AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 1/15/20

What Worked

-I really liked what Santana/Ortiz brought to the opening tag scramble. Everybody else was worried about what move they were going to not acknowledge while trying to remember the next sequence order, and those guys were the ones who were actually adding any kind of substance. I saw Ortiz multiple times try to grab at guys from the apron as they ran the ropes, liked how they built to drama over kickout saves while most everyone else was just burning through offense to kick out of, liked how they took pratfall bumps and dug their big dives to their floor. They seemed to be the only two guys in there who saw the need for glue in a match like this.

-Guevara is definitely among the most consistent topside guys in AEW, and my favorite part of this match was how he occupied himself during the commercial breaks. He seems to be the only guy who can continue doing worthwhile stuff on a break. Earlier you had MJF saying a bunch of stuff into the camera that nobody but lip readers were able to get, so Guevara brings out his cue cards and knows when to go to that smug chinlock. Everything he did during the mid match break was stooge stuff that played to the fans in attendance, and that's great! If you need to decide which spots to do for the full screen and which ones to do while a Doritos ad is blaring, grabbing a fan's popcorn bucket to beat Moxley with makes way more sense during the Doritos ad. The fireman's carry squats should have been saved for full camera, but that spot is such a great thing for a runt underdog heel to do that it doesn't matter when he does it.

-Six man was a little dry, and the Dustin heat all happened during tiny screen commercial break (Dustin is a great FIP and I like seeing his mannerisms!), but it had enough good moments to get it up here. The first time I saw DDP I thought he was in his mid 50s, and he still basically looks exactly like that. DDP is the Harry Dean Stanton of pro wrestling? Dustin's cannonball off the apron and DDP's very unexpected dive to the floor looked great, and I liked the camera work involved in seeing MJF slip a weapon back to the unfortunately named WARDLOW.

-Give me a Sammy Guevara match and a Darby main event, throw Dustin somewhere into a match, and odds are I'm going to be into the episode overall. Allin is totally fearless and adds a bunch of shine to everything PAC does to him. Loved the coffin drop to the floor, loved his dive plastering Pac into the barricade, and hot damn if Darby doesn't even know how to make a Guerrero/Malenko sequence work and work *well* in 2020. Allin really gets a lot out of roll-ups, and for a tiny guy he's really good about getting into them with force and then actually making them look like legit pinning predicaments. PAC's big finish looked great, no surprise these two matched up so nicely.

What Didn't Work

-Well they sure tried during that opening tag scramble. Kenny point a lot and swung into go behinds like he was doing street dancing choreography, just swinging around street lamps. Matt Jackson doing rolling northern lights across the ring, only for Trent to just hit a tornado DDT on the final one, is one of those really stupid spots these guys are good at. You know, those spots where guys get stronger after taking a move a lot. Page hit a lariat that I liked, and a bunch of backflip stuff that looked awful as usual.

-Is Mel a non-wrestler? She worked that tag with similar amounts of polish as David Flair. I'm not sure the last time I've seen someone on TV with less ring instincts. Literally every single spot she was involved with looked blown. Brandi Rhodes is your partner, and you look like the less trained member of your team? I have no idea what Statlander's backflip off the apron is supposed to be. I've seen her use it in all her matches, no idea what it is. The dumbest way to almost hit a back elbow? It is a bad piece of offense. Shida was ultra exposed in this one too. Her jumping knees look bad, and she had arguably the worst strikes of the match (which covers a lot of ground) with those pitter pat punches (?) she was throwing at Mel's thigh while fighting to her feet. So much of Shida's offense is done in slow motion, looks like someone going through the motions rehearsing spots. I reached around someone at the copier today and accidentally nudged them harder than any of her shots on Mel. The biggest miracle in this was that Shida gave Mel a superplex and they didn't manage to both die. In fact, it was a fine looking superplex.