AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 11/6/19

What Worked:

-I love how Pac handled Orange Cassidy getting into the ring. Cassidy got into the ring while Pac was turned the other way, the crowd went wild, and Pac acted like he was the one getting the crowd hyped. That's a smart way for a heel to be paying attention to the crowd.

-"Undesirable to Un-goddamn-deniable" is a great line from Cody, good place to peak a promo

-Feels like the Jericho video is going to be contentious, but I liked it. At first I thought it was filled with nothing but bad acting and bad reads, but I got the tone the longer it went and I liked the presentation of a heel champ writing off his challenger. The stuff that was supposed to be funny (dumb eyed Jack Swagger making his "did I accidentally put two mouth guards in?" face, Guevara's "at 48 he's the youngest champ in AEW history" line) was actually funny. I could see people disagreeing on the overall tone, but I liked what they were going for.

-Women's tag was fun, with an especially fun performance from Jamie Hayter. I dug her aggression, loved her lariats, loved the way she would dispatch Riho with condescension. Riho isn't great but she has great energy, which goes a long way as an underdog babyface. Shanna felt like a pro, and Sakura really stuck the landing on all her sequences with Riho. The magistral spamming in the end could have looked like absolute trash, but instead it was a perfect combo of Riho's speed with Sakura's tight execution. Sakura's magistral looked like something that should finish a match.

-Brandon Cutler is a spitting image for young Sid Haig. He needs to lean into that more. A Spider Baby gimmick would be far more interesting than "also this other guy with kickpads". But we got a squash match! It didn't always look great, but damn an actual 2 minute match that wasn't hyper competitive bell to bell? Wild.

-Sammy Guevara really understands his role as the low ranked guy in the stable, and he bumped around in the best way in the main event. He knows how to play the athletic boob, great flunky charisma off him. Also, to say something nice about rhinestone cowboy Hangman Page - that cowpoke who does flips - he and Sammy had an awkward exchange, and I liked how Page cut the bullshit and just deadlifted Guevara off the mat and hit a great fallaway slam.

What Didn't Work:

-Every single wrestler in AEW is equally as skilled as every other wrestler in AEW. Every damn match is worked 51/49, totally equal footing until one guy wins. Trent has been exclusively a tag wrestler, but he can also go toe to toe for 15 minutes against Pac, who they're building as a top singles guy. Boris Zhukov wasn't going out there and working a hard fought 15 against Jake Roberts. There are ways to not completely kill Trent while still having Pac decisively win matches. But every match has to be an ultra competitive war, and it doesn't feel like a very effective way to build a decent hierarchy. Do they not want a hierarchy? Am I supposed to think that every person in the fed is equally talented? This is not even bringing up the weekly complaint that every match on Dynamite so far has had nearly the exact same pace. Evil Uno has been the only person to go out and try to slow things down, and I wasn't expecting to go into AEW being the "people should be taking more cues from Evil Uno" guy. The fart noise phantom kickout down the stretch was something that should not happen in a major fed.

-Private Party/Dark Order tag felt off, even though I liked elements of it. Uno's cannonball while Grayson hit the 450 was a great spot that deserved to be shown a lot from different angles, and I liked Uno doing things like crawling out of the corner to set up being used as a vault. But the match didn't add up to anything that ever felt cohesive.

-I don't totally understand Sakura's "heel Freddie Mercury" thing, and it stood out as even more weird since her partner was just being an outright heel. Like I get if Sakuraba would have come out doing her Mercury entrance, but it felt weird here. Plus Freddie Mercury wouldn't wear Chico Che vinyl bibs.

-I can't think of one, but has there been a cowboy wrestler lamer than Hangman Page?