AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 6/17/20

What Worked

-Give some decent time to Dustin, and the match is almost always going up here. I might be the lone QT fan out there, but I can't help it if QT is one of the better guys on the roster. Omega and Page looked off for large portions of this, and it was only the tag match structure that Dustin can do in his sleep that saved it. Omega kneed Dustin right in the face because he can't leapfrog a man like a normal human, he has to do a fruity gymnastics routine that messes up the timing for everyone. Dustin uses the flub and actually makes it mean something, continuing to sell taking a knee to the temple as he's taking Omega's rana and then popping up with one of his own. Or, the man got brained with an unexpected knee and he was knocking cobwebs loose. Page threw two of the weakest pescados I have ever seen, holding onto the rope until the last minute so that most of his body misses the mark and it lands with no oomph. He threw weak clotheslines too, which QT made look like great clotheslines. Page's sliding lariat did look good, so not a full loss. Marshall has such blatantly better strikes (and a great dropkick) that of course Jim Ross is going to cover that up by calling Page one of the best strikers in AEW. You knew the Dustin hot tag was going to be good, and really the whole match was worth it just for Dustin's snap powerslam, but I also liked how Marshall threw himself into Omega's snap dragon. Fun tag that relied on a proven formula and a great babyface team.

-I really loved how the set up the Anna Jay/Abadon match, giving Anna Jay the "Coming Up Next" graphic and the promo video out of the commercial break, and then flipping things into an Abadon showcase. I don't know Abadon, and horror movie gimmicks like this don't do a ton for me, not when we've seen Su Yung doing this very thing for several years now. But it's cool that random Colorado indy workers are on their radar and the twist of someone entirely unexpected being the actual star of the segment was a cool bit of presentation.

-Billy Gunn/MJF was a fun use of time and a good use of Gunn. I like how it was built around working over an old man's leg, Wardlow slamming it a bunch into the ringpost, MJF dropping knees on it and snapping it over with a quick Indian deathlock, coming down hard on it while the knee was draped over the ropes, and I like how Gunn's selling of the knee played into the finish. MJF really added a ton to this just by making sure his misses looked as devastating as all of the work Gunn was taking. MJF came down really hard on his tailbone after Gunn moved his leg off the ropes, and throwing himself hard chin first into the bottom buckle. That bottom buckle bump was something that Lanny Poffo used to do and I always loved it, and it looked neck snapping here.

-Liked Cody in his match, especially when Starks tossed him into the ropes and he made it look like he hit a brick wall. Dug his topes, dug his vertical suplex, didn't dig his opponent.

-Big top of the page love for Britt Baker's Kaitlin Olson level puke gagging in the dumpster, with a perfectly positioned banana peel on her head.

-Really liked Jericho and Guevara in the main event, really like their complementary feel. Sammy hit a real nice dropkick and followed it up with an awesome slow rise kip up, and moments later Jericho hit an awesome heavy dropkick (looked like a Bret Hart or Lawler dropkick). Jericho had a bunch of great strikes, with the peak being his killer short knees to the gut.


What Didn't Work

-Didn't see anything from Ricky Starks that I haven't seen from any of these other guys with the same build, haircut, and movement. He's probably maybe better than Austin Theory? His dance steps weren't as refined and he stutter stepped a couple times, had really performative bumps, and the only offense of his I enjoyed was when Cody would make something simple look good. You're bringing Malenko/Guerrero roll ups to my TV in 2020? Hard pass.

-Another week, another Sabian/Havoc match. Kip Sabian has more AEW matches in 2020 than anyone else. Who is behind that decision? Who thinks that anybody wants to see that? Who are the people who want to see that? I've somehow written up 23 Dynamites this year, and Sabian has been on 40% of them! He's just that one weird canned food item that everyone has in their cupboards and nobody remembers how it got there. We are supposed to move that can to the back of the cupboard and do a couple moves with it, not make a meal with plenty of leftovers out of it.

-JR thinks Hangman Page has arguably the best strikes in AEW, and that Chuck Taylor is "lanky". Has he seen Taylor's COVID bod or was he watching tape from a decade ago?