AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 7/8/20

What Worked

-The big tag scramble delivered exactly what I wanted from it, with some fun unexpected double team chemistry from Young Bucks and FTR. Lucha Bros. are a team I was really tired of (well, I got really tired of Pentagon not showing up to work, but Fenix always had the chance to impress) but they've been really strong in AEW, and they had some inventive runs in a match filled with inventive runs. Dax Harwood (I still can't get over how fake their real names sound compared to their fake WWE names) was a real sticky piece of glue here, and a match like this desperately needs glue. The sequence where he got his ass kicked around by Lucha Bros. was masterful, and included a fantastic spit take in the middle. Butcher was really the only one who looked a page behind here, but a quick 8 man doesn't really seem like the right environment for him to shine. Everyone else was on it doggone it, and there was some slick business. Fenix hit a freaking flip piledriver to the floor into the rest of the match participants and it's wild to me how naturally they set up that spot - a spot that sounds so overblown that I wouldn't have guessed it would even approach working - and make it look more natural than Marq Quen made an enziguiri look. Loved the modern twist on the old Arn spot where Blade ducked his way out of a YB superkick right into a Dax DDT, and we got a sick powerplex with a big splash AND a swanton. This was fun as hell.

-Didn't like the match at all, but Christopher Daniels hit this super cool tope on Brodie Lee that looked like he was going to keep floating farther out. Lee caught him up high and it gave this illusion that Daniels was flying out into deep water, and they both crashed the barricade a few feet into the crowd.

-Main event was great, has to be my favorite Orange Cassidy singles match I've seen. Jericho was really good at flying around for Cassidy's high speed offense, and OC came off aggressively wild. He hit bigger than he typically hits, and his misses were just as big. The opening hands in pocket stuff was all really quick and looked impressive, and I dug how after 20 seconds of that he took them out and hit a real crash and burn tope, then punched Jericho around ringside with long right hands. We got more good barricade work from both guys (the night was full of guys flying impressively into barricades), and I liked how the momentum shifted throughout. Cassidy was good at falling hard for Jericho's offense, and Jericho worked fast and landed hard. Cassidy had this huge miss off a flying forearm and skidded across the mat and out of the ring like a skipped stone. Building a match out of big misses is pretty cool when the guys are missing big, and OC takes a big bump from the apron to the barricade, Jericho misses the springboard shoulderblock to the floor allowing OC to wipe out the Elite with a moonsault. All the misses felt like they built logically to a bigger moment. Now I didn't love the fighting from the knees and the kickouts got a little overkill, but I also can't deny that some of these kickouts were hot. I truly thought Cassidy was going to pin Jericho when he hit that satellite DDT, and that's when I knew they had me hooked. Plus Aubrey Edwards slid expertly through a lot of orange juice to enthusiastically count the pin. This was one of the stronger main events in Dynamite history.


What Didn't Work

-The more Marq Quen appears on TV and the less Kip Sabian appears, it might have revealed that Quen is worse than Sabian. Quen really dragged that tag match down, just a guy who constantly looks out of place and constantly requires a lot of moving parts just to get close enough to hit anything. There was an embarrassing early sequence that made nobody involved look good, where Quen was standing in the middle of the ring like a goof while Omega and Page crossed the ring around him, hitting him every time they passed and ending with him doing a handstand out of Omega's rocker dropper. Every second of it looked horrible, and little did I know that it was the first of several spots where Quen would stand in one place while Page and Omega bounced off him. Quen is working this match like the worst possible 1/6 scale Mabel. Page really busted ass to make this match happen, and the sequences with he and Kassidy were the parts that worked. Kassidy really lands with his dropkicks (his baseball slide to send Page crashing into the crowd looked great) and Page really flung himself into things to make them work. But Omega has been wildly inconsistent in AEW and Quen looked out of position for most of this match. Watch your back, Kip!

-Janela really tried to die on a couple bumps but Lance Archer looked like garbage in that match. First, it was silly to have them go 50/50 for so long. Janela wasn't throwing strikes that looked like they should stop Archer, and Archer isn't very good at selling strikes, so that was a terrible match. But Archer is also really bad about doing things to occupy himself while waiting to take a move, or getting into position way early to take a move. There's wrestling, and there's dancing, and Archer was doing a whole bunch of bad dancing. When Janela hit him in the gut from the apron, Archer just stood there bent at the waist, arms resting on the middle rope, waiting for Janela to leap over him. then the second Janela did, Archer immediately turns around and waits in position, middle of the ring, for Janela to go for a headscissors. Archer literally turned around and just held his arms out waiting to take a headscissors. Dancers know how to anticipate movement much better, and wrestlers are supposed to give some kind of idea that they don't know what move they are taking before the guy performing the move even attempts it. Janela crashed hard over the barricades on a spot where Archer basically lost his grip and didn't throw him, and I was happy when Janela splatted him with a heavy ass senton off the top.

-Not sure how I feel about Taz bringing back the FTW title, but it's also cool that Taz still has his belt from 23 years ago. Does the new guy wearing an old belt ever get a guy over? No weirdo is ever going to pretend that the Million Dollar Belt was the thing that made Austin. Also, because of Taz, I thought FTW meant Fuck the World up until maybe 7 or 8 years ago. Every time I would see something at a baseball game like "SF Giants FTW!!!" I just thought they were putting out the image of the Giants just waving double middle fingers to everyone.

-Pretty bad already to run a big multiman tag match after the really great multiman match from 20 minutes earlier, but a really bad idea when it seemed like half the guys were working this at 2/3 speed. They couldn't have done what the earlier match did, but some of the guys worked here like they thought nobody would be watching (I don't follow AEW quarter hours, maybe Dark Order is a real channel changer). Plus, putting half the match during a commercial break wasn't going to help them get more eyeballs. Daniels had a nice showing, Grayson seemed off in spots, Romero kept taking ugly bumps that made Grayson seem even more off, Brodie Lee felt like one of six guys in the match, Kazarian looked ridiculous working 50/50 with Lee...it just wasn't very good.