they've properly thrown in a nice squash match, which shows they're at least learning the importance of show pacing. Deflated Bobby Roode got most of his mic work during the break, made a fossil fuel joke, and then got wrecked by Luchasaurus as he should have been.

-We get an honest to god cut off the ring tag match and that is a great thing. I do think that Quen would have been better as the hot tag guy, because he's just better than Kassidy at running together offense, but that's a minor gripe because I also liked how they handled Kassidy's hot tag. LAX were real dickheads while cutting off the ring, with Ortiz especially being mean. I dig all the nonsense like locking Quen in a Boston crab and Santana vaulting in just to lightly mule kick Quen in the face. The back work paid off nicely and I absolutely love paying off limb work within a signature spot: Kassidy goes to roll over Quen's back on the apron to hit the silly string, only Quen's back can't hold the weight and he falls off the apron. Those spots seem so obvious if you stop to think for a moment about what part of the body had been worked over, and yet some guys seem so averse to doing them. I love "obvious" payoffs like that, and thought this tag came off so much better than if they had gone out and just done a big go go go big spots match.

-Dustin is already my favorite wrestler in AEW, and if he decides to become a guy working a cast gimmick and add a bunch of cast related strikes? Well then brother I can't think of anyone who would be a threat to unseat his #1 status.

-Moxley/Allin was pretty easily the best Dynamite match so far. We'll be writing that one up in its own MOTY post.

What Didn't Work

-I am so sick of flipping piledrivers that don't mean anything. I probably could have stopped that sentence after "piledrivers".

-Has Britt Baker been featured every single week? I'm not sure. Has Britt Baker been exposed every time she has appeared on TV? Yes, definitely yes. Her match with Shida was filled with both of them kicking out of their own pinfalls, lifting their legs up to make it easier for their opponent to hook legs, and at least a couple moves that landed as if whomever was taking the move had no idea what the move was actually going to be.

-Jimmy Havoc continues to be the supreme dweeb, even if him stapling Billy Gunn's stomach was funny, he immediately ruined it by calling everyone tossers as they cut to commercial, his voice breaking like a 13 year old, using slang that should be natural to him yet sounded like he'd never said tosser before.

-Talked with Phil about what cowboy wrestlers lamer than Hangman Page, and the best we could do was Killer Tim Brooks or ultra gassed Scott Casey. But neither of those are definites, and I would rather see both of them than Page.

-AEW Dynamite has one camera-missed dive per week, and they also seemingly want to corner the market on refs stopping 3 counts for things that nobody actually saw happen.