AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 8/5/20

What Worked

-AEW has somehow had a poor success rate with big multiman matches. I think a multiman tag with 8+ people should be pretty much a slam dunk good match. You can hide anybody you want and can work at a great pace with frequent tags. But for some reason AEW multimans just have not clicked. The opener tonight clicked. There was stuff I didn't like (I really dislike whenever a big match like this focuses on a spot that involves half or more of the participants, like an 8 man suplex or the silly 3 way spinning toe hold that ended with them all knocking heads), but much more stuff that I thought worked really well. The energy throughout was good, and I especially liked Evil Uno. He's a guy who worked countless multimans like this, so you get a sense he knew right where to be. His chain spots didn't require anyone to wait awkwardly, he took the snap dragon real well, set up double teams great (loved his sit out powerbomb), and hit that nice cannonball under Grayson's 450. Both Bucks knew how to pick their moments and Matt had some great stuff running through a bunch of guys on the floor before getting leveled by a Brodie Lee superkick. Lee also had a cool double lariat and wrecked Kenny with one on the apron (painful bump from Omega), and this was maybe the best Lee has looked in AEW. The important thing here was that everyone was pretty good about choosing their moments, and many worked in smart spots to get out of the action. Grayson flew past the ringpost to the floor and took a big apron bump, Dax Harwood left the match after doing a nasty gutbuster on his bad knee (I do not know if the injury is real, but I hope it is not. He sold it convincingly enough that it looked legit), and that lead to a really great Page comeback when he rejoined the match after taking Harwood to the back. This wasn't bogged down in any way with that comedy that tends to drag these AEW matches down, and that tight pacing kept this real strong throughout.

-Really enjoyed LAX vs. Best Friends, with things really picking up when Trent took a nasty bump on the edge of the apron, getting his legs yanked out from under him. The LAX control segment was really good, thought Santana looked really good in there. They had a real nice double team suplex, and Trent is at his best selling and bumping around. Now, the structure meant that we were building to a Chuck Taylor hot tag the whole time, which was the weakest part of the match (and I did really like his Sliced Bread, thought it looked much better than his various drivers that always see him getting into position too early). He moved through his offense quick, which looked a bit too planned (compared to how the rest of the match looked), but the home stretch had a couple of big double teams and a decent nearfall. It didn't have the result that I wanted, but I can't argue with how we got there.

-Sammy/Hardy brawl was good, Guevara looked like a real maniac. His punches were thrown with the body language of a man trying to injure someone with punches. This wasn't a set of clean punch exchanges, this was a guy jumping someone. He threw an opened chair right into Hardy's face which felt like a crazy moment in an Ian Rotten match, not something that Matt Hardy would take on TV. The twisting dive through a table was sweet icing, but Hardy's deep red gusher was all the cherry we needed on this sundae. Sick blade job, made me wonder how the hell they would top any of that in an actual match, and made me excited to see themselves top it.

-How cool was it that Ortiz javelined that sledgehammer into the windshield to end the segment? That's the kind of one take that would have made me flip out the moment the scene was cut. "You see it stick in the windshield!? Try to defeat me now, God!"

-Wasn't feeling the Cody/Cardona tag, but Reynolds and Silver won me over during the nice, long control segment over Cody. Early stuff felt a little too indy, Cody didn't totally look like he touched the ringpost in the spot where he was supposed to, but he committed to the selling enough that I eventually bought in. Silver is a shrimp but works well with his size. Silver makes up the difference by throwing hard kicks. He is a better thigh slapper than most, really hitting the mark on some very fast timing, but really his kicks look good enough that he really doesn't need the slap. His kicks to a kneeling Cody were what really got me into this. He has good aim and came in with kicks to break up pins to show more of that good timing. But while his kicks look powerful, he is still small, and I like that someone like Cody was able to just power through with a cool powerslam in spite of the damage. Cardona didn't do a ton for me (and it's hilarious that JR was talking about his big action figure collection as something that would presumably get him over) but everyone else made this work.

-I didn't actually expect the Jericho/Cassidy program to have legs. I keep finding myself surprised with every segment. They're drawing it out really well and, not worrying about making each segment more intense than the last, just convincingly pairing them off the right amount each week. I'm not sure they can top their match, but they're doing a really good job keeping it interesting.

8. Darby Allin vs. Jon Moxley

ER: I thought this was great. Unhinged Darby performances are the most consistently high end part of Dynamite since the beginning. Moxley can be a little goofy, but he can also bleed and dish a stiff beating on Allin while Allin finds a dozen different ways to crash his own body. Moxley goes right after him to start but soon Darby is crashing the way he does best, including a brutal run into the ringpost. He dies on a couple of topes, and is one of the best in wrestling at making topes look like devastating offense. He finds great ways to stay just ahead of Moxley, and the match keeps getting hotter because of it. I dug how he set up his Code Red by kicking out Moxley's knee, and I loved how he stomped all over Moxley's hand in the ringpost before coffin dropping to the floor, landing on Moxley's same hand. There is some MJF interference, but they don't let it define the match, and don't let it be the cause of the finish. What it does do, is give Moxley a great chance to blade. Matt Hardy still had the juice of the night, but Moxley's adds to this fight. I liked Darby capitalizing and was actually shocked when the coffin drop wasn't the finish, and shocked again when Darby refused to stay down after a Gotch piledriver. I wasn't expecting the match to go big match epic on me and I enjoyed that twist. The implant DDT that kept Allin down looked sick and should keep someone down. Darby is must see TV, and matches like this one make that an obvious statement.

PAS: This was really great stuff, I didn't care for either of their first two matches against each other, but this was great. Darby might be the single best wrestler in the world at structuring an underdog match, and maybe one of the best ever at it. He is actually taking less insane bumps now than he was in the indies, but the one crazy bump he took was totally awesome looking and perfectly placed. All of Darby's offense is that rare mix of flawlessly smooth and really violent looking. You can get one or the other, rarely do you get both. Eric is right about his topes, they are the most violent dives in wrestling, and really maybe the most violent since Ciclon Ramirez. There was no need for the MJF stuff, and it would help Darby more if he got his near fall due to his own actions, but it is a minor quibble. I do think they are getting a little Lucy with the Football on Darby's big win, and they really need to pull the trigger soon.


What Didn't Work

-It feels cheap putting Swole/Reba here, since Reba is hardly a wrestler and the match was designed to be a Swole demolition. It wasn't meant to be great, and it wasn't. But it wasn't bad, and they gave the whole segment the right amount of time. The rest of the show is all up top! I feel like a real heel putting this here. The show does need segments that aren't just workrate match after workrate match, but it probably would have worked much better in between the opener and the Inner Circle tag. Also, it is a bizarre choice that amid all the "put more women on TV" talk, they put women on TV for a total of 3 minutes.


2020 MOTY MASTER LIST