2023 Ongoing MOTY List: AEW PARKING LOT BRAWL 2

 

13. Trent Beretta/Chuck Taylor vs. Claudio Castagnoli/Jon Moxley AEW Rampage 8/4/23

ER: This is the second Best Friends Parking Lot match, and if the Height of the Pandemic words I wrote about the first one are to be believed, I thought that one was one of the best matches of the year. That one was against LAX, who doesn't exist anymore. This one is against Blackpool Combat Club, who didn't exist then but is as good and as watchable as LAX was then. But this wasn't as good as that and I know that even though I couldn't tell you one clear detail of that first match which I loved if you had a gun to my face, I would guess, but it would be a lie and I would spend some days unexpectedly suddenly afraid that I cheated death and would someday be forced to pay back double. That first match was the first match Chuck Taylor was a part of that I thought was great. Now it's a couple years later and he has the dark red cheeks of a man with lupus and it reminds us all how we've aged since our last parking lot fight a couple years ago. 

This match knew what it was, in a way that hurt it. It didn't have the freshness or the element of surprise that the original had. This was violent - Trent Beretta essentially got busted open good in the first few seconds - but had this weird approach where everything that happened in the parking lot was equally damaging as anything else that happened in the parking lot. Selling is less important to me in matches where guys are just taking "real" bumps. But this felt long in ways the other one didn't, moving at a pace that was like the match walking alongside itself. Getting hit with a spoiler was about the same as getting piledriven on the roof of a KIA which was about the same as getting powerbombed through a windshield. The price was about 3 seconds. It felt like they were on an itinerary. But also Trent Beretta tried to recreate the legendary Real Parking Lot Fight where Cliff Booth threw Bruce Lee into the side of a Lincoln Continental. 

Really it's the Trent Beretta match. That's why we watch this. We love Claudio doing strong man spots in a junkyard brawl, we love Moxley bleeding almost as quickly as Trent, but Beretta is the guy doing the spots you want to see on cars. That cannon ball into the side of the car was sick, Claudio press slammed him on top of a car, he got slammed inside the engine and stayed inside as Taylor was powerbombed on the hood, he gets bombed through a windshield, Claudio swings him into the head of one of those big yard waste bins, and every time he fought back his offense it was just him taking the same awful falls only offensively instead of defensively. He drove this forward and his body kept taking the most real bumps on concrete and cars and then getting right back up to do it again. I don't give a shit about his mom. Chuck Taylor siphoning gasoline should have led to something special - and I'm not looking up whether Taylor actually siphoned like a divorced dad who hates his wife's new boyfriend, because I believed he was that man; eyes flaring redder than his rosacea cheeks, he thought only of his hallway that used to be lined with pictures. But a man siphoning gasoline shouldn't lead to the weakest stretch of the match, not when guys are out there killings themselves. 

Trent Beretta is a guy who I just realized has three different Tags on our site because I've spelled his name differently three different times. But I thought he was so good in this match that it made me take the time to go back and fix all of the times we tagged him as Trent Barretta. I didn't have the energy to update the ones that just used Trent. 

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 12/12 - 12/18

AEW Dark 12/13

Eddie Kingston/Ortiz vs Trustbusters (Slim J/JVSK)

MD: Sometimes AEW will tape something and then not show it due to changing circumstances. This was taped all the way back on 11/4 in Atlantic City, and Eddie, post Akiyama, has apparently cooled down. He was still pretty hot for this one. Still, they came through and showed it nonetheless and we're glad they did. Slim J vs Eddie Kingston is about as much of a Segunda Caida match as is possible. If Punk doesn't come back, then Slim J becomes the fifth finger sort of by default. This got a ton of time too and was a good showcase for everyone involved.

Eddie and Slim J got really stretch to start with Slim just absolutely driving Eddie nuts and goading him into things. Eddie came back by responding to some more goading with a perfect eyepoke. Later on the Trustbusters would get to really lean on Ortiz, looking pretty good working as a unit for a team that has maybe one or two Dark matches together. Slim J has been around forever but he's traveled in different circles than a lot of the other AEW guys. I think Davari said that he'd first met him the day that they started as a unit. And I don't see any signs of VSK working him before either (even though VSK has been around for fifteen years). This broke down to some pretty wonderful chaos with Eddie suplexing everyone, taking Slim J's flying reverse DDT perfectly (which not everyone does), and less perfectly eating another dive. They had Eddie break up a couple of lesser things by VSK but made Ortiz kick out of the Amityville Horror/Cradleshock, which I think is JVSK's finisher, so that was a dubious choice but it fit the moment of the match, I guess. I liked the little bit of Sonny Kiss we got as a second in this one, including to set up the finishing miscommunication. Trustbusters are just such a weird and random unit but it somehow works. Excalibur was trying one last ticket sale read as Ortiz made the final hot tag and Eddie spun into the backfist and he carried that manic energy forward into the call. If this is the only Eddie and Slim J encounter we get in AEW, it'd be a shame, but it still felt pretty substantial for a month and a half old Dark main event and I'm glad we got at least this much.

AEW Rampage 12/16

Dustin Rhodes/Orange Cassidy/Chuck Taylor/Trent vs Kip Sabian/Trent Seven/Butcher/Blade

MD: Feel good way to end a yearly themed AEW taping, especially important considering the big hometown babyface lost to end Dynamite. Lots of moving pieces here but they came together pretty well, with everyone more or less where they should be when they should be and plenty of gaga. I enjoyed the Trent-off to start and the fans got into it. Seven is a guy with a couple of unique ideas, a slightly different body type. I think there's probably more value to AEW overall to bring guys like him in occasionally instead of full time, that sense that anything can happen at any moment as opposed to just making a huge roster even huger, but he was more than happy to play along with everything here. Probably my favorite moment in this one was when he was taking Dustin's punches by really throwing his head all over the place. Sabian is someone I give some credit to, as while I don't entirely think the act works, I like how broadly he thinks about things; there was a moment during Dark a week or two ago where he was mocking Alex Reynolds about the Preston Vance turn that is something almost no one else on the roster would have done in that spot. Sort of a galaxy brain approach to his matches.

I get that WWE is better in many ways than it was at the start of the year, but it's always refreshing to highlight someone like Dustin in Texas. It's so intuitive and so special. It's part of what WWF was doing for years at the start of the war in the 80s, bringing in people like Wrestling II in Louisiana or Mad Dog Vachon in AWA territory. All of Dustin's interactions with Danhausen (constantly staring at one another) or Cassidy (playing air guitar to the theme as Cassidy leaned upon him on the entrance) were enjoyable and the sort of things I'd hope would lead to something more. I feel it's off brand to note on Segunda Caida that I would have liked a hug with everyone involved, but I kind of would have. The bits with Danhausen and the faux low blows (and the one actual one) set up the finishing stretch in a fun and different way than a dive train would have. They could run a match like this once every few weeks or once a month, highlighting a local guy, pulling together some characters and some feuds, to send a crowd happy, and it'd be part of what will always make AEW special compared to a lot of what we've been forcefed over the last two decades. I still hope this is leading to Dustin challenging Cassidy for the All Atlantic Title at some point though. I'd even take Dustin and Danhausen interacting more.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends): 10/17 - 10/23

AEW Dark 10/18

MD: Eddie was our only guy this week and he was on Dark, so I figured I'd just do the whole show. It's been a little over a year now since I've been watching AEW. One interesting thing about the promotion relative to other ones over the years is that different people from different generations get very different things out of it. Punk and Danielson coming back drew me in. Kingston and Dustin and Darby, among others, kept my interest, but on a week to week basis, it was the webshows that really worked for me. If Dynamite feels like crash TV with original ROH style dream matches, and Rampage feels a bit like late 91-early 92 WCW Saturday Night with a Dangerous Alliance match and a few midcard matches, Elevation and Dark feel like WCW syndi shows. Squashes and a few midcard matches. It's one of those things people of my generational tolerated for years, maybe grumbled about, but ultimately had no idea how good we had it.

In an ecosystem like what I described above, squashes are a amazing, right? Guys like Naylor have been so good at highlighting them and why they were special over the years, but they highlight moves, characters, give the announcers room to breathe. They're not exhausting like sprints can be. They're pro-wrestling comfort food while giving wrestlers the ability to really express who they are. You can tell a story in them or not depending on what you're trying to achieve. All the talk about how wrestlers are wasted not being on TV is irritating, to say the least. The nature of AEW's roster is that people get rotated on and off to keep things fresh. Someone like Ruby Soho coming out to her theme on Elevation gets the fresh and excited crowds going. Emi Sakura is the MVP, having hard-hitting entertaining tag after entertaining tag with partners that can vibe with her act and opponents that are better off for getting reps with her. It's the perfect place for Dalton Castle and Danhausen and Brandon Cutler and the Wingmen, giving the crowd extra value for their ticket and helping to keep acts over. It lets them try out new talent or new tweaks upon a gimmick. I was excited when Deeb, for instance, finished up her title match programs and was interacting with people like Emi and Skye Blue again.

The problem, as much as fans being small-minded, is AEW not doing enough to use the shows to build to everything else going on. There was a patch back six months ago where if someone was going to have a match on Dynamite or Rampage they'd often get featured on Elevation, and they did some things, like building to the ROH PPV with Dark and Elevation, but in general, it's underutilized. I don't know a single person who watches the webshows and feels like they're not valuable or worth watching though, no matter how much griping you get from the people who don't watch (the most worthless griping of all). This was an especially star-studded episode given they were in Canada and it was taped before a live Rampage, but don't sleep on the studio Darks either. Studio wrestling is great given that with AEW we get all sorts of variety. You may not want it as your only wrestling but as part of the whole, it balances things out.

Hikaru Shida vs Vanessa Kraven

MD: I've been giving a lot of thought about 'aces' lately. I think it's due to watching a ton of Inoki over the last year. It could be because I want to watch some Big Daddy and make some calls for myself soon. Don't hold me for that. One aspect that I think is important in an ace is to leverage the cachet you have with the crowd to find ways to highlight what makes your opponent unique. Shida absolutely did that here, making full use of Kraven's size and strength. This was not at all the same sort of match that she would have had with someone smaller or with a different background. Some of that was leaping into the catch on the outside off the chair and eating that samoan drop on the apron (which then, thanks to the AEW house style, she could use later in the match to escape the Samoan drop and set up the finishing stretch). Some of it was the struggle for the falcon arrow, barely getting her over, and then letting her kick out of it. The creativity and imagination and care that went into how she laid this out was definitely appreciated however.

Dark Order (Evil Uno/John Silver/Alex Reynolds/10) vs Tyler Tirva/Shane Hawke/Zak Patterson/Jordano)

MD: Again, we get the freedom of the web shows here. They're not trying to hit any major time marks. They're not worried about picture-in-picture commercial breaks. This was in Canada. This was about showcasing Uno, as well it should have been. It's one of those things AEW does best and that we spent decades getting denied due to weird piques of spite "up north." Though some of this was diluted by Taz poking Jose the Assistant on commentary, but certainly not for the live crowd.

This was surprisingly complete, with Reynolds getting some shine to start (useful given that he plays FIP a lot), a tease of Uno early only for him to get swarmed, some heat on Silver (including eating a huge gutwrench), and everything set up to combine the big Dark Order spots and all of Uno's signature spots mixed with all of his showmanship. They could have just had Dark Order run through these guys but they gave it enough substance to make Uno's spots mean just a little more.

Eddie Kingston/Ortiz vs Mo Jabari/Jake O'Reilly

MD: Just a stylized mauling. Jabari and O'Reilly might get one shot in but they sure wouldn't get two in a row. Ortiz knows this is his moment to come into his own and showcase his own identity and he's been doing that with the Rick Rude or the crotch chop before the veg-o-matic or the tiger style (which, now that I think about it, may not be his own identity at all). Those crossfaces in the corner were nasty though, and Eddie's chops sounded as good as they ever did. The anger management angle for Kingston made sense in the Sammy match; I'm not sure if it's totally believable moving forward, but the Pac match it seems to be building to should be fun at least.

Best Friends (Orange Cassidy/Chuck Taylor/Trent) vs Kobe Durst/Steven Mainz/Jessie V

MD: This was a straight up crowdpleasing squash on the heels of the Cassidy/PAC main event one day earlier. Occasionally they'll run these where guys can just do whatever and they don't even give the enhancement talent a hope. It was pretty brutal with Trent not quite getting all of the flip into a spinebuster (and he save the same sort of shrug that Silver got when he tried to suplex two guys at once). The Sole Food into the Half and Half looked great though. Cassidy then came in and punched everyone. I'm not sure if it's Keith Mitchell retiring or what but they don't seem to time the hug nearly as well as they used to. Anyway, this was never going to be much but it was fine for what it was.

Ari Davari vs Brandon Cutler

MD: Like I said, people watch AEW for different reasons. There are some people who are thoroughly into the Elite, to the point of having Omega avatars and whatever else. I don't have a ton of time for any of them for reasons no one needs to hear right now, but I do think Cutler's been one of the bright spots of the company over the last month. He's a guy who throws himself entirely in the act, who's unafraid to do anything necessary. He cares so much that the fans care, and as the only bastion of the Elite remaining, they care just a little bit more. You put him up against a guy like Avalon (like we'll see this week) or Danhausen or Serpentico and you get a fun comedy match, but if you put him against an actual wrestler like Davari, and you get a kind of interesting, contrast-laden match, where he can work from underneath. Here, Davari threw a lot of simple, driving shots, credible stuff that put over his annoyance of the entire situation. Cutler would comeback with fun 80s offense but Davari would cut him off by going for the eyes or with Kiss' help or through something just as conniving that sort of defies hierarchy and highlights how offended he is that he has to lower himself to wrestle Cutler. It made for a pretty fun match. I would have rather Hook had to go through all of the Trustbusters first before getting Davari, though part of that was just beacuse I wanted to see Hook vs Slim J (who is the new 5th finger if Punk isn't coming back, by the way).

Willow Nightingale vs Seleziya Sparx

MD: In a lot of ways this was an inversion of the Shida match. Willow still wanted to give some shine to the local, even if she was working heel, but she made her work for it and chip away, not going down easily, leaning hard into her size. It's hard for a babyface with a size advantage to know just how much to give while still showing the right amount of vulnerability, especially given the hierarchical difference here, but I think she nailed it. Willow has great emotive reactions in her selling, able to switch between ebullience, exhaustion, and aggression. All of Sparx' stuff looked pretty good, even some of the overwrought things like how she vaulted over the turnbuckle to hit a running kick. That's the sort of thing that is maybe a bit much but you can't fault it if the kick looks good. Jody Threat got a lot of attention last week, but Sparx should get some as well.

QT Marshall vs Dante Martin

MD: A year ago, when I first encountered him, I thought QT should wrestle more like a manager. He's capable of a lot of things (including missing a 450) but just because he can, doesn't necessarily mean he should. That said, for a lot of this period, AEW's needed credible mid-card heels to eat losses. Having the Trustbusters now help a little bit, but that's really been the Factory and the Wingmen, and Lethal, and as such, it does make sense for QT to stretch his wings a bit more. He's good at it and especially good at engaging with his opponent and the audience. They were all over him, despite having sat through all of the previous matches and even if no one necessarily bought a ticket for him, they all had a seemingly great time getting on his case and it'll be, consciously or subconsciously, part of their enduring good feeling about the night in the months and years to come.
 
Dante, in the meantime, probably through no choice of his own as he'd rather be teaming with his brother, has had a lot of ring time to improve. I thought he was already pretty far along in the singles match with Black last October, but his expressiveness and interactions with the crowd have developed since then. He's a great seller on top of his ability to seemingly freeze time as he flips around the ring and soars through the air. He's a case where the sum is greater than any specific part, as his flipping rana into the ring here would be the most spectacular thing in almost any other match in the world but felt almost subdued alongside his huge dive to the outside and stuttering splash to avoid the cutter. The finishing stretch worked to protect QT in loss but still felt like an accomplishment for Dante. Definitely the sort of match that Dusty would have been proud to call the Moo Match of the Week on WCW Prime in 1995 even if maybe it wouldn't make a comp tape for the year.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death Week of 3/14-3/20

AEW Dynamite 3/16

Bryan Danielson/Jon Moxley vs. Best Friends (Chuck Taylor/Wheeler Yuta)

MD: I saw some criticism that this was a little bit long and maybe there was a little bit of that; maybe just a bit too much wrestling for the sake of wrestling, and a general house style sense of how long an AEW TV match has to be, or a technical need to encapsulate the commercial break. But when you look at what this match was trying to do, you can't say they didn't nail it. This was about Danielson and Moxley completely dismantling their opponents with Regal commentating over them, about Taylor looking resilient despite the fact that both Cassidy and Trent were down with injuries, and to get Yuta over. That meant Danielson and Moxley took 90% of this, including a double heat. It meant that while Taylor was able to have a moment after a hot tag, it was Yuta who got that last hot tag and got to look strong against guys way above his paygrade. We talk about how Kingston is the guy who understand the emotional weight behind the old AJPW style, but this nailed how hierarchy could be used to get someone over. Yuta's defiance at the end when Danielson was kicking him and how the crowd started to chant his name felt like when a lion would step up to Tenryu only to get crushed for his affrontry. Speaking of those kicks, I kind of loved how Yuta took them, throwing his hand back in order to steady himself. It gave him a place to go as he started to lean into them more and more before finally drawing Danielson in. So far in this arrangement, I wondered about exactly how well Moxley fit, as he had come back as a huge babyface with a meaningful story, but you're seeing him revel in the violence more and more every week. You really were able to see that here as they cut off the ring and just bore down upon Taylor and Yuta. 

ER: I am not a Chuck Taylor guy, and I am not a Yuta guy. The latter encompasses a lot of the things I hate about modern wrestling house style, the style where every guy with a year under their belt gets the same "this guy is going to be the best in the world in just a couple years" hype and all I can see is someone who can't set up offense and whose bumps almost always look disconnected from the moves they're bumping for. And I liked how Danielson acted exactly as he should, the old head scoffing at the new hype, and then punishing him for it. I thought Yuta and especially Taylor looked pretty bad in this, but Taylor kind of has an excuse to look bad because, well, people know he wrestles like Chuck Taylor. So I reveled in the extended aggressive beating that Danielson and Moxley dished out to Yuta, while Regal's honeyed tones described the savagery. Regal was as much of an MVP in this match as Danielson, fleshing out the story of the match being told, and Danielson had another one of those runs where I instinctively want to write that it was "one of the best performances of the year for Danielson" despite knowing that I've written that probably a dozen times already. Yuta gets full credit for standing up to a beating that wasn't going to stop, and I really liked Matt's comparison to the AJPW hierarchy, and found it apt. Those fans knew when young KENTA was landing more kicks than normal on a main eventer, just as they knew when Misawa was suddenly getting deeper into matches against Jumbo. Yuta's got a long way to go before that, but he knew exactly what role he was playing in this tag, and that's more important than a moveset. 

 

AEW Rampage 3/18 (Taped 3/16)

Darby Allin vs. The Butcher

MD: Phil covered this one on the Ringer and his review is more poetic. Go read it. Here's mine: Great chemistry here. So much of what made this work was Darby's confidence in how over he was and in his own offense. He knows the fans are behind him not because he dominates matches but because he never quits, because he takes a beating, because he can come back at any moment believably, because he wields his own body like a weapon like maybe no other wrestler in history, and because he layers upon that speed and explosiveness and technical savvy. It means he can give the Butcher most of a match, can lean into his ever shot, can take offense that's visually dramatic like the cloverleaf powerbomb and the swings, both within the ring and into the steps, and come back at the last second and have it all work. Moreover, the advantage of having someone so dependent on risks or very specific openings (like manipulating the fingers) in order to stay in control is that it creates narrative possibilities. Darby has to throw his body at Butcher. That leaves him open for Butcher to catch him. It's as simple as that. Disparities, if capitalized on correctly, create drama. Butcher was great here as a looming, crashing, clashing, violence presence. The announcers played up that he'd been injured against Darby previous and was taking a pound of flesh in revenge. Whether that was what was going on in Butcher's head or not, you could read that into his ringwork and it gave Darby a very tall mountain to climb.

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AEW All Out 9/5/21 Pt. 1

Private Party/Jack Evans/Angelico/Matt Hardy vs. Jungle Boy/Orange Cassidy/Luchasaurus/Wheeler Yuta/Chuck Taylor

PAS: This was a match full of guys I am a low voter on (I like Jungle Boy, Hardy and Jack Evans a fair amount, the rest aren't for me), but this kind of fast moving 10 man is a good way to hid limited guys and keep things moving at a nice pace. The Private Party have some fun SAT's double teams, and didn't have to do things they couldn't do. The top rope blockbuster by Jungle Boy was a great spot, and they did some amusing Chikara stuff like the chicken fight and submission chain, and left slow motion spots and invisible grenades in the trash where they belong. I don't know why Chuck Taylor did two dives to the floor and Jack Evans did none and Luchasarus needs to dump the spin kick when Tommy End is in your fed, but otherwise this got Cassidy and Jungle Boy on the show and it is smart to get really over acts like them to open a show. 

Eddie Kingston vs. Miro - EPIC

PAS: The first real Eddie Kingston classic we have seen in AEW. This was King's Road Eddie, he maybe the only US wrestler to actually understand what made those All Japan matches so special, and it wasn't the moves it was the meaning. Eddie and Miro really beat the hell out of each other with Miro landing great looking kicks and straight rights and Eddie absolutely beating the hell out of Miro's chest and neck with blood blistering chops. I loved the little selling Eddie did throughout the match, eyes getting glassy after eating big shots, never fully able to get movement in his back after getting powerslammed on the floor, shaking out his fingers when Miro bit them, masterful stuff from one of the greatest sellers in wrestling history. All of the stuff with the turnbuckle pad was great business. Remsberg being a beat too slow on the Kingston pinfall, him stopping Kingston from slamming Miro into the turnbuckle only to be out of position and miss the low blow. This is how you protect an over babyface like Eddie, he was the better man, but lost out due to fate. This is another level performance by Miro and another feather in Eddie's all time resume. 

ER: Incredible, passionate performance for Eddie Kingston, a guy with a career's worth of great passionate matches. He's the guy I currently want to see against every other wrestler, the guy I think is most likely to have someone's best match (at least until Hero gets back). And if there's a Miro match I've ever enjoyed more, it's been many years since it happened, as these two really tapped into something. This is the coolest version of Miro we've gotten, and I love Eddie in big title matches so I was buzzed about it. Eddie got to have a great selling match, working a ton of match long bits in between quick bursts of damaging Miro. Eddie brings that ability to have a chance in any moment of the match, the same way Fujiwara was always in it. Kingston could lose every single match he's in for two years straight and people will still believe he has a chance the next match. It's a strong connection and it elevates his biggest singles matches. 

I fully bought into how big each guy was missing, both running hard into turnbuckles and guardrails, and I also bought into how both would immediately come firing back. Kingston firing off the guardrail with a yakuza kick or how Miro would scream into Eddie. Eddie's chops really did look blistering, and the way all of his offense had these triumphant builds due to the way Miro had avoided them really added to his aura. Seeing Kingston finally land his tope or his backfist really meant something, and the two suplexes he hit looked like a title change. I really liked all the nonsense with the turnbuckle, loved the way it played out. Miro's winning combo was like something Kingston himself would set up: A mule kick low, big high kick, and a big exclamation point running kick to turn out the lights. Great presentation, great title match. 

Jon Moxley vs. Satoshi Kojima

PAS: This was a solid hard hitting New Japan style match which I think was hurt a bit by following Kingston and Miro doing a better version of a similar thing. They really put Kojima over on commentary and it is cool he got to have a big US moment like this. Stuff landed with thuds and I thought Kojima got several big near falls (without ever hitting his Koji lariat), the DDT on the apron looked appropriately nasty and the bloody elbow from Moxley added a bit of spice to the match. But this had a lot of the elbow strike, make a face, elbow strike stuff which I don't like in current Japanese wrestling. Suzuki coming out post match felt like a big moment and I like how AEW takes advantage of an open door policy to have surprises like this.

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 10/14/20

 What Worked

-Opening tag had a strong first half and then started to drag once they involved Kip Sabian and their ringside game cabinet and around then it started feeling like they were just filling time. Probably didn't need to go 15+ with this one. But I liked it a lot through Taylor's hot tag. Trent is good at taking a beating, eating suplexes (loved Wheeler's high backdrop and Harwood's faster lower angle Saito suplex) and I liked the way they tangled him up when making quick tags. Wheeler was working hard at this one, keeping pace with Trent while administering the beating, and my man then carries Trent's corpse all the way back to the ring from the gaming cabinet crash, blowing himself up worse than that cabinet got blown up. Taylor's hot tag was good, with big lariats sending both to the floor (both FTR had some nice bumps to the floor in this one) and then a wild tope con hilo that wipes out both of FTR. FTR were good at feeding into Trent and Taylor's offense, even stuff that can look bad like the sole food/50-50 combo, Harwood flew right into. 

-It is extremely fitting that Kip Sabian's nickname is "Super Bad". 

-Loved my man Sean Maluta getting his ass absolutely TOSSED around ringside, just throwing that body into guardrails. I dug him in Evolve teaming with Colby Corino and Eddie Kingston, and now that he's made Lance Archer and Miro look strong on Dynamite, hopefully they can find something more for him to do. 

-That Expos Vlad throwback Kingston was rocking was so sick. Expos gear is doubtlessly the coolest MLB gear. Gimme Kingston on commentary (and in the ring) more often, and gimme Kingston pointing out that he never tapped to the bully choke. 

What Didn't Work

-Miro yelling GAME OVER!! and then whiffing on Maluta's jaw for his camel clutch made me laugh, but I don't think he was going for yuks. 

-A couple of the gags worked well in the Jericho/MJF segment, but I'm not really a fan of building main event stories with this kind of overly planned comedic back and forth. It's funny when Britt Baker tosses Tony Schiavone a hand towel to cover up his balls during her promo at the spa, but Jericho and MJF working "So I'm saying that you're saying that if I'm saying""No what I'm saying is that you're saying what I'm saying" kinda stuff just goes nowhere with me. Honestly Jericho should have absolutely sicced his goons on MJF the second he brought up his hair (also Jericho is 50, it's not really "premature balding" if a dude is 50. The guy I went to high school with who had a horseshoe at age 18, THAT'S premature balding), or at least recommend he gets that neck freckle checked out right quick. MJF's Boy Meets World bully shtick just does not work for me in main event programs. 

-Cody/Cassidy came off as the weakest of the Cassidy prestige matches, and was one of Cody's weakest AEW singles matches (by memory only the Warhorse match came off weaker to me). It was really slow paced but never earned that pace, coming off flat instead of as "intense drama". Orange looked really small against Cody and a lot of his offense didn't look like it would crack an egg. The standing strike exchange was not good and I have no idea what those Cassidy chest palm strikes were supposed to accomplish. The slow pace really worked against the match and putting a beach break on the apron and in the ring so close together made Cassidy look even worse that they didn't finish Cody. The tornado DDT spot was nice, and Cassidy's dive was fine, but that time limit draw coming at the 2 count came off way too prepared and I don't think the match earned any of the solemnity they wanted to push at the finish. This whole thing came off like two guys working through injuries while trying to cover their injuries. 

-They kept calling Shida/Swole hard fought, and it kind of was, but the hardest fight was the timing of all the exchanges. Shida matches always have wonky timing moments, where either she gets off time or she throws her opponent off, and those happened throughout. You watch a match like this and see all of the ways it could have been improved and tidied up just by keeping things simple. Whenever they went into a more complicated strike exchange that required someone to be in a specific spot, that's when you got knee strikes that missed or a rolling elbow that had to be stopped mid roll. When they were just working headlock exchanges off Irish whips or knocking each other off the turnbuckle it played much better. Shida has undeniable charisma but the in ring has a long way to go. The same could be said about Swole, but she was the one getting more of her sequences thrown off tonight. There was a good match here somewhere, but too many little blunders. 

-I cannot believe they're still trying to make Tye Dillinger a thing. 

-Moxley/Archer felt the exact same level of sluggish as the Cassidy/Cody match earlier, and it had a similar layout with surprise kickouts of finishers that get immediately shrugged off because the next spot had to happen. Archer is such a goof. When he's wrecking jobbers in ring or in locker room he's nothing but screaming and flexing and at least comes off destructive. Here he works this methodical match that I think is supposed to make it seem like he's a monster with gravitas, but the match just comes off draggy and lame. I liked Moxley hitting dirty deeds to start the match, and the match would have been way more interesting had that just been the entire match. I thought this was a real dry match with the announce team trying to convince us it was a big time main event. Just like Cassidy hit the beach break on the apron and in the ring earlier, here Moxley hits dirty deeds off the apron through a table, and not long after hits it in the ring only for Archer to kick out. Moxley locks in the bully choke and Archer merely stands up and goes to the corner for the next spot. Whenever a match is laid out where a finisher is kicked out of to supposedly dramatic effect, only for the guy who took the finisher to be up and active literal seconds later, you know you're trapped in some bullshit. Kingston confronting Moxley after the match was infinitely better than anything in the match proper. 

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2020 Ongoing MOTY List: AEW Parking Lot Brawl

Santana/Ortiz vs. Trent/Chuck Taylor AEW Dynamite 9/16

ER: I did not care about the Best Friends/LAX build, hate Chuck Taylor feuds, wouldn't have ever guessed it could go somewhere interesting. And then they go out and have an insanely violent Zona 23 style parking lot brawl. What? This had some spills in it (a LOT, really) that were as nasty or nastier than anything in the Finlay/Regal parking lot brawl. Am I stupid for saying a match with Chuck Taylor had tons of comparably violent moments to two a famously violent match featuring two of my 20 favorite wrestlers of all time? Possibly, but I loved the damage these four took. This match had some of the most gruesome vehicle-based spots I've seen. By the end of this everyone was bleeding out of places that don't typically bleed in a wrestling match. Ortiz got jammed under the hood of a car and crushed in painful ways by Taylor and Trent, Trent hitting a senton while Ortiz's leg was still hanging out. Trent got powerbombed into the windshield of a truck, and while the announcers were focusing on his cut up back from the glass I couldn't stop seeing the back of his head getting whipped into the top frame. Sure, that bloody back is gonna mess up the upholstery of his mom's minivan, but that check to the back of the head is gonna mess up his cognitive functions in his 60s. Trent also got slingshotted straight into a down truck tailgate, so he was really trying to be an equal opportunity brainpan destroyer. The board shots all looked nasty (especially Ortiz cracking Trent in the back and then blasting him in the ribs). Powerbombs on truck tops, backdrops on cars, spears into a car grill, and a piledriver off a truck tool box? Yeah, shoot that in my veins. There is a Chuck Taylor match on one of our MOTY Lists.

PAS: This was inexplicably great. I mean Santana and Ortiz are from the JAPW family tree so it shouldn't be shocking that they can be in an awesome parking lot brawl like this, but I have no time for Chuck Taylor and Chuck Taylor associated things, but I have to give the devils their due. Santana and Ortiz were incredibly in this, the whole build for this feud was winking horseshit about Mom's and Mini Vans, but Santana and Ortiz came into this like a pair of serial killers, and forced Trent and Taylor to fight for their lives. There was a couple of moments where the Best Friends tried some indy wrestling shit (Chuck Taylor started throwing bad forearms, Trent tries for a spinning counter DDT) but for 95% of this we were fighting. The big bumps were big and all of the smaller things also looked great. Trent gets totally demolished, that windshield bump was some Miedo Extremo shit, and who thought he had that in him. Didn't need Orange Cassidy, and would have rather seen a straight up finish, but dang this was something.


2020 MOTY MASTER LIST

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 9/16/20

What Worked

-FTR get the tag match up here, but Luchasaurus kept trying to drag it down. Luchasaurus is at his best when he's working as first year Test, and he is near unbearable when he is Test working as a Young Buck. Luckily, he worked more Test than Buck (the one stretch with him as an Cretaceous Buck was as bad as ever), and weirdly enough Jungle Boy is way better when he doesn't do as many moves. Jungle Boy is someone who actually does some small things well (I am a big fan of his dropdown) but I don't really love his highspots. Well, here he worked down as well and I think the match benefitted from that. It also benefitted from Cash Wheeler bumping hard (the Psicosis bump was awesome) and that sneaky pinfall win was legitimately the most they felt like the Brain Busters since joining AEW.

-What a great little Frankie Kazarian performance. That has to be the best Frankie Kazarian match since....well, I can't remember the last time I talked about a great Frankie Kazarian performance. The match went longer than it needed, but Kazarian working his age is a good thing, as Page was the one here who was working much more silly offense. Kazarian not only made some of Page's more suspect offense look great (Page usually has a weak pescado, here Kazarian made it look lung deflating), leaned all the way into clotheslines, always in the right place at the right time. What I liked most about Kazarian, and what felt most age appropriate about his offense was all of the right hands he threw. Kazarian isn't a guy I think of as a "puncher", and I'm not sure I've seen a match where he threw more. I like his right hand. He's got good form and it's a genuinely nice worked punch, and I liked the way he used it to cut off Page throughout the match. He tightened up elbow strikes too, and used that to nicely cut off Page as well. I hate the stuff like "run down the length of the apron just to get clotheslined without even trying to do offense, just running down the apron" or "I hit you and run but you run after me and hit me but then I run after you and hit you" and the match did have that bullshit. But it also had Kazarian blocking a bulldog by snapping off a Russian legsweep variation, and the Kazarian performance elevated this to a level I wasn't expecting. Good match.

-Kingston on the mic, gonna be up here. "Check the rules."

-I really liked Hager in that tag. Not sure what's happening tonight, but I didn't have Kazarian or Hager on my list of guys I was looking forward to seeing. Hager bumped super generously for Private Party without making it look ridiculous, and all his close range work looked great. I dug Kassidy ragdolling for the Judas Effect, and Jericho punching Quen across the temples, but Hager was the real standout for me here. He had an actual cool reckless shooter vibe that I think he's tried before but never quite nailed. The dives looked good, they got out of there at the right time, fun quick match.

-Thunder Rosa/Ivelisse was pretty messy, but I liked the layout and the messiness looked like it lead to more stiff strikes than we might have otherwise gotten. Hitting sloppy ranas and mirror sequences where someone is one beat off? That kind of thing sucks, but I laughed when Ivelisse cracked Rosa with a slap, and laughed again when Rosa stopped Ivelisse dead in her tracks by burying a hard dropkick in her stomach. Ivelisse worked a nice sleeper choke (sadly marginalized into picture in picture) and if the execution where stronger throughout this would have been quite good. I bet they could run back this same match and some sequences would come out tighter. Even with the flaws, it stood above most other AEW women's matches so far.

-I did not care about the Best Friends/LAX build, hate Chuck Taylor feuds, wouldn't have ever guessed it could go somewhere interesting. And then they go out and have an insanely violent Zona 23 style parking lot brawl. What? This had some spills in it (a LOT, really) that were as nasty or nastier than anything in the Finlay/Regal parking lot brawl. Am I stupid for saying a match with Chuck Taylor had tons of comparably violent moments to two a famously violent match featuring two of my 20 favorite wrestlers of all time? Possibly, but I loved the damage these four took. This match had some of the most gruesome vehicle-based spots I've seen. By the end of this everyone was bleeding out of places that don't typically bleed in a wrestling match. Ortiz got jammed under the hood of a car and crushed in painful ways by Taylor and Trent, Trent hitting a senton while Ortiz's leg was still hanging out. Trent got powerbombed into the windshield of a truck, and while the announcers were focusing on his cut up back from the glass I couldn't stop seeing the back of his head getting whipped into the top frame. Sure, that bloody back is gonna mess up the upholstery of his mom's minivan, but that check to the back of the head is gonna mess up his cognitive functions in his 60s. Trent also got slingshotted straight into a down truck tailgate, so he was really trying to be an equal opportunity brainpan destroyer. The board shots all looked nasty (especially Ortiz cracking Trent in the back and then blasting him in the ribs). Powerbombs on truck tops, backdrops on cars, spears into a car grill, and a piledriver off a truck tool box? Yeah, shoot that in my veins.


What Didn't Work

-MJF should get that mark on his neck checked out. I have an irregular shaped mark on my chest and getting it checked out was a real weight off my mind. Someone needs to be monitoring that mark and make sure it's not growing. Can we get some 2018 MJF photos where he's facing to his right?

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 8/27/20

What Worked

-Gauntlet matches are always kind of hard to write about, just because sometimes I love individual matches within a gauntlet, but you really have to talk about them as an entire segment. Overall, I think this match worked. It feels light to have only 4 teams in a gauntlet, and I have no idea how the order of entrants was chosen. Dustin/QT vs. the Bucks was solid, and any show that opens with Dustin (and, honestly, QT) is a good one. They work well together as a team, and I like QT as the Clear Weak Link in any match he's in. Dustin bumps generously for the Bucks (Dustin taking a huge hiptoss bump looked like me taking a hip toss from a 5 year old) and gets to show off as the fastest guy in the match, but also the strongest guy in the match (love that whipping powerslam). The double superkick after QT missed his silly handspring to nothing was timed really great. Bucks vs. Best Friends was better than anticipated, and it played as an extended run of Bucks offense (which is better than an extended run of Chuck Taylor offense). Trent eating a nice superkick and German suplex 1-2 on the apron looked good. The Hangman Page interference finish was weird and I don't want to have to follow these guys on social media or watch their different web shows to see why good buddies might be cranky with each other, but it came off stupid. FTR have underdelivered in AEW so far, and JR's commentary during their matches is unbearable. He always acts like he's saying something profound when he says "you know these guys remind me of an old school tag team" as if that hasn't been their one gimmick for the past 5 years. "You know, Kenny Omega always reminds me of some weeb geek who tugs it to anime." Yeah, no shit. But Cash hits a great snap vertical suplex on the floor to take out Trent, and Dax takes out Chuck's knee, so I am totally fine with this.

-Lance Archer would still be WAY more interesting if he was just limited to backstage assaults on nameless ring boys, but Sean Maluta really made the most of his squash debut and got big height on his bumps. Loved how Maluta flew on suplexes, and the height he got on the chokeslam put this up here.

-I don't know who did it, but I loved the GASP on commentary when MJF brought up Jon Moxley's hairline.

-8 man tag was fine, with the negatives talked about down below. Sonny Kiss looked really good, and as I pointed out after his less than stellar performance against Cody (which JR naturally deems AMAZING), he is a guy who really excels in frantic multiman tags. His stuff with Fenix was really electric (Fenix's rope work that lead to him getting knocked off, hanging his knee over the rope, looked real close to an injury), and I love the way Kiss darted around Butcher and Blade. The scouted  Matrix feint into a powerslam was a cool spot from Blade. Janela had a nice performance too, another guy who is improved just be being in a trios or 8 man. I liked the comedy gag he worked during picture in picture, taking leg kicks from Pentagon, no selling them, before collapsing in pain. He took a couple gnarly bumps, and his big bumps feel like a bigger part of the whole in a match like this (compared to his singles matches which have too many big bumps). Good match, would have rather seen Kingston wrestle than any of them.

-The Hardy/Sammy tables match ruled, and it's a real shame that it was somehow cut into by commercials. It's incredible how week after week they always manage to cut to commercials during actual big moments. I would have liked some more time in this match, felt like they ramped up to the kills pretty quickly. But at the same time I appreciated how they actually acknowledged within a match that going through a table is the only way to win, so they might as well go for that right away. It's a common stupid thing in wrestling to have a stipulation match where the participants work the first 5-10 minutes as if it were a normal match. Guys working armdrags in a first blood match, things immediately not breaking down in a no DQ match, it happens constantly. These men knew they had to put the other threw a damn table, and it was great. Sammy gets busted open, and they smartly take a couple of sick bumps through tables in ways that don't count. Sammy gets busted open (still nothing like that juice he got out of Hardy a couple weeks ago), flies through a table with a missed tope con hilo, Hardy misses an elbow through the table in painful fashion, Sammy gets stuck with a side effect on the apron, Hardy did a disgusting twist of fate while Sammy was wearing a chair around his neck, all of it looked great. This was a quick, violent, satisfyingly economical match.


What Didn't Work

-The commentary - JR in particular - always goes way over the top with comparisons, here comparing Lance Archer to Stan Hansen. JR is always the kid who cheats his way to an A+, not just staying out of sight with a B-. He always has to compare someone to the absolute best in wrestling history, and then you look up and see Archer hitting a so-so back elbow with his goober ass Burning Man braids flapping in the wind and it only makes me want to see Stan Hansen beat the shit out of him. Jericho fantasy books a 2020 Archer vs. 1976 Hansen match, and I wonder if Jericho has even seen 5 matches of 1976 Stan Hansen. What an odd year to pick for the guy.

-The balance is all off with MJF's promos. He's too smug to be stupid, but too stupid to know the right notes to hit. There's way too much school play villain and not enough believable villainy. He doesn't sound like he can think on his feet, as he never has a follow up when his opponent responds to one of his planned lines. I am genuinely curious what MJF has learned from watching Ernie Ladd tapes though, because that's not an inspiration that would have crossed my mind.

-Is Eddie Kingston the FIFTH MAN in a stable of Lucha Bros. and Butcher/Blade?? Seriously? Why sign Eddie Kingston so he can sit on the bench with a towel? He's not Jud Buechler. Plus, it's additionally stupid to have Kingston as the ringside mouthpiece, and then throw most of the match to picture in picture so we can't even hear Eddie Kingston. They constantly have wrestlers sit in on commentary, and Kingston would CRUSH commentary during these matches. It's like they signed him based on reasons that they immediately forgot. The wrestling in the 8 man was good enough, but you know what would have made it better? Eddie Kingston replacing literally anybody in the match.

-What happened here? Is Rebel/Reba supposed to be working a "not an actual wrestler, completely untrained to be in the ring" gimmick? Because she certainly convinced me. I can't remember the last time I've seen someone stumble around the ring that much, just getting in the way of absolutely everything. I can't blame Ford for much of this, even when she didn't look great, because it was always due to Rebal bumbling in where she didn't belong. Britt is a bright spot in AEW, and she could not save this.

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 7/29/20

What Worked

-The visual of Stu Grayson's huge tope con hilo past the turnbuckle, hitting the cameraman on the way down (and running right at the cameraman) was awesome.

-Couldn't be much less interested in Zack Ryder as a new AEW recruit, but at least Ryder showed up ON THE GAS. I am more excited for hulked up juice god Ryder than Woo Woo Woo Ryder.

-This show needed Darby in the main event, because this was a real 2 hour drag if you were looking for good wrestling. This was a quick, under 10 minute sprint with a hot pace, totally unnecessary (but fun) weapons, and some classic Darby crash tests. The whole thing starts with Darby doing the Coffin Drop off the entrance tron, so this rules from go. Any match based around Darby dying is going to be cool, so crashing with a Coffin Drop, eating a powerbomb, a German, a nasty spill to the apron, it's all great. Starks and Cage had decent chemistry as a team, but I like Cage a ton more as "guy throwing two men around at once" than "guy going up easily for everyone's suplexes", and luckily we got a bit more of the former. Darby's late match comeback to save Moxley was great, there were a couple good nearfalls, and the finish was fantastic. You give me Darby smashing tacks into Ricky Starks' back by dropping in off the top rope and planting that deck on his back, and that's a finish I'll be into. Starks' sell was awesome, left leg stuck out straight and lifted off the ground while being pinned, shaking like he had spinal damage or like a man who just got his back tacked for the first time. Thank god for Darby tonight. That's a guy you get the ball to with seconds on the clock.


What Didn't Work

-Dang, that opening 10 men sucked, and it had zero excuse to suck. A 10 man given enough time should be the highest hit rate match out there. Any match with 6+ people where at least four of the participants are capable, should be a guaranteed good match. But this was just a sloppy, unfunny, poorly timed mess. People stood around awkwardly, waiting to take offense, missing offense, or just not doing anything. The dive train started well with a cool tope con hilo from Chuck Taylor (who appears to have lost some of his added quarantine weight), but then a long stint with Marko Stunt getting tossed back and forth between Hager and Luchasaurus while everyone just watched. There was a lot of "just watched" in this and it blew. Any time they tried to string a moves chain together it fell apart by the second move, everyone moving at a completely different pace than everyone else.

-I really love the idea of Cody vs. Top Indy Guys, and I have to accept that most of them are not going to touch Cody/Kingston...but I'd like to think that most of them will be better than Cody/Warhorse. I've never been much of a Warhorse guy, the whole thing comes off forced an unnatural, and let me tell you: if something comes off forced and unnatural on small scale indy shows, it is going to look downright bush on a big league presentation. Warhorse looked like a guy who won a sweepstakes, not a guy who earned his shot at the champ. Cody really busted his ass to make him look good, but it's a two way street. Warhorse throws a nice clothesline, and that's about it. Cody is good at taking lariats, and Warhorse had a big running one and a nice flat foot standing one that looked really impactful. Amusingly, JR called him "offensively minded" in a match where up to that point he had only thrown clotheslines and some stomps. Cody did a good job setting Warhorse to shine, Warhorse just didn't shine. His timing was a step earlier than Cody's, and it pulled back the curtain too much on a lot of his rehearsed pins or missed strikes. There were several times where he was already reversing the move he was set to reverse, while Cody had barely started the move. Grabbing a small package off a figure 4 attempt is a smart nearfall, but it looks bad when you're showing your reversal hand before Cody is even in position. Later, he committed to a missed double stomp off the top after seeing that Cody was 8 feet away from where he was stomping. It wasn't a blind leap, he watched Cody move, then leaped into a double stomp to the mat as if a person was there. There's debuting on national TV the way Eddie Kingston debuted, and there's debuting on national TV the way Warhorse did. This was Dancin' Homer debuting in Capital City. We've set each end of our Cody vs. The Indies bar.

-Man has Omega's stock fallen. The tag match was not a long match, but it felt like a long match. That's never good. Omega looks more and more like a broken man in tags like this, but this thing was mildly cursed beyond Omega. There were unfortunate hiccups that you can't really blame on anyone, yet take a match down anyway. Little things like the ref getting in the way of a Page clothesline, requiring Page to completely stop his momentum before continuing the spot as planned. Grayson doesn't always hit with his stuff, but I appreciate a lot of the stuff he goes for. The slingshot senton to the apron didn't fully connect, but it's something that is crazy enough that I want him to keep trying to make it look better. I like Uno's AEW work and dug him here, thought he took the snap dragon like a beast, loved Page wrecking Grayson with a lariat, but this never quite came together as a match.

-I was curious to see some more Diamante after her match last week, even though I was not into her match last week, but now I think I'm good for awhile. She did not look good throughout much of this. Every Shida singles match always has to have these really bad strike exchange sections, always looking like the most brutal slap play. For all I know those shots sting like hell, but I have yet to see a Shida vs. Opponent strike exchange that actually looked ready for prime time. Several of Diamante's chops hit hard, a couple things looked good, but I'm still waiting on an AEW singles match where the participants actually have chemistry.

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 7/1/20

What Worked

-Cody/Hager was a real good mildly overbooked big match, where all of Cody's comebacks felt natural to the match even while Hager took probably 70% of it. Hager works like a punishing lummox, and while some his stuff looks slow he makes up for it with some inspired moments. I loved Hager breaking the figure 4 by just slamming the side of Cody's head into the mat, and Arn taking a bullet was worth it to see Hager drop Cody with a German on the floor. I dig when a bully heel just throws people to the floor, and I thought they did a cool job of Hager tossing Cody to the floor multiple times and making Cody find new ways to get in without getting smashed. Cody's comebacks were strong and fit well within what they were working, dug his nice powerslam after stopping short, and I fully bought into Hager actually pulling out a convincing win. You can tell Cody is a guy who likes coming up with finishes, and while some of them get a little cute, this one definitely worked. I thought for sure Hager was muscling him over into a guillotine, and Cody standing with a wide bridge for the pin worked real well for me. Strong.

-Main event tag worked well enough, and I appreciate that it was mostly subdued and not treated in any way like a Big Omega Epic. Parts of this were messy but I like the direction they built things and felt they kept within the match they were actually working. Taylor always dips out of a match structure to go ham, and that wasn't a problem here. I'm still laughing about JR calling him a beanpole last week. He's clearly the largest guy in this match. He always overshoots his tope con hilo, but his short piledriver looked really good. Trent had a nice aggression here, and I liked the pace he kept throughout, and the way he leaned into a few nasty shots. The ugliest (in a great way) was Omega's missile dropkick to the back of Trent's neck. Omega looked like he was trying to sever Trent's spinal column and that is something that will snap me to attention in a main event. We had a couple good nearfalls down the stretch, and Trent really died to make Page look good, so this lands up here.


What Didn't Work

-Opening tag just was not it. Tons of bumps felt disconnected from the actual moves people were taking (Jungle Boy sold getting thrown into the ringpost like Rock taking a Stunner) and the Luchasaurus hot tag was ug-lee. All of his stupid off timing stutter step kicks look bad, they never land clean, they look slow, and the extra spins and flourishes just look silly. Wardlow cannot catch a dive and Excalibur at least did a great job saving that by saying Wardlow was trying to get out of the way. MJF on the other hand made Jungle Boy's topes look really good, throwing himself back into the guardrail a couple times before getting flattened by a tope con hilo. Every spot revolving around Luchasaurus either lands too light or requires guys to do things they wouldn't normally be doing (he has three different pieces off offense that require MJF just running at him and jumping). The commentary made this match sound a lot better than it really was, so hats off to Jericho and Excalibur for shining this shit.

-Shida/Ford had some ideas and some good energy, but a lot of this was ROUGH. Ford has made noticeable improvements but still has some major weaknesses clash with Shida's weaknesses. Shida is bad at standing and throwing (yet always does it) and Ford is bad at selling on her feet. So you have Shida making ugly non-contact on strikes, and Ford standing there taking strikes she doesn't quite know how to sell, and it derails a lot of this. The small surprises were nice, like Ford's big pump kick, there was smart camera work to cover up certain spots (it's important to know your workers' weaknesses, and there were at least three moments where cameras cut to a super favorable angle in anticipation of a spot), and there were a couple of strong nearfalls. This threatened a couple of times to make it onto the top side of this review, but Kip Sabian cemented it down here for good. Sabian was involved in one spot, and it managed to be the worst spot of the match. Shida caught him sneaking in with a kendo stick, threw a bad strike at him, Sabian paused.....then just threw the kendo stick straight up into the air. There were so many different ways you could have sold a strike and still allowed Shida to get the stick. But this clown just throws a stick in the air in a way no other person would. Is there anything at all this guy does right?

-Private Party took me way out of that tag match. Opponents always feel a little dragged down by them. They don't take offense interestingly because they sell every move as if it has the exact same effect. Doesn't matter how nasty or how simple a move looks, they sell it the same, especially Quen. Their offense is athletic but sloppy, dives always going off kilter, and I hate how everyone has to specifically have a Private Party match. It's a bad structure, and this would have benefitted way more from Santana and Ortiz working like Arn and Bobby, instead of working like a different Private Party.

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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?

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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 4/8/20

What Worked

-I have never cared for Lance Archer, always felt like he came off like a real goof and a guy playing at being a hoss without being one, but his AEW usage has been great so far. This match wasn't as Deeply Uncomfortable as last week's, but he killed southern indie guy Alan Angels, and I laughed as Jericho managed to (intentionally) call Angels a different name every time he had to say it. Alan Eagleson was my favorite, and the best was that he was integrating them casually into the commentary (not making jokes and then elbowing ribs after).

-Very smart to do Baker's 2nd hour promo without her washing any blood off her face. Dried face blood promos are universally great. But can she really fix her own teeth if they get messed up, even if she IS a dentist?

-Don't believe I've seen Lee Johnson before but that is exactly how you bump for a big squash match. I love how he took the half nelson suplex on his side, made it look more dangerous than taking a stomach bump.

-Cody/Spears I think went a bit long and don't think Cody should have given up so much to the 10 guy, but overall thought it delivered. Spears is really bad about standing still waiting for offense, but he's quite good at taking offense. I don't think the match would work as well without making Cody's okay tope look good by bouncing across the stage, and I loved how he took the two rolling CrossRhodes near the finish. His pop up butterfly suplex was nice and I actually dug the match ending with a pinned figure 4. It did feel a little cute (especially with Jericho and Schiavone immediately saying they'd never seen that happen, felt a bit produced), but I liked it. The title tournament has potential to produce a few good matches, this was a decent start.

-I don't think I'd want Jericho on commentary every week, but I mostly liked his work here. He and Tony were in the tough spot of having to think the comedy tag was funny, but he managed to do heel commentary without just burying everything in sight and actually putting over action. Plus he made fun of Cody's tattoo which is fair and necessary.


What Didn't Work

-What a sometimes good and oftentimes incredibly bad Baker vs. Shida match that was. There was hardway blood! There were a couple of genuinely stiff shots! There was also an abundance of extremely embarrassing exchanges that looked like they belonged nowhere near televised pro wrestling show. I challenge anyone to find me a worse wrestling sequence from 2020 wrestling TV than that limp first few minutes of this match. They went through this shoving sequence that looked like neither of them would be able to break through the finish line of a marathon. Neither of them looked like they could run ropes, and it peaked when Shida whipped Baker into the ropes and was supposed to miss a dropkick, and threw that dropkick literally the second she let go of Baker. Had Baker not held onto the ropes, Shida would have still missed that kick by 8 feet. These two are both really great at doing sequences of moves without having any idea what the sequences are supposed to look like or what they're supposed to be replicating. They spend several minutes seemingly trying to make as little contact with each other as possible, and then Britt Baker throws two potato shots from the mount and I just had no idea what this match was. I'm not positive Shida can throw an enziguiri that gets above someone's shoulder, because every time she throws one it lands waist to shoulder. And every time I think "maybe she was trying to throw it to that spot?" but then it's always clear by her opponent's time stand still selling that it was just a botch. The gutbuster on the turnbuckle looked good, Shida's running knee looked good, Britt's nose got busted open nicely and that made for some good visuals, but there were stretches of this that were U-G-L-Y.

-My least favorite thing about AEW comedy matches is that they always go main event distance, and that they're always an unintelligible mess of head drops and yucks. Who is dumb enough to go out there and take a couple of dangerous moves when someone else is going to sell it the same as a jockstrap rubbed in the face? The dynamics are so weird. I liked the gag of Nakazawa applying baby oil to make Trent's chops slip off his body, liked Trent's jumping piledriver, and wish we could have had this match go half as long as it did.

-Brodie Lee has had nothing but bad ill-fitting gear since the awkward Bludgeon Brothers port wine gear. I'm not sure what his gear is supposed to be but it looks like it came from Hot Topic's Corpse Bride Collection deadstock.

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 3/18/20

What Worked

-Rey Fenix definitely worked, that's for sure. That opening tag was a one man show and Fenix didn't seem affected in the least by the lack of crowd, and was working as fast and hard as ever. All of his kicks and his knife edge chops sang in that empty arena, and I loved how he was using eyepokes or other cheap shots to set up actual hard kicks. Fenix was in twice as much of this match as Pentagon, which is a good balance for their tags, and they really made this work. Fenix is a guy who bumps so explosively that he actually makes Chuck Taylor shoulderblocks look good. I even liked Orange Cassidy's pocket hands coffin drop off the stage, but perhaps they should leave the coffin drop as Darby's things. You don't need a second guy doing stupid trust falls off of high landings.

-Brodie Lee is good at talking and this felt like the first time I heard Brodie Lee talk in maybe 5 years. I think I dig this Dark Order nonsense more than most, though.

-Lance Archer feature was the coolest possible package for a wrestler I don't care about. Archer just leaving a pile of yarders laying in the woods while Jake the Snake sits in a busted wicker chair with his weird hair, watching Archer chop and kick guys like it was his fetish. That's a good idea for a feature.

-Sammy Guevara continues to rule, as I'm not sure how many other guys could have made me laugh just by singing Jericho's theme song.

-Really liked Ortiz's performance in the main event, really felt like he was the guy bumping for everything, falling off the apron, taking Cody's dive, doing all the pratfalls needed in a match like this. It felt like he was in the Sammy Guevara role since Guevara was at ringside. Page and Cody looked like they were working this about 3/4 speed, and he made all of their attacks look they had actual snap. I also liked Hager as the team wrecking ball, and I really got into it as Inner Circle was cutting off Cody. The energy was good, and I can imagine it isn't the easiest thing to keep energy up without a crowd.


What Didn't Work

-The over serious delivery of the Elite sure sounds a lot sillier without an arena of fans fawning all over them no matter what they say. If they're going out there to show off their stage drama chops at least give me their take on a performance of Our Town.

-JR pointed out before the tag match that Trent had the tightest bandana ever, as he'd never seen it budged. And that just made me obsessively watch how often that goofball adjusts that stupid bandana immediately following any bit of offense he took. Watching him get KO'd by a double superkick, but then lie there on the mat carefully adjusting his hair and bandana, is now something I'm going to be watching for every time. JR just outed his game.

-Has there been an AEW women's match without a major blown spot yet? As in, a spot blown so badly that commentary just has to go "Nope, she didn't get that, not a bit". I can't think of one. But I did like enough moments in the women's match, and they kept the pace moving. Statlander hits the best elbow strike of the match on the interfering Kip Sabian. I'm not actually sure what Ford's elbow strikes are supposed to be, as it looks more like she's wiping something off her opponent's chest, left shoulder to right shoulder. Statlander took Ford's reverse rana really well, and I liked the spot early in the match where she had Shida suplex her into Riho. Riho's offense doesn't look great, but she throws her whole body into dropkicks and body attacks, so those at least look as good as possible. Throwing this many moving parts into a women's division match is inviting problems, but I liked a lot of what they did here. I also think that constantly lumping them into 4 ways or tags isn't really allowing any of them to stand out.

-I was really getting into the Butcher and Blade vs. Jurassic Express tag, when it was just Butcher and Blade cutting off Jungle Boy in their corner. That was the bulk of the match, but it felt like they really lost things the second Luchasaurus finally got tagged in. The guy is a giant compared to Stunt (not there tonight) and Jungle Boy, but he comes in the ring and starts doing bad big man version of Jungle Boy offense: A bad flat foot moonsault off the apron that awkwardly crashes into Butcher, a bunch of thigh slap kicks that all hit weird landing points, a clunky headscissors on Blade, just bad juniors wrestling done by a very large man. Of course, when he wrestles like a very large man, that is also ugly, as it leads to a dry fart of a standing exchange with Butcher. Jungle Boy almost accidentally takes what could have been an insane bump to the floor, although I couldn't tell you how the spot was supposed to go. And moments later the match ends with one of those finishes where commentary goes "Oh that was it! I guess that was the finish!"

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 10/23/19

What Worked

ER: Marq Quen looked fantastic in the opening tag. This guy gets unreal height on everything and connects. His shooting star was gorgeous, and he took some big spills (really flew into a Fenix german suplex, among other things). PP have some really fun double teams but it can result in a lot of waiting around. Still, Quen is a fun guy to watch. Fenix's double stomp to Quen's shoulderblades was disgusting, he also hit a great tope and I dug his ropewalk punt.

ER: Dark Order looked good and deserved a lot better than Jericho taking regular focus away from their offense. Uno is a big chubby boy and was really great at taking the innovative 2005 offense of SCU, threw some stiff shots, actually made me want to seek out some Uno matches. Grayson hit a bananas tope con giro over the ringpost, looked like he was going to fly 30 feet, also bumped around huge for Kazarian's hot tag.

ER: I am into the 8 man tag they set up, and thought the promo setting it up was great. Jericho dunking on MJF's scarf, Jericho saying "don't take one more step" several times, Cody breaking the glass door to get to Jericho, an actual great security break up, totally want to see this match.

ER: Bucks tag was really fun, built nicely, cool moments came off well. I dug Orange Cassidy's hands in pockets dive, both Bucks had some slick chain offense, Trent threw several nice suplexes (you know, maybe not "Gary Albright-esque" like Excalibur said, because that's dumb), even Taylor had a cool northern lights suplex. Bucks had a nice save on what I thought was the for sure finish, and I thought the match length was perfect for the pace.

ER: Britt Baker has been on these episodes way too damn much, but that coal/steel/iron Steelers logo ring jacket using colored molars instead of stars is damn choice. That jacket has been far and away my favorite thing about Baker.

ER: Moxley had a really nice cover in the final minute, really grapevined the legs and sunk it in.

What Didn't Work

ER: Lucha Bros. tag was far too long. Even though it was "only" 15 minutes, it was so go go go that they hit multiple points where it felt like they were doing way too much. You build a match around two teams hitting tandem chain offense, and the longer it goes the more likely it is that some of it doesn't look good. Pentagon is such a slug in these matches, completely terrible at getting into position for big offense. He almost always gets into position, he's not missing dives or anything, but he literally just walks into the spot he needs to stand, or shifts ridiculously across the mat on his back. He's not good! AEW is still somehow missing a few big spots, barely catching a nuts looking Fenix tope at the end. And I think Private Party really should have won here. Lucha Bros. do not need any kind of big wins at this point. Pentagon shitting up the ring for the past 3 years and getting louder reactions than ever kind of proves that.

ER: This fed is really cornering the market on "Guys trying elaborate ranas, slipping, and falling short of their mark". It has happened every week so far, multiple times this week.

ER: All of the teams I don't want to see are the ones advancing. SCU feel like the most 2005 tag team possible, and I wish their stable was called Bald Dudez.

ER: Omega has a lot of offense that looks like it really hurts, but it must not because Janela was always able to get back up immediately and do something that also looked like it hurt, and sometimes Omega would make funny spittle faces after being hurt, but it turns out he also isn't hurt by Janela's offense. The V Trigger that set up the finish looked extra painful, but I'm not sure why that one knocked Janela out cold but the other V Triggers just made him get up and hit suplexes.

ER: I am sure that I am the first one to say that "TV Time Remaining" is a weird way to end a match when there is still TV time remaining...

ER: We sure did see a lot of 450 splashes and shooting stars tonight. How long is that going to feel exciting? This show needed way more breathing room. It was 2 hours of constant matches, almost all of them worked at the exact same pace, almost all of them using the exact same offense. It's too fucking much.

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Select Matches from EVOLVE 75 12/11/16

1. Jeff Cobb vs. Fred Yehi

ER: Love these two and they worked a real fun 10 minute match, but it never really felt like there were any consequences. It was felt a little too rehearsed and set in stone. Everything in it looked good (although Yehi was too clappy on his dropkicks). The grappling was predictably cool, with Cobb reversing a go behind by grabbing a cravate, and Yehi going for a backpack choke which Cobb escapes by bending Yehi's wrist. There were a couple of really cool moments of Cobb catching a limb to block something, one where he blocked a Yehi forearm, and another late in the match where he blocked an octopus choke by grabbing Yehi's leg before it crossed his throat. Real cool visuals. Both men snapped off some impressive throws (shock!), with Cobb launching him on a pumphandle and Yehi snapping two low angle Germans. Match was quick and to the point and didn't doddle, but again it felt a little more like an exhibition than a dramatic 10 minute match. But I like the shit these two exhibit so NBD.

2. Chris Dickinson/Jaka vs. Darby Allin/Peter Kaasa

ER: A kind of messy but fun tag match. Props to Kaasa for rocking the 1993 Scott Steiner mullet. I don't love his feathery-soft-but-athetically-gifted offense, but I could see him getting better. Allin is a guy I've really started to love, feels like an early 2000s indy guy like Dixie, a dude with good selling and some quirky offense who will absolutely die on bumps. Phil is a big fan of creep mode Dickinson, and I still can't totally get a feel for Jaka but he and Dickinson make sense as a team. This had some cool stuff but also had some clunky "take a move and then plan my bump" kind of delays. Allin's standing-on-opponent senton is sick and I loved the ending of him doing his tope en reversa with Dickinson catching him. With more focus (they kept getting stuck with wanting a spotfest vs. wanting Jaka/Chris working an Andersons cut off the ring match) this could have been more, but as is it was decent.

3. Dick Togo vs. Ethan Page

PAS: Togo has wrestled random Italian crusierweights, DDT comedy scrubs,  and untrained Bolivians, but his greatest challenge might have been to get a match this solid out of the "Inexplicable" Ethan Page. Togo had the crowd behind him, as they seemed to be as irritated with this match being booked as I was. Dick was kind of a fun disrespectful babyface, he no sold one of Page's crappy punches, flipped him off, spit in his face. I did like how both guys did some cool counter wrestling, Togo caught Page's RKO attempt with an RKO of his own, and Ethan kept evading Togo's senton. Pretty entertaining match with Togo looking great. Didn't love the finish with Page hitting his rock bottom and pinning Togo clean, continuing the Ethan Page super push. Did Gabe see Owens with the WWE belt and decide to overpush his own Tubby Canadian with crap facial hair? Is this like when Russo tried to make Booker T the Rock? I did like how the Gatekeeper took the pedigree and senton, it felt like Togo v. Gatekeeper would have been the better match.

ER: "Inexplicable" Ethan Page is the perfect nickname, and would actually make him FAR more interesting as a worker. Just give him a self-aware "overpushed" gimmick. To me it feels more like Heyman pushing Justin Credible. Gabe's even celebrating the 20th anniversary of Credible beating Sasuke twice by bringing in another M-Pro legend to put over his own version. But this was good! Ethan can look fairly unathletic at times but sometimes it benefits the match, like when he sandbagged Togo on a backdrop to the floor, it instead made it look like Togo was really muscling him over, and then Page clunked nastily on the apron and into the railing. Page can throw some decent haymakers, and also some clunkers, and Togo was wise about picking and choosing which punches to treat like a big deal, and I liked the way they kept avoiding each other's finish. Togo hits a crazy delayed slingshot senton and splats Page with a tornado DDT on the floor, and I really liked a couple of Page's slams. Smart layout, still inexplicable why it was booked.

4. Chris Hero vs. DUSTIN

ER: A look into a text conversation between me and Phil:

Phil: Did you finish watching EVOLVE 75?
Eric: Need to watch Riddle match and curious what Hero can do with DUSTIN
Eric: I'm not going to watch the near 40 minute Gulak/Williams match though
Eric: If people were talking it up maybe, but I've seen them work enough good 15 minute matches
Phil: You are going to watch a DUSTIN match, and not a Gulak match
Phil: ?
Eric: Dustin match 11 minutes, Gulak match 36 minutes
Eric: And the match has Hero
Phil: Dustin match has Dustin
Phil: That match is Gulak's EVOLVE swan song, the climax of the Catch Point movement, the passing of the torch
Eric: Oh you watched it?
Phil: Fuck no, it's 36 minutes long

I love Phil, you guys. But yeah, it's true that Dustin was in this match. I don't care how much Dustin tries to look like Buster Posey, he still wrestles like serious Chuck Taylor. The problem with this match was that they worked things on equal terms, as if Dustin's strikes were just as powerful as Hero's. Hero sold the same for Dustin as Dustin sold for Hero. That's silly. We've seen a couple dozen Hero matches this year alone where he beats the shit out of someone who actually returns the stiff strikes. And now I have to believe that Dustin's strikes are hurting him? Dustin's clubbing shots to the back are some of the worst I've seen. I could just never by Hero being damaged by any of the strikes. But there were fun moments, because Hero got to find fun ways to hit Dustin. Hero threw a couple killer right hands, some great kicks, and awesome short knee, that nasty snap piledriver; it's Hero, the strikes will look good. Spot of the match: Hero gets a boot up in the corner and Dustin stops himself from running into it. Dustin laughs and makes a "that's your big plan?" gesture at Hero, and Hero immediately punches him. Match went the right length, just can't buy Dustin as any kind of threat to Hero. The moments that worked were Dustin trying to cheat to win, and really if this had been worked more like Akiyama/Inoue I could have seen myself loving it. Dustin is not Masao Inoue though.

5. Matt Riddle vs. Ricochet

PAS: I was looking forward to this on paper, but it didn't really deliver. This felt like Ricochet dragging Riddle into a Ricochet match, instead of Riddle getting Ricochet to work a Riddle match. There was enough cool stuff in there to make it worth watching, I really liked Riddle catching Ricochet's moonsault in a triangle choke, and the finish was neat. Unfortunately, most of this felt like dosey-do dance wrestling, with Ricochet sort of mailing it in. Disappointing.

ER: Yeah this really wasn't the match I wanted. This was sexy dance fighting. Both guys are good sexy dance fighters, and the way Ricochet strings together some sequences is really impressive, but sexy dance fighting isn't going to be the best use of either man's talents. The moonsault into the triangle was really cool, but that sequence in the middle where they were essentially running in circles taking turns kicking each other in different ways? You could hear the crowd get silent in the middle of it. My least favorite Riddle match :(

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