New Footage Friday: SANTO! PANTHER! FISHMAN! BORNE! FINLAY! SABU! BRODIE LEE!

Fishman/Espanto Jr./Blue Panther vs. El Hijo Del Santo/Volador/Octagon AAA 5/15/94

MD: My hard drive went kaput, which has been a fight that's been going on for a while, so I lost my initial write up of this. In short, it was a solid lost trios with long entrances and a spirited post-match Panther promo where a lot of stuff hit well and where it moved briskly. There wasn't a pairing that really stood out, but there are things that will stick with me, like Espanto landing on his feet off of an exchange or Volador looking almost inhumanly athletic towards the end or Blue Panther being an absolutely amazing stooge off a quebradora, selling his groin in a spasm all the way across the ring and out to the floor or Santo's lightning crack tope off of an irish whip. The more I see of Fishman from this specific era, the more I think Eric should deep dive on him since he's got a sort of hammering Bestia del Ring vibe to him.

Matt Borne vs. Sabu ACW 11/23/01

MD: Deceptively long video. The match is pretty much what you'd hope it to be and doesn't wear out its welcome. That's because the back half is a pretty manic Borne post 9/11 rant about how he'd die for the crowd and challenging Sabu to come back out (he does, once, but not the six or seven times Borne wants). For the match itself, Sabu does his stuff and Borne is a very game foil. There's crowd brawling that we miss but that we can be assured was solid due to a father in the outskirts putting his kid up on his shoulder to see it, a sure sign of quality. They use weapons liberally but never gratuitously. Borne bleeds big as Sabu stabs at his head. There's a table. It does not break. I'm amazed they could move after that (I'm not really, because I've seen it before, but you know what I mean). Sabu's so good and experienced at this sort of match that he knows exactly when to head out and move things along when Borne can't get it in. Blood, plunder, big bumps, unmitigated violence, a clear finish, and only about ten minutes before the rant begins. Afterwards the camera sticks with Borne as he goes backstage and is told how spectacular it all was.

PAS: I thought this was excellent, it really had the pacing of a great 80s brawl, the kind of thing you might imagine Matt Borne might have had in Mid-South or Portland. It also had Sabu at his unhinged greatness, flying around, stabbing Borne in the head, crashing awkwardly into tables and chairs. Borne kept the whole thing connected, at no point was anyone standing around waiting, or setting stuff off, it always felt like a fight. The crowd brawling really felt chaotic too, they were just flying through the crowd, not seeming to care who they hit. This is easily the best 2000s Sabu match I have seen, and it felt right up there with the top tier Funk, Foley and Sandman stuff. 

Fit Finlay vs. Brodie Lee vs. Joe Gacy 3/16/12 - GREAT

MD: Our theme for this week are matches shorter than the video run times as this doesn't go as long as was indicated. Here, though, I could have used a few more minutes, because I liked what we had and I wasn't quite done with it. There was a sort of unique element for a three-way here, where the guy on the floor often operated like a moat monster. If you got too close to Brodie or Finlay on the floor, they'd just pull you right out. It made for a more interesting dynamic than guys laying around and played well into Finlay's ability to use the apron, for instance. Gacy felt like he belonged, with a great jab and willing to bump around for the other two.

PAS: I really liked the way this was organized. I hate three ways normally, but this was less about doing choreographed spots, and more about the third guy being a violent cheap shotter. I mean imagine leaving your back open and giving Finlay a free shot, or being near the ropes and being pulled out and smacked by Brodie Lee. I am crediting Finlay for the structure, because he is one of the greatest match architects ever, but whoever called this match was really smart. There were a lot of great little Finlay moments: he blocks a Lee Scorpion attempt by straight punching him in the face, takes his signature top rope bump to the floor and is just constantly killing people. Gacy is by far the least of these three guys, some of his stuff looked good, but some did not, and it seems totally BS to have him go over. That indy Finlay run was one of the coolest things ever, and I am excited we got to see another classic Finlay match. 

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AEW Dynamite Brodie Lee Tribute

When I decided to start writing up Dynamite last year, Phil and I thought the best way to document it would be the classic DVDVR Workrate Report style that Phil, TomK, and DEAN popularized. Talking about what worked and what didn't work is a satisfying way to talk about a pro wrestling show, with certain benefits over just writing up the show linearly. But after watching this episode in its entirety, a typical Workrate Report didn't really feel appropriate. 

There was plenty of wrestling on this show, plenty of in ring to praise and criticize, but a seemingly healthy man just a year or two older than I am dying unexpectedly makes criticizing a weak bodyslam or poorly laid out match seem a little inconsequential. These wrestlers all lost a brother, a friend, a mentor, and I couldn't begin to put myself in their boots and what could have been going through their heads as they honored Brodie Lee. 

I did think the wrestling was good on the show, but this show was obviously not going to be about furthering angles in any drastic way, so it was nice to sit back and enjoy it as much as I could, while also feeling crushed every single time they cut to -1 at ringside. Brodie was a guy who I first saw teaming with Necro Butcher as the Hillbilly Wrecking Crew, and within a few years of that was in the best wrestling match of 2014. He was one of my favorite WWE wrestlers of the decade, and around 2014/2015 he was one of maybe three guys who I would most look forward to seeing on TV every week. But up until his passing I did not know one single solitary thing about the man outside of the ring. 

In the days since his passing I've seen nothing but warm, tender stories about the big man, stories that were a joy to read. But the stories were also gutting in their earnestness, in their disclosure, in what delight they revealed about this man whom I've "known" for over a decade without really knowing a single thing about him. Reading stories and seeing photos that reflected his sense of humor, reading stories about the road, reading about how much of a loving father and husband he was, it hit me how much I wished I never had to learn *any* of these stories. I was only hearing these details because so many were mourning, missing a man they had no reason to believe would be out of their lives this soon. I knew not one detail of his non-wrestling life before this week, and while it has both warmed and torn my heart hearing what a great person he was, I wish I was still able to live in that bubble where I only knew him as a wrestler. I wish these stories were still private, wish they were memories shared among friends, stories that didn't need to be shared to the world to illustrate what we were now without. 

This show was probably the most affecting wrestling memorial show we've seen, but it's not like any of us would be actually ghoulish enough to rank wrestling memorial shows. This is not a contest anyone would want to participate in. Owen Hart's show hit me particularly hard, because it was one of the first times I'd seen wrestlers opening up as humans, to remember someone who they unexpectedly lost. Hearing Jon Moxley and Eddie Kingston talk about Brodie gave me the same kind of swelling sinus feeling I felt when Mark Henry read a poem about Owen. I could have listened to Kingston talk about Brodie for an hour, as there is nobody else in wrestling who is more brazenly unafraid to directly associate personal pain and emotion to his words. There is just something so difficult about seeing tough competitors with wet eyes, the saddest way to break the fourth wall. 

Wrestling images don't get more powerful than seeing a man's son take part in an in-ring boots ritual that he shouldn't have ever had to learn about. But another that hit me harder was one of the last images in the show closing tribute video, with Brodie's wife smashing her face into his massive beard to give her husband a kiss. Seeing his out of control beard and mustache engulf her face just made me think about how a woman is never going to be annoyed by her husbands absurdly large, scratchy facial hair ever again; a private moment we were all let in on only because that husband is no longer with us. 

AEW put on a great tribute to a man whose kindness, love, and affability obviously inspired and touched nearly everyone he came into contact with. I wish I never had to learn these details of his life, as that would mean he was still spreading that warmth. 

 

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RIP Brodie Lee

Hillbilly Wrecking Crew (Necro Butcher/Brodie Lee) vs. H8 Club (Nick Gage/Nate Hatred) JAPW 11/21/09

PAS: The Hillbilly Wrecking Crew tag run was this truly awesome under the radar series, every match was like a 21st century Moondogs match. Hopefully with JAPW showing up on IWTV more folks will get to check it out. As one might imagine this was an all around the arena tag brawl between four nutjobs. Necro grabs a pair of scissors to carve up Gage, Lee and Hatred brawl outside in the cold and slam each other into walls. Lee might take the biggest bump in the match with all of these crazy bumpers and he gets hurled over the top rope and lands on his knee. I think the end meandered a bit, which kept this from all timer level, but it was as bloody and unhinged as it looked on paper.

ER: It's hard not to love the Hillbilly Wrecking Crew, and this team was my first exposure to Brodie Lee. This match is filled with tough guys taking awful spills on concrete, bleeding, and landing on each other in ugly ways. Gage brought this great Give No Fucks energy to this, running hard enough into guys that he seemed totally unaware that he could come out taking damage as well. Brodie had this insane hulked up Necro Butcher energy, stomping through crowds of people and shoving everyone who got near. He looked like Brody during an All Japan entrance, shoving fans on the upbeat and running into Gage or Hatred on the downbeat. Gage does some gnarly work on Necro's leg, stomping it in a chair and leaping onto it in a way that looked extremely dangerous. But what is danger to a man who was jabbing scissors into Nate Hatred's head? Necro also takes a sick sunset flip powerbomb onto the bad side of a chair, Lee dishes out big boots and big bumps, just the exact kind of war you'd want. The sit and brawl stuff wasn't any good when it was happening in 2009, and it's completely stupid that we're seeing that spot even more in 2020, and I think in this case especially it really slowed things down unnecessarily (it literally always fucks up the pacing of any match that spot appears in). If someone like Necro can't make it work within a match, what chance does anyone else have? Still, this match brought the brawl violence that you would want to see these loons inflict on each other, so let Necro take a seat. 

Brodie Lee vs. Mike Bailey C*4 1/19/11

ER: This was Brodie and Bailey doing the things you'd want them to do against each other, and perhaps doing it for too long. We get some wild Bailey stunts stunt together in fun ways, starting things with a tope, hitting a tornado DDT in the aisle off a cool as hell moonsault, building to him hitting a dragonrana off the risers. I like how they had Bailey not hit these things super clean, having Brodie look like he was about to reverse all of them before Bailey would find a way to finish it. Lee takes over with a big boot and then alternates back and forth with big power offense, and showoff Mike Bailey-style offense. He hits a powerbomb, but also a fantastic dropkick, hits a black hole slam (that honestly looked big enough that it should have ended the match), but also hits a nutso Asai moonsault. I thought they got a little silly with kickouts (I don't think it would have been tough to give Bailey a better way back into the match than just kicking out of things), but they did cool offense after all the kickouts (Bailey hits his great shooting star press, Lee hits his awesome Liger bomb), so who really cares. People want to see Brodie bounce Bailey off the mat and want to see Bailey hit wild offense, and both those things happened a lot.  

PAS: Good example of how comfortable Lee was in a spotfest. He had a great ability of keeping up a juniors pace while still retaining a heavyweight aura. I really liked Bailey's early hit and run offense, and Lee's takeovers were as violent as you hoped they would be. He does this pumphandle suplex which sends Bailey damn near to Manitoba. I do think they had a couple kick outs too many, and a match like this doesn't need as many near falls to work structurally. Still this delivered what you hoped it would, the imported wrestler works a Mike Bailey match formula was one of the cooler things in end of the aughts, start of the teens indy wrestling and this was a great example of it. 

Brodie Lee vs. Eddie Kingston Chikara 3/25/12 - GREAT

ER: This didn't quite get to the heights that it could have, but with these two you know there was a damn high floor. I think this was their only singles match, and it's great that they ran it right before Lee was headed off to WWE. We got some big stuff, including topes from both big men and a half nelson suplex that I'm sure made Kingston think about Lee for weeks after. I love Kingston as Grand champ, going into the match and getting outfought and outgunned by Lee, and Lee was really really swinging like a man who thought he wasn't going to be allowed to work Indy Stiff any longer. The strike exchanges here were really cool, because they were sold exactly how they looked. Lee was buckling Kingston's knees with his elbows and rattling his brain box with uppercuts, and against a beast like Lee you knew that Kingston would be best playing a man outgunned. Kingston realizing he's being outstruck and still letting his mouth get him into hotter and hotter water is one of my favorite types of Kingston match, him taking a hard shot and saying he's been hit harder is such a real thing to bring into wrestling. Nobody likes getting their ass kicked, nobody wants to give the guy beating their ass any satisfaction, and Kingston is the guy who would rather absorb a worse beating as long as its on his own terms. I love King selling individual injuries (like hurting his arm after Lee blocked a backfist), and again that half nelson suplex was a real monster. I wish we could have seen a series of matches between them, as I know they would have kept going out there and doing new things as a feud progressed. I'm glad we got what we got. 

PAS: It was cool to see Lee work a big time heavyweight title match. Kingston did a great job of making the Grand Championship meaningful and this felt like something that mattered. This was two big guys hitting each other very hard, but with the variety and selling to make it matter. Lee was throwing his sick looking open hand shots to the ear and Kingston sold it like a guy getting his equilibrium jarred. Eddie was on his back foot but was going to try to give as good as he got. I liked Lee going for the foul after the ref bump and getting a big near fall on a Liger bomb, it really felt like he was going to be taking the title to Connecticut. I didn't love the finish run, felt like it needed a bigger explosion to put a pin in the match they were building, still this was two greats having their big match and it was neat to see. 

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 10/7/20

 What Worked

-Both Young Bucks standing and watching TV while peering back over their shoulders, set apart so that both were visible for the shot, was such a hilarious artistic decision. I suppose they could have been watching the TV from between their legs, but then we wouldn't have had them posed side by side, watching TV over their shoulders like they were stand-ins on a Nelson album cover. 

-Ringside doctor being announced before a dog collar match is a nice touch, and having Greg Valentine there is even better. Even better than that, is Valentine's graphic that refers to him as a "Dog Collar Match Survivor". 

-I LOVE that Dr. Luther was in the main for Jericho's 30th anniversary celebration, although I wish they had some balls and made it a Jericho/Luther singles match. I had that opinion before the match, and I think it stands after, because Serpentico and Hager were the weak parts of the match. The Luther/Hager sections were clunky (which kind of made the stand and trade look cool and uneven, but other parts less so) and Serpentico is just...not a guy I need to see in a main event. But the Luther/Jericho sections were fun as hell. People laughed when Luther was signed, because obviously it was just a friend getting his buddy a gig. But fuck it, we should get gigs for our friends if we're in a position to do so. Why wouldn't we do that? Luther is in his early 50s and has barely been active as a wrestler for the past 20 years (sheesh I saw him live on an APW show 20 years ago) and he can still clearly go. His cannonball was awesome, dug his big boots, and I liked the way he and Jericho interacted. I've seen nastier Judas Effect elbows, but I dug how Luther dropped to his knees after taking it instead of flat back bumps like everyone else. Fun match, and possibly the only match of the evening that knew what it was supposed to be. 

What Didn't Work

-I wanted a LOT more out of the Cage/Hobbs opener but it fell short. The standing exchanges looked bad, the elbows thrown just looked weak and lacking, the shoulderblocks looked like two guys trying to not hit each other (although I liked Hobbs' late match torpedo shoulderblock), and a lot of this came off like a Lance Storm super heavyweight match. The missed strikes or clotheslines to set up planned offense all came off phony and leading, even if some of the moves they lead to looked good (Hobbs hit a nice powerslam and spinebuster, Cage hit a couple of big drivers that could have landed Hobbs on his head). But the moves didn't mean much to me because of the laziness in setting up literally every move. Almost every piece of offense was set up by a guy missing a slow strike, or a guy slightly overrunning the other and then turning around into a move. Both of these guys are big, but both seem less interested in running into each other and more interested in slightly missing each other to then do a big spot. The big spots looked good. Every single thing gluing those spots together looked bad. 

-We're really on a big moves/no substance roll tonight, and the FTR vs. Evans/Angelico match underwhelmed. Last week was FTR's best AEW performance so far, but they came off like SCU Best Friends or any of the other lesser AEW teams who have their set movesets they're going to work through, and selling is only based on whose turn it is next. Evans and Angelico have been underutilized in AEW, in that I cannot believe some of the flippy goofballs we've seen a ton on TV when they have two of the better flippy goofballs hanging out on Dark. That said, Evans whiffed bad on a flipping legdrop, so bad that there was absolutely no way to cover for it. Dax did his best by immediately grabbing his face, and Excalibur picked up on it and said that Evans' boot hit Harwood in the face, but it is never going to look good when you miss your opponent entirely and then just keep your opponent in position and climb to the top to do another move. That's ugly backyard stuff. A lot of FTR's chain offense looked good, but both teams turned off who was on offense with a switch, so you'd have weird close nearfalls that would lead immediately to the person being pinned going on offense. It was laid out messily, even when it was executed well. 

-Every week they build FTR vs. Young Bucks is a week where the feud seems less interesting. The Bucks are not playing this right, FTR are coming off very miscast as babyfaces (tweeners? men with no alliances?) and Best Friends making hack jokes while winking that they're hack jokes doesn't make the jokes any less hack. 

-Liked the blood, liked Arn's old man spinebuster, liked a couple of the inadvertent falls onto the chain, but did not like the Dog Collar match. They went out and worked a mostly normal match while just so happening to have a chain tied around their necks. There was a lot of time spent on moving the chain out of the way, or adjusting the chain, or making sure they don't hit the chain, and that time needed to just be spent punching each other with the chain. Brodie Lee is also someone who is not great at taking offense anymore. I'm not sure how long that has been going on, but it's something I don't remember being a problem 2-3 years ago. In AEW he takes offense awkwardly and gets into position for offense even more awkwardly. Look how he takes that front suplex (a move he has taken several times in AEW and always takes badly) on his knees, face coming nowhere near the chain it was supposed to be near, and the announcers having to sell it anyway. Moves where he has to bend at the waist are even worse, as he doesn't know to do anything other than make his body a 90 degree angle and freeze. The table piledriver was unfortunate as Brodie's weight went the wrong way, flattening Cody, who then had to go back on offense despite it looking like he had taken the worst of his own move. I liked Cody's dive (doing dives while attached to a chain and another person will always be impressive), but did not like this match. It didn't come off like a violent chain match to me, it came off like a poor Cody/Lee match with them trying to work around the chain as an obstacle. 

-Women's match probably would have made the top side had the finish been a little cleaner. But I don't like those kind of runs where each person knocks the other into the ropes with a strike, which gives them momentum for their own strike, which so on and so on. It looks even worse when the strike gave you momentum to fire back with your own strike, but also you can still stop at will or change directions on rope running. Is the strike moving you, or is it all just terrible. The finish stretch was ugly, with lots of bad thigh slaps, but I liked a lot of the early stuff, liked Serena's leg drags and how she would trap Swole's arm in her leg before rolling over her, but I hate that move begets move nonsense.  

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 9/23/20

What Worked

-Evil Uno/Hangman eeks onto the top side here just because I still like what Uno brings to AEW. Page has several cool bits of offense and then other things he should drop entirely. Things like his moonsault off the apron that rarely connects, offense like that just looks silly with his character. It's that Silas Young thing where he looks like James Gammon and is a real man, then goes out and wrestles like a bad Chris Sabin clone. Page needs to drop the flips and just focus on cool fallaway slams and big lariats, because those things work well within his character AND are moves that look good. I really liked the fallaway slam where he held a bridge, not an easy thing to do. Uno is someone in AEW who makes little things look good, but here he also gets to splat Page with a huge cannonball off the top. The match wasn't perfect, but Uno made Page's offense look good (Page makes stuff look good, but Uno helped with some things), so this landed up top.

-Uno was selling his head and neck around ringside during the Lee/Cassidy match and that rules.

-Cassidy/Brodie was a good use of bullshit that leaves the door open for Cassidy to get some kind of cage match revenge. I dug Lee knocking Cassidy's block off after the hands went in the pockets, but I am a fan of the hands in pockets spots. His dive that was caught by the Dark Order was a cool trick, and they managed to all impressively scatter at the right time to make it look like Cassidy actually got the worst of Lee's dive. Lee has a few too many goofy twists and turns to his offense still, but he's great at barreling into Cassidy with falling lariats and big boots, and I loved that grounded side headlock he worked during the commercial break (also hit a great elbowdrop during the break, shame some of his coolest stuff was during the break). Cassidy's comeback was good and I liked the way they worked in him dealing with the Dark Order (lots of fun work with him dodging interference in between hitting dives), dealing with them leading to him getting blown up. Run this back, throw them in a cage, give me a Cassidy pockets dive off the top of the cage.

-I like a good "look we WANT to fight you guys, but that wouldn't be fair to YOU because of how beat up you are" and FTR pulled off that attitude well.

-You know? Just keep matching up Thunder Rosa and Ivelisse every week. There have been plenty of AEW women's matches that are just actually bad, so it's way way way more interesting to just have two women in there who look and act like they genuinely hate each other. Having unprofessional looking exchanges is an upgrade over having bad looking rehearsed exchanges. There was plenty of stuff here that was out of sync (including a hilarious moment where Tony and JR are talking about how perfectly in sync Shida and Ivelisse were, as Ivelisse's timing was clearly off on two things in a row), but I'll take a couple out of sync moments if you give me some stiff punches and kicks. Every time Ivelisse and Rosa were in there together was noteworthy and the hate bled through the screen. Ivelisse mounted her and looked like she would have punched her right in the nose if Rosa didn't know how to cover up and buck her off, and it added a sick "what will happen next?" element to things. I dug Shida suplexing Ivelisse boots first into Diamante's face (with Rosa hitting slingshot knees after), and later Shida running across the ring to stop a hot tag by hitting a flying knee to Diamante on the apron. It didn't totally matter much as the finishing stretch fell apart a bit, but the falling apart was some of the best stuff here. Pure hate and actual emotion are things we don't get enough of in wrestling, so I celebrate this unprofessionalism and welcome it to my television.

22. Eddie Kingston vs. Jon Moxley

ER: It's cruel of AEW to make us wait two months for another Kings(ton) Road match in prime time, because of course King is going to deliver. I could watch Kingston sell chops all day, love watching him take a hit and see his muscle memory go to respond with a hit, only for the pain to hit mid throw. Gimme more of Kingston duck walking away holding his chest. You never get rote exchanges with King, the strikes are always mixed up and broken up with unexpected kicks. Kingston hits a lariat and  takes it to the floor, goes after Moxley's ear, yanks his waistband into an elbow to the back, dumps him into the timekeeper's table, and we get a nice tour of the AEW floor. King eats a vertical suplex and they both whip each other into the barricades. I love Kingston faces after he takes a suplex. We get too many idiotic facial reactions in wrestling, Kingston's reactions are the only ones that feel honest. These two kept it close and always punished lag, like Kingston headbutting Moxley off the top after Moxley left space between an elbow, or Moxley powering through a lariat after Kingston gloated a wee bit. We get some big moves, like Mox hitting a piledriver, or Kingston taking a big German suplex before dropping Mox with a backdrop, but there's never the feeling of moving from spot to spot. Kingston matches always feel like a strike battle broken up by occasional bigger moves, but everything is glued together with chops and headbutts and elbows. The sudden finish was awesome, with Moxley blocking a backfist and just pouncing on Kingston, dropping him to his knees with his weight while applying a sleeper that turns into a sick side headlock. Kingston is a man who knows how to make a side headlock look like a finish, turning purple and spitting, and Mox did his part by really hooking that chin. It's almost like Kingston needs to be wrestling on TV more.

PAS: All Japan Eddie Kingston isn't my favorite version of Eddie Kingston, although I love all versions. We are far enough removed from that era, that matches paying tribute to it don't seem as trite, and Kingston does that tribute stuff better than anyone. He understands that what made those matches great were timing and reaction and not just moves, and his reactions to getting hit were even cooler then the nastiness of the shots. Moxley had some cool little moments too, this wasn't just a Kingston showcase. I loved how he sold the downward elbows like he got a muscle cramp, and I really felt like he was excited to be working this kind of match and that excitement was contagious. I wish such a big chunk of this match wasn't in picture in picture, it's better then not getting it all, but they should time things better so your main event doesn't get chopped up. I thought the finish was really cool, no need for a bunch of near falls, that quick bulldog choke felt like an ending. Too bad it took COVID to slot Kingston in the main event where he belongs, but hopefully they realize he belongs there now, and a title rematch between these too - with a big build up - is the most exciting thing AEW could do right now.


What Didn't Work

-Opening tag was a real slog, not at all the kind of debut that made Miro looked like an asset. Miro looked fine in the match (although I couldn't stop laughing at JR fawning over his quads the whole time), but it went way too long, and it was easily the slowest paced match that Janela or Kiss have been involved with in AEW. Some nice individual moments (Kiss took a nice bump to the floor after Janela got shoved into him), but this whole thing felt sleepy.

-Jericho has made some pretty uninteresting on paper matches into interesting or even really good matches, but getting something good out of Private Party might be his greatest task. The promo didn't hit me, but I'll hold out hope.


2020 MOTY MASTER LIST

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 9/9/20

What Worked

-Eddie Kingston used a microphone, obviously it winds up here. I giggled every time he yelled at the Lucha Bros. to separate.

-I like Joey Janela when he is a Jericho punching bag.

-ALL ELITE HEELS IS REAL!!!!! I saw something about it on Twitter weeks ago and thought someone made a hilarious meme.

-Dustin match goes up here, but it was close. Brodie Lee looked really bad here, looking like someone who had no idea where he needed to be and couldn't think of interesting ways to get there. Dustin made this as salvageable as it was, so basically Dustin turning in a typical Dustin performance gets this up here. If I wasn't lazy I would write the Dustin part here and the Lee part down below, but let's call it at 55% good. Lee stumbled his way through things and looked lame enough through parts of this that it made me think there's a chance he is pulling double duty as Luchasaurus. Lee had a bunch of moments where he was just waiting to take moves, with no artistry whatsoever. He telegraphs all of Dustin's offense by just standing perfectly still and waiting for it, just horrible at occupying himself. When he took Dustin's drop down uppercut he literally just bent at the waist with his head up, watching Dustin the entire time while standing still. What a fucking idiot. He was at his best when he was Godzilla, throwing tables and barricades into Dustin while Dustin scrambled to safety, Dustin throwing punches while working to avoid him. But Lee has been bit by that really contagious Dijakovic bug, that makes him chain together a bunch of offense that looks like total rehearsed shit. He make Dustin's bulldog look like shit, and the finish was especially risible. The finishing lariat looked good, but making Dustin bounce back and forth between the ropes and his boot might have sounded like a good idea on paper, but it was hilarious in execution. Dustin keeps this here - barely - and Brodie Lee's stock has fallen every single week he's been in AEW.


What Didn't Work

-You know who stinks in AEW? Luchasaurus. That's a guy who stinks up a match. I really thought he had made strides in Lucha Underground, but he is pro wrestling poison in AEW. He always throws off the timing of a match, as everyone slows down to work in his spots and he does bad slow versions of cruiserweight spots. It wouldn't be SO bad if any of his spots looked good, but the thing is, none of his spots look good. Fenix looked great doing Fenix things, loved his rope work and his big dive into Luchasaurus down the finishing stretch (that Luchasaurus caught by falling over), but the finish of this was as putrid as anything Luchasaurus did. This was one of the more idiotically laid out finishes I've seen in AEW. Lucha Bros. hit a package piledriver on Jungle Boy, the Fenix hits the dive, gets back in the ring, but Jungle Boy is apparently Actually Fine from taking a tandem package piledriver just seconds before, and tricks Pentagon into giving Fenix a flipping piledriver. Incredibly, impossibly stupid.

-I guess I should be glad that they didn't work a physical angle with Hardy, but once I saw Reby there with their child I thought "Oh man Matt Hardy is gonna get fucked up". And I'm a monster because I am left disappointed by a man who clearly got a very bad concussion did not get nuked on TV a few days later.

-Jack Evans has just been on the roster, not being on TV? And he's not even wrestling tonight, just appearing at ringside? There are plenty of chuds on TV every week that should be replaced with Evans. Cassidy/Angelico (oh yeah, they still have Angelico too. I have not watched any episodes of Dark) was ehhhh. I liked Angelico's Jerry bump, but th Navarro sub looked like it was the first time he was trying it, and all of Cassidy's offense landed feather light. Then we end the segment with some Best Friends and this is firmly in the bottom half of the page.

-Not only do we get a segment showcasing Kip Sabian's comedy chops (and an unexpected Puf appearance), but Rusev/Miro is here and lemme tell you people, he's got something things to say about SOME PEOPLE UP NORTH. We know who HE'S talking about!! Get outta here. Bring someone in and do something other than that, ANYTHING other than that. Also, Miro is absolute wedding poison. Nobody should want him anywhere near an official role in their wedding. You'd think he wouldn't even want to be involved. THOSE PEOPLE UP NORTH had me do some stupid
wedding cuck angle. I'm going DOWN SOUTH to also then do a wedding angle.

-Boy, Hager/Sonny Kiss is an ugly style clash. Kiss has been great in trios matches, awkward in tags and singles, and Hager is not going to help him look good. I liked Janela's big bumps to the floor, liked Jericho getting run into a chair, but there was a lot of clunk in this tag.

-I did not anticipate FTR being this toothless in AEW. I'd rather see them Old School Tag Wrasslin on Main Event rather than these weekly talk segments and disappointing matches.

-You know what the women's division was missing? Someone with another awkward style that requires matches to come to a halt just so bad looking spots can be done. Well, they checked that box with Tay Conti! Capoeira almost always translates poorly to pro wrestling (I have been a fan of some Arturo Ruas matches, others I found his capoeira getting completely in the way). He submissions looked slow, her kicks looked bad. She hit one nice knee on the floor. And she's going to be a babyface? She feels like a natural heel to me, but hey, they seem to know what they're doing with this division.

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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

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 6/24/20

What Worked

-AEW realized that nobody in the fed knows how to catch a dive, so I appreciate they made a match into a lumberjack just so 18 guys would be standing close together to catch someone. The set up was clumsy as hell, but it's smart to recognize your weaknesses.

-Super smart usage of Shida, just a quick running high knee and nice falcon arrow and then leaping aggressively into the crowd to smack Penelope around. Shida is someone who fucks up everyone's timing in every AEW match I've seen her in, so quick squashes to build to bigger matches is brilliant.

-Lee/Cabana vs. Janela/Kiss was certainly a pleasant surprise. They kept a hot pace for 8 minutes, and I cannot believe that this is the first actual non-battle royal that Kiss has been in over the entire Dynamite run. He came off like a real star in this one, if not a main eventer than someone who should clearly be a featured attraction every couple of weeks. He and Janela had a lot of chemistry as a team and I liked their quick tandem flying and the way they would run into big Brodie boots or screens. There was really only one hinky spot (where Cabana held up on a roaring elbow and Kiss bumped a little early for it), but most of this was fun fun fun.

-FTR/SCU was a hot tag that started falling apart a bit down the stretch, but I think they mostly did a good job at going home when things started slipping. I think this got good during the picture in picture break right after they did the tandem suplexes over the top to the floor, and thought Hardwood was especially strong with his cutoff punches. I think SCU's double team work was surprisingly more  solid, but I don't really care about FTR as a "double team" kind of tag team, I prefer them more as a cutoff tag team. So it was a complementary pairing with a strong progression. I dug SCU coming back with Daniels' slingshot elbow and Kazarian's big legdrop, and how it lead to FTR taking over later when Kazarian missed with an even bigger legdrop. Even a couple things that missed (like a Daniels flying knee that missed the mark) looked good after Wheeler took a nasty bump ricocheting off the ropes. Don't love FTR cutting gassed post-match in ring promos, but it's at least unique to them and so for now I'll appreciate it as a feature.

-Nice Cage squash. Jon Cruz is the right kind of ragdoll bumper that makes someone like Cage shine, getting insane height on a flapjack and crumpling nicely on everything. I dig Cage's bicep curl spot, feels like something an awesome juiced bodybuilder should be doing. Press slams and bicep curls, fuck yeah. There just needs to be a bodybuilder wrestler who bases every piece of offense on his regular gym set.

-Hardy/Santana was a good pairing and I liked seeing all the cool ways Santana would bump wildly for Hardy. In the opening couple minutes alone he was flying to the floor, all around ringside, and into the barricade. His cutoff work was simple and I liked how he would mix quick reversals in with just choking and stomping away at Hardy in the corner. The flip reversal out of the Side Effect was something I hadn't seen, and I like that it didn't come off fluidly; it came off like Hardy was going through with the move as planned and was genuinely surprised at Santana's reversal. After seeing the abomination that was Wardlow/Luchasaurus and how they kept anticipating every single move a split second (or more) too early, this kind of surprise struggle was awesome to see. I'm into 45 year old Hardy busting ass and keeping up with quick guys like Santana, and dig that he's pulling it off.

-Fine segment to close out the show, really loved how they kept building to the moment where it looked like Jericho was going to pop Cassidy. The through the crowd brawl was real good (also why the fuck are there so many people there in the crowd?? Who are they??), loved the hotshot Jericho took on a railing and especially loved how cool Orange Cassidy looks while bleeding all over himself out of the ear. It's almost like blood automatically makes nearly every wrestling situation better? Jericho's bump was cool, still no clue why so many people were there, but this was a good way to close out the show.


What Didn't Work

-Wardlow/Luchasaurus was a shitty version of a shitty Keith Lee/Dijakovic match, the kind of match that could have been good had they just done shoulderblocks and clotheslines, and instead derailed in hilarious fashion once they decided to pepper in a ton of slo mo dancing. The strike exchanges were all terrible, with Wardlow throwing slow punches from a mile away and both doing pillow soft slo mo Frye/Takayama strikes. Luchasaurus kept showing too much of his hand on bumps, clearly prepping for bumps that never quite matched up to the move Wardlow was delivering. And by the time the match devolved into Luchasaurus doing his embarrassing DDR exchanges it become one of the saddest matches I've seen on Dynamite. Literally every one of Luchasaurus dance exchanges looked like he was throwing them for the first time, without practicing, and without making sure that he could make any of it look good. And none of it looked good. It arguably peaked with him hitting the slowest legsweep I've ever seen, with Wardlow then taking a flat back bump after getting slowly legswept in the shins. Incredible. Luchasaurus whiffed on every strike that was supposed to be caught, thigh slapped when kicks didn't connect, and made sure every single kick he threw looked like a giant pile of triceratops shit. The flying off the stage was a minor bright spot, full props for Marko getting launched like that, but the set up for all of the big spots was so clunky and unnatural  and not a good enough reason to work an entire lumberjack match just to use them as a base. This was a real sad way to start a show.

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 5/13/20

What Worked

-I laughed when Fenix ran out and hit a leaping Bruce Lee kick to the back of Orange Cassidy's head.

-MJF squash was a bright spot, loved how Lee Johnson bumped around for MJF (including really hitting his back on the apron while bumping to the floor) and loved things like MJF's stiff arm clothesline and his killer shoulder breaker finisher. MJF bringing a shoulder breaker back to prominence will go a long way towards making me a fan of MJF.


What Didn't Work

-The opening tag was at least brisk, even if a lot of things looked off. Luchasaurus needs to drop all strike combos (even though I get it, he basically has a similar size and skillset to Lance Archer so he has to come up with some different stuff to set him apart) but they always look dorky. Jungle Boy had a couple cool moments and Taylor's awful waffle is a nice finisher, and this was a perfectly fine short tag involving people I don't much care for.

-At this point I just feel bad when I see that a women's 4 way is happening, because I'm never excited to just dump all over the women's division and say shitty things about their sequences that ALWAYS get sloppier and sloppier as every minute passes. It's always the same, every time, where I start out thinking "Okay this isn't bad this is kinda working okay I liked that..." and then every minute goes by, and things start getting messed up, and then I say "why do they keep running these same 4 women in matches against each other where they have no chemistry, no in ring communication, no rapport of any kind." I'm starting to think Shida is the MAJOR problem here, as she really just derails every one of these matches. Not only does a lot of her offense look terrible, but her sequences are almost always designed to result in awkward wait times and awkward collisions. She waits awkwardly for offense, then she's like a scared rabbit who runs headlong into traffic and just panics. Statlander was already bumping to the floor, and here's Shida throwing Baker right out on top of Statlander - literally any other part of the ring would have been fine - and Baker has to completely alter her bump just because Shida had to rush the sequence. Why did Shida have to rush? Why, to get into position several seconds early to take a missile dropkick. Every spot Shida is involved in requires the other participants to slow down and stand still, it's unbearable. Statlander has a lot to like about her, and she really tries to put over some of this bad offense (like her almost going full scorpion off a DDT) but there is always at minimum one strength spot that winds up looking completely compromised, and at this point maybe she should just accept she is not great at strength spots. The interactions between her and Baker were fun, Ford at least tries and always seems to get hung out to dry in these matches. Baker is a great personality who needs to drop some of the shittier parts of her offense (that slingblade is brutally bad) and stick to clawing at mouths and noses. Just STAHHHHP leaving them out there to work through a commercial break, literally every one of these things has fallen apart after just a few minutes. Either the ability isn't there, or they're biting off more than they can chew.

-I know we can't push every team all the time, but I was hoping for more of a showing against Omega/Hardy than Santana and Ortiz got. This felt structured as an Omega/Hardy showcase, and I cannot think of many guys who need less of a showcase than those two.

-I'm an inconsistent motherfucker, as I get so sick of seeing Omega work these long competitive matches with people who shouldn't be so competitive, and yet I actually wanted to see at least 5 minutes out of Jericho/Pineapple Pete. I've been hearing Jericho amusingly call this guy out in the crowd for a couple months, I wanted a little bit of a payoff. I didn't need to see Pete beat Jericho, or even come close to beating Jericho, but for whatever reason I wanted an actual WCW Saturday Night, Winner Never in Doubt, 5 minute match. 90 seconds of Pineapple Pete isn't going to cut it. WCW knew how to do fun matches where the winner was never in doubt for a second, and AEW can't get that same tone.

-Daniels looked really slow in the main event, and why shouldn't he? He's still wrestling the exact same style with the exact same moves as 20 years ago. But this was the first time I've actually been alarmed at how slow he was running the ropes. Daniels would have stood out as slow if he was opening an All Japan show teaming with Haruka Eigen against Momota and Rusher. Lee still has the worst gear in the biz, non-Tamina division. Can anyone actually explain what his gear is supposed to mean? It looks like a day camp crafts project where all the kids learned how to draw scars.

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 4/29/20

What Worked

ER: Cody/Darby was really good, while also having a finish I thought made Darby look like a first class dummy, and a bunch of knee work that added absolutely nothing to the match. I loved the smoke and mirrors and the actual big match feel that they worked, and all of the knee work could have played into something cool if they remembered to give it a third act. It was set up by Cody tweaking his knee while bridging up, which is a cool way to set up something like that. I tweaked my hip getting up too quick after napping on the couch, surely it's possible for Cody to tweak a knee while doing an off balance bridge. But neither ever seemed too interested in building off that, until they were suddenly VERY interested in building off that for two minutes, until they both decided that they can move past it. While Darby was working a kneebar on the knee that he didn't originally attack, that was probably my first clue that none of this was going anywhere, but I don't put that on Darby. I thought his cannonball into Cody's knee was cool, dug the floatover Indian deathlock grapevine, and was bummed that they couldn't find a way to close that story out. The rest of the big match stuff played nicely.

Darby was great at being bullied around by Cody, loved the spot where he got flung into Brandi and Cody still fit in a thrust kick before tending to his wife. Britt Baker hitting Cody with a shoe was weird, but kind of fun (even if it felt a little out of place in this kind of match. I mean would they build to Baker/Brandi or something? Plus after she hit him with her shoe I'm STUNNED that Jericho didn't say something like "She turned HEEL!"), and Cody really came off like a confident star in his beatdown. I liked the finish, until I didn't. Cody foolishly attempting the Coffin Drop really feels like something hubristic that Cody would try in a big match, only to have it backfire. But the finish was so telegraphed and only even works on paper if you believe that Darby is an actual idiot. Darby hits his own Coffin Drop right after, then pins Cody, but you see it was actually CODY who pinned DARBY! And for that to work, I am supposed to believe that for the first time in his life, Darby opted to pin a man in a position that he's never pinned anyone before, rolling himself back onto his shoulders ON THE MAT to pin Cody. This might have felt clever on paper, but made Darby look like a real dweeb in practice. Sometimes just a normal boring finish is better than a cute finish that requires out of behavior stupidity.

PAS: I thought this was mostly very good outside of the wonky finish. Cody doesn't really have the kind of offense or bumping or selling which connects with me. If he did everything 10% better I think I would like him a lot, but he is kind of missing that 10%. Darby is so good, he first showed up on people's radar as an insane bump machine, but now he can work a match like this where he hardly takes any big bumps at all, and just move the match along on his timing and the fluidity of his offense. I really liked Cody hurting his knee on the bridge up, and do wish that the legwork part of the match was done better, although I kind of accept that limb work isn't what these guys do. I haven't been watching much empty arena wrestling, but the AEW set up of wrestlers in the crowd works way better then the WWE setup. Here it just feels like an IWA-MS show with 30 people in the crowd, and that is still a recognizable form of pro wrestling


-I liked Wardlow yanking Musa off the top into a kneelift, and liked Wardlow's bump off Musa's kind of sketchy handspring spinkick.

-The Flim Flam Jam was fine for what it was, but the Manitoba Melee was entertaining and a fun use of quarantine. Good use of cameos, but I'm surprised they actually didn't do a sponsored ad with Cameo. They got Ferrigno, and I'm sure you can probably find people like Ted Beneke from Breaking Bad for a good price. And now I'm wondering if Larry Blackmon is on Cameo.

-Britt Baker's promo from her dental office was the kind of segment that is making me an unexpected fan of Baker. I wish her dental office was filled with more awkward sibling photos, the way my dad's dental office has pictures of my sister and I, with the most recent one of either of us being from 2004.

-Brodie/Marko was fun, which I recognize means that I now have to face myself in the mirror while trying to come to terms with how Deeply Disturbing my conscious has become. I am amused at moments like Lee swinging a clothesline from his normal arm slot and being surprised it missed, even though his normal clothesline traces 2 feet over Marko's head. But Marko crashed and burned spectacularly, the spinning slam looked great, the sitout powerbomb finish was disgusting, and him stepping right on Marko's face was maybe the coolest thing Lee has done in AEW.

ER: Dustin/Archer was very good, the kind of high class main event wrestling story that Dustin excels at. You need an irrepressible vet to die on his sword in an effort to keep this bad haired bad tattooed wrestler from fighting his brother? Dustin is going to deliver. Archer has come a long way and has some impressive big offense. I do think the seams in his game come out the longer his matches tend to go, and this was a match that got a lot of time. Against someone who wasn't Dustin, that would have been a big problem. But Dustin is good at filling time and good at building sympathy, and it's cruel that this match wasn't in front of any kind of pro wrestling crowd. Bloody Dustin is a babyface who NEEDS a crowd, needs to have fans losing it as his blood drips across his face at cool angles (seriously how great does Dustin blood always look as a visual). I love how Archer countered a lot of Dustin's signature stuff, like blocking the dropdown punch or stopping his momentum to block Dustin's powerslam, that kind of stuff is right up my alley. Archer busts open Dustin with a chair, and Dustin bleeding means his opponent is going to punch him in his cut, and that rules. Both guys traded some really hard clotheslines, Dustin finally does hit that snap slam, and I like the AEW Story is Obvious moment of Archer kicking out of the Cross Rhodes at 1. I can definitely do without stuff like Archer's long rope walk moonsault, which while impressive, felt completely out of place in a bloody fight. It's also a shame that a lot of Archer's weakest stuff came during the home stretch of the match (that repeated facepalm into the mat while just holding the other side of Dustin's head looks like something that would have been edited out in post), but overall this was a great presentation.

PAS: I liked parts of this a lot (The Dustin parts obviously), but I don't think this fully connected with me. Archer is so plodding and having him work this long section of dominance was tough. He wanders around, hits a mediocre punch or clothesline and wanders some more. He is supposed to come off like this vicious killer, but instead comes off like a big Power Plant guy with a couple of bits of big offense, but no idea how to string a match together. I think Dustin vs. Shawn O'Haire could be a good match, but not for 20+ minutes, with O'Haire lumbering around for 16 of it.  I don't know how many big Dustin main events are left, and each one is a treasure, but I wish he had a better dance partner for this one.


What Didn't Work

-Leave it to chuds like Chuck Taylor and Kip Sabian to make the No DQ stip as uninteresting as possible. When Jimmy Havoc is in the top half of workers in any given match, you know you've sunk to some depths. Taylor threw some strikes so bad in this match that were so bad there would be no way of describing them to a non fan as strikes. You've possibly never seen clubbing forearms as bad as whatever Chuck Taylor was doing. Some of the garbage stuff looked good, like Havoc blindsiding Orange Cassidy with a thrown chair, or Taylor taking a backdrop onto a ladder, but overall? Nah. This is one of those matches where the best thing you can say about it is "Well all of the people I dislike the most were all used in the same segment, which means their specific brand of awful was at least quarantined and won't infect the rest of the show."

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 4/22/20

What Worked

-I'm still not certain we've gotten an actual Sammy/Darby classic, and they've matched up several times. It's possibly because their best matches are against monsters and matched up against each other one on one they somewhat negate what the other is best at. They're easily two of my favorite five guys in AEW, but they can both likely have better matches against lesser opponents than against each other. HOWEVER, I liked this a lot, I just have a higher bar set here. It's strong throughout, but weirdly cut apart by commercials, which hurt the flow a bit. I could see the argument that the commercial layout was smart, as it allowed recovery time from some pretty big stuff, but I would have liked to see just how they handled that recovery. Instead we jumped right back into more big moves and it didn't feel right. It starts with Sammy blindsiding Darby with a tope and then hitting a nutso superfly splash to the floor, "putting" Darby through a ladder. Except the ladder doesn't budge and both of these two are going to be dealing with crushing rib pain for the next week. Darby worked on Guevara's foot and even ripped off his boot, that all lead to a cool kneebar that I would have bought as the finish. Both guys take some big spills (not a shock) and I liked Sammy's lunatic dedication to selling a foot by actually trying to do a one foot springboard cutter and a 630 where he was clearly favoring a leg. That's a great way to die, but I think he pulled it off. Love seeing these two do their thing.

-Best Brodie Lee squash so far, but I also think the other ones have been weak. His big windup clothesline looked great, that's really the only kind of stuff he should be doing. Drop the superkicks and somersault sentons.


What Didn't Work

-I was on a long phone call last week with a relative, and missed most of Dynamite. I *did* want to mention that I made it back in time for the Hager/Moxley match, and it was a real clunker. Easily the worst "Bloodsport" style match I've seen over the past few years, compeltely sluggish, both completely over their heads, no idea where to take the match, and it felt endless. In a just world, people would be dumping on that match as much as they dumped on Edge/Orton.

-To add to the discussion of Better Wrestler: Lex Luger or Kenny Omega, I like being able to throw on an old episode of Raw and see Luger take Tony DeVito to the woodshed. Omega always wants to have these extended squash matches, where he runs through a squash and then when the squash match is supposed to end he just stands there for awhile and lets someone do all of their kick combos. Alan Angels is fine I guess, but the Kenny Omega Competitive Squash structure is a real dud. He dominates, then kinda hangs around for awhile until he finishes it. Am I supposed to think Angels is a  future contender? Am I supposed to believe that every person on the roster is one quick pin away from the main event? Just squash a guy.

-"But right now, let's take a special look at Scorpio Sky" sounds like such an unnecessary vignette in 2020. But I look forward to the special looks at Scott Lost, several Gallineros, TARO, Hook Bomberry...

-Jimmy Havoc is bad, but THANK YOU Jimmy Havoc for just trying to have a normal match with Orange Cassidy, thank you for not selling the intentionally silly offense parts instead of doing that thing most opponents do where they bump across the ring for a finger poke. Most of Havoc's stuff doesn't look good (he had a nice punch and a nice forearm, and the former got a quick camera cut away because they knew Jimmy Havoc was about to attempt to punch a person). The Penelope/Kip involvement was really shoehorned in, and most of this didn't work for me. But I am much more interested in seeing someone work an actual match. Sadly, that person was Jimmy Havoc.

-Not buying Wardlow, and I'm about as easy as it gets when it comes to finding things to like about big gassed wrestlers. Lee Johnson has been the bump king of AEW squash matches, but there's only so much he can do.

-Liked the Brodie Lee squash, but that ring gear is B-A-D.

-I actually did not realize just how terrible Kip Sabian was until tonight. I know that I've never enjoyed Kip Sabian before, but I thought his match against Darby was fun (even though that was just a great Darby performance). But this? This was atrocious. Sabian looked like the absolute worst AEW worker on the roster in this match, and this was a match that had a Penelope/Brandi showdown that saw Brandi run straight past Penelope without either of them pretending to duck or act like they were avoiding each other in any way. This was Dustin working a Sabian match, and it was straight torture. Things got momentarily compelling with Dustin working a knee injury after hitting the turnbuckles. But then he had to keep selling for Kip Sabian's offense and that was when this whole thing got impossibly bad. Kip Sabian looked like he was trying out every piece of offense in his repertoire for the very first time, and I wish he was in with someone who isn't as much of a nice guy pro as Dustin. Could you see someone like Finlay bumping for that short arm clothesline? Finlay would have grabbed Sabian by the maxilla and elbowed his nose into oblivion. With no hyperbole, I can honestly say that was the worst short arm clothesline I've seen, completely beyond parody to have Sabian hitting offense lighter than the guy in sunglasses who purposely hits half of his offense lightly. I would have thought it impossible to have a 10+ minute Dustin match wind up on the bottom here, and that tells me everything I need to know about Kip Sabian. I encourage everybody to find and watch this match, just so someone can explain to me their theories on what any of Sabian's offense was supposed to be. Is Sabian's hiring like when Johnny Ace hired the wrong one legged wrestler? Was someone in AEW actually supposed to hire BLK Jeez?

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