AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 1/6/21

What Worked

-I was initially down on the opening 8 man tag, finding at odd how much of a backseat The Acclaimed took the entire match. I thought they showed a lot of presence in their Dynamite debut and had kind of assumed they'd be treating them big. So it felt odd when they were such afterthoughts here, at the expense of talking about how Frankie Kazarian hadn't lost a step the entire match. But I admittedly got into the story after the match, with Kazarian's promo. I like a retirement or team breaks up storyline, and while it's true I haven't been excited for a Daniels/Kazarian match since 2001, I think the role of old gunslingers can be suitable to a lot of late career wrestlers. I have a soft spot for wrestlers playing that role, and I like the addition of them breaking up after their next loss. It's something that could supplement the in-ring. The match itself was fun enough, if way too one-sided for SCU/Bucks. I kind of talk out both sides of my mouth, as I have complained about AEW matches worked too competitively, but I think this would have been better if it was more even. I think SCU winning but having to work hard to beat Acclaim/Hybrid2 would have felt like even more stakes going into a much bigger match against the Bucks. It would be more like Rocky taking too much of a beating in a tune-up fight. Bucks had some nice dives, Kazarian worked hard in the match to give the angle some weight, and it kept a good pace. 

-Snoop Dogg at nearly 50 looks so cool in the Doggystyle hoodie. This guy is going to look cool forever and then cool as a corpse. He looked terrible up on that top rope, but who cares, Snoop went off the top rope. We can't all be Federline. 

-Shida/Abadon was nicely laid out, even if it wasn't quite good? Shida has charisma for sure, but her wrestling can be a real mess. She comes off uncoordinated during a lot of spots, and has timing issues, but she has the kind charisma that plays well off of a horror movie Kamala. Abadon bites at Shida's thigh and neck, and works like an ugly bruiser character from the 50s. Shida's incoordination comes out when she is doing more complicated roll ups and timing things with multiple people, and that really didn't come up until the very end here. She mostly sold a beating, brick walled for a couple Abadon clotheslines, and her fighting through things is where her charisma works. So the match played to their strengths without actually being great in-ring. 

-I didn't love the main event - too much Omega goofiness and it could have used an editor - but it was the first time since Fenix got dropped on his head that he looked like he knew which direction he was going in the ring. It was a good main event performance (could have used less melodrama) and had a nice mix of him hitting his great flying offense (dug his double springboard dropkick into wild tope con giro that almost went over the guardrail), and he's great at taking Omega's offense. Fenix will get tossed hard on Germans and lean into v triggers, and he did that all match. Omega takes a reverse rana in a way that looks devastating, but I couldn't tell you the last time a rana that looks like someone is getting spiked on their head was anything more than a "shocking" kickout. We'll see where the pinfall controversy goes, but I don't know if I need another Omega main event epic with Fenix. Fenix is doing well at working big match drama into his bigger singles, but I don't like Omega's specific brand of drama. Maybe I would like a Fenix/Omega sprint more? 

What Didn't Work

-Wardlow/Hager felt like they should have accomplished more with the time they got, felt like the middle was a little time killing. I liked Hager's takedowns and some of the early matwork, and I think would have preferred things stay that way. It feels like a fresher way for bigger guys to work a match these days. But eventually Hager took a nice bump off the apron into the guardrail, and I liked Wardlow's three suplex and slams and a couple other throws. But this didn't quite get to the level that I think it could have. 

-I thought Sydal/Rhodes went WAY too long and felt like they were throwing out way too much. Cody was really flavorless here and he was responsible for a lot of the drag. There was early clumsiness, and Cody felt so...in the way through much of this. Sydal hit a nice meteora to the ramp and a nice dive, but Cody kept taking this thing in such uninteresting directions. The Sydal crossbody with a clumsy Cody roll through into leg work just seemed like somebody throwing dumb sequences at the wall. I hate that thing Cody does where he bumps the same direction his opponent is already bumping, so has to do this stupid jog like when a car is waiting for you to finish crossing the street, just to be able to bump somewhere there isn't a body. He did that kind of thing a lot here. This had bad energy despite not being dull, it just went too long and never hit the level it thought it was at. 

-I do not like Jericho on commentary. It is way too much, and he sounds like a drunk guy rambling over everyone half the time. It's like having two JR's out there, which is two too many. During Inner Circle matches? Fine. During entire broadcasts? Please, no. No more. 

-A Bullet Club revival, famous hand sign included, is not going to be the thing to excite me. I am sure that it excites many other people, and that's fine by me. Is this something people are excited about? Jericho was acting excited. 

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 12/2/20

What Worked

-Jericho/Kazarian was a decent enough old guy fight, though I think a lot of the best stuff happened during picture in picture, sadly. Jericho is good at keeping a nice thread of hard short right hands and stiff right elbows running through matches like these, and I liked him peppering in stiff strikes while mostly just letting Kazarian either bump or do his 2006 offense. Kazarian takes a nice big bump into the guardrail, and he lands right on Jericho while doing a Spanish Fly and while I don't think that was intentional, I dug it even more as a nearfall. I liked the bit with MJF threatening to throw in the towel, strong asshole move from the guy infiltrating the stable. The match itself wasn't clean, some things didn't quite land like they were supposed to, but that typically adds to a match like this. 

-I am not excited for 60+ year old Sting in AEW ("long term contract"!?!), but I cannot put into words the joy I felt listening to Schiavone scream his head off in excitement. It's Stiiiiiiiiing!! 

What Didn't Work

-The further we get away from a time in wrestling where battle royals were either a) an important part of a card, or b) a common match on a card, the more we get into the territory of modern battle royals filled with people who don't know how to work a compelling battle royal. Two minutes into this battle royal and I counted 9 people lying on the mat, apron, or ringside, selling exhaustion. Nobody knows how to work interesting mini stories within a battle royal, they now only know how to do actual sequences they just work in normal matches. Dustin is the best battle royal worker in AEW, and he was not in this one, and you really need at least one battle royal engineer in there to make one work. Tully Blanchard was shown smiling on from the crowd, and you'd think a super compelling battle royal worker like Tully could have at least passed along some advice. Tully was the kind of guy who you'd see constantly stooging his way through, cheapshotting people, begging off when caught about to cheapshot someone. Here, one of the few people I saw trying something like that was Kip Sabian, who was comically blocking people off so Miro could beat them down. The rest just looked like guys lying around until it was their turn to bump. Sure, there were some nice elimination bumps (I liked Quen getting thrown back over on the silly string attempt), but there just wasn't any color or battle royal artistry happening here. Everyone needs to just go watch an All Japan battle royal (any one). There will be at least 3 or 4 easy things to steal. 

-Well, Baker/Hirsch was a bit of a mess, several little time standing still moments. Hirsch is billed as 4'11 but I'm not sure she's even 4'8. She makes Baker look like a giant, but that just made it worse when none of Baker's kneelifts came close to making contact with Hirsch's head. Baker has long legs, and I don't honestly know how kneelifts can miss by 6" when she barely had to lift her knee over her waist to make contact. And that was kind of the story of the match. I liked Leyla's chops on the apron, thought her suplex was cool (but think the set up of Baker needing to sell in the ropes while Hirsch slowly runs back and forth hitting offense is silly), but that submission trading was slow and ugly. Baker is a great personality and has improved in the ring, but that was not visible here. 

-I think I would have liked the Cody/Darby tag a lot more if it was just a Darby/Hobbs singles match. Darby selling and getting ragdolled by someone like Hobbs will always be entertaining, even though Hobbs doesn't quite land with the follow through that they act like he has on commentary. All of Darby's offense looked great, my favorite being the springboard back elbow on Starks before the commercial break, and that nasty coffin drop on Starks to end things. Actually, any time Darby and Starks interacted looked good. The problem was mostly Cody. Cody tagged in with a bad run of hot tag offense, whiffing on stomach kicks, barely making contact on a springboard dropkick, landing way light on a pescado; all of his offense looked like he was just running through a rehearsal with Starks and Hobbs, saving the full contact for the actual live show.  

-WHYYYYYY did that main even need to be 30 minutes? You ever watch one of those Jon Moxley matches where it looks like he's working at about 2/3 the speed he usually works, and throws most of his strikes so that they don't make contact? It's a thing, and that's how he spent most of this 30 minute match. Anything interesting about the match (namely Moxley getting his leg worked over after a dragon screw in the ropes and getting tossed knee first into the guardrail) get abandoned by the first commercial break, never to be mentioned again. Moxley worked this match the way a depressed man in a bathrobe makes breakfast, just dragging his feet throughout the entire thing. Kenny felt like he noticed how draggy Moxley was and decided to dump himself on his head a bunch to make up for it. It helped, honestly, but Moxley kept dragging things back down. At one point, selling exhaustion, they had one of the worst looking "on our knees throwing strikes" exchanges I've seen, the kind of thing that would stand out as bad on any local indy. Omega was making awful faces, all of the shots looked terrible, completely embarrassing stretch of match. It went so well, that not long after they decided to have an even stupider strike exchange by sitting in folding chairs and taking turns seeing who could throw a more mediocre punch. 2x speed only mildly saved things, but they couldn't save how awful Moxley's elbow strikes looked while escaping Omega's first 1WA attempt. You look at those downward elbow strikes and you tell me what they were supposed to look like. I have no idea how Moxley thought those looked, but nobody can tell me those even looked like someone miming a strike. Omega's knees down the stretch may have looked bad and landed somewhere around Moxley's tricep, but at least it looked like someone throwing a limb at their opponent. What an awful match. 

-I have no actual clue how to feel about the new relationship with Impact. Impact has gone on for so long and is so off my personal radar that it's not even an amusing punchline anymore. I used to love making fun of TNA, have fond memories of that night where they went head to head with Raw and had an impossible amount of things go wrong (the Homicide mousetrap cage, Jeff Hardy being mobbed by two teenage girls in the parking garage, Hogan driving to the building for an hour). I watched it with friends and we laughed about it for years. But at this point TNA has been around since before I could legally drink, and it's just this thing that somehow never goes away. It's managed to exist for 18 years and it may be around in 18 more, but I'm not sure how old I will have to be to want to revisit a bunch of old TNA. I will watch so many other eras of wrestling several times over before I get nostalgic for TNA. And yet here they still are, somehow getting another life preserver by being attached to a stronger product. Maybe I'll root for a partnership between two competitors to actually work! Maybe this will turn into something interesting. I'm not very interested in it at the moment, but because of the angle I found out that Impact was actually on AXS TV, and before this I just assumed they had existed on Twitch or Quibi or European Netflix for the past couple years. If my Tuesday evening is otherwise unfilled, maybe I will watch AEW invade Impact Wrestling. 

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 9/30/20

What Worked

-I really haven't seen a ton of Ricky Starks but was impressed with how he pinballed around for Darby and set up a bunch of his offense. They had cool callback stuff throughout, like Starks running a spear right into a Darby guillotine early but then hitting that spear late in the match as Darby was springing off the ropes, leading to a nice nearfall. Starks took some big offense from Darby, like a vertical suplex on the apron and stayed in to get killed by a Darby tope, but he also flipped hard onto his shoulders off the Code Red and got launched across the ring by a weird/cool monkey flip armbar thing (it was like Darby was giving him an airplane ride and then kicked him off while holding the arm). Starks paid attention to the damage his back took from that apron suplex and really put on a selfless bumping heel performance to make Allin look like the superstar he is. Great way to open up the show.

-We got what I think is easily the best FTR performance since showing up in AEW. Tons of people were excited for them to go to AEW where they could "finally work" and then they proceeded to have several matches that weren't anywhere near as good as the matches they were regularly putting out on Main Event. THIS felt like the FTR that people were excited to see. Cash hilariously got Daniels thrown out from ringside by faking a picture perfect trip from the floor, planting on his face and holding his mouth (so of course you knew Tully was going to grab someone's leg from the floor at some point and I loved it was the finish). FTR were working quick tags and cutting that damn ring off, going fast on exchanges, taking all of Scorpio Sky's pillow soft landing crossbodies and making them look impactful, taking silly cutters (Cash flew high over the ropes on Kazarian's derpy slingshot cutter) and making them look good, really building a hot match around a tag team I don't find very interesting. The nearfall stretch leading up to the finish was really strong, with Kazarian getting dropped by a gnarly dragon suplex (I like commentary pointing out that being sweaty was probably the only thing that allowed him to slip out of the pin in time) and a couple of tight Scorpio Sky roll ups. Tully grabs that leg for the finish, and this is the FTR I'd like to see more from.

-JR doesn't really have much of a place on a good commentary team anymore, but I get repeat amusement out of his glowing descriptions for picture-in-picture. This week he called it "restaurant quality" and that got a real laugh out of me.

-Old man Jericho is really great at crafting these 80/20-yet-competitive matches around guys of all skillsets. Kassidy brings little to the table for me (and here he whiffs on a tope con hilo onto several guys, barely clearing the ropes) and Jericho works a nice match around making it look like Kassidy was *this* close to putting him away. Jericho's short right hands are maybe my favorite punches in current wrestling, and he has a couple different variations on them. His mounted ones look strong but here I was especially in love with a couple of standing shots in the corner, short hooking rights to the cheek. I also really love his short kicks to the ribs, they always look like they sting. The finish was one of the very best Judas Effects ever, casually spinning through a Kassidy springboard to hit the killshot, then getting the hell out of dodge when a ringside brawl breaks out. Jericho as old gunslinger Misawa rules. And I really want the Jericho/Luther match.

-The Beach Break that Orange Cassidy polished off Ten with was nasty as hell, and I dug that tope en reversa off the top to the floor into Dark Order.

-Loved the Britt Baker return squash. That look over her shoulder into the hard cam before hitting a butterfly suplex is the stuff legends are made of, and she kept trying to pop Red Velvet's shoulders out of their socket with holds and more butterflies. Her kicking Velvet throat first into the middle and bottom ropes feels like something nasty that Greg Valentine or Ronnie Garvin would have done, and she somehow made it look as violent as I imagine they would have. Yes I am talking about Britt Baker and Greg Valentine in the same sentence and I feel minimal shame about it.

-I wasn't clamoring for a Butcher showcase main event, but him going after Moxley's knee was fun as hell. Butcher doesn't really have clean offense or stuff that looks particularly great, but he's a big guy who hurls his body weight at people. I don't need pretty moves, just leap at someone with a big mustache and wild hairline. Butcher had a big chokeslam and was tossing Mox around, dropped a knee on his head, choked him over the ropes so Kingston could talk shit, stops a Mox tope with a punch, and snaps Moxley's leg over the apron. I'm a sucker for limb-focused DDTs, so Butcher DDTing Moxley's leg put me over the top, and Butcher twisting Moxley's leg around his own to work on it ruled. This was really Moxley as Cena, but Moxley works well enough in the Cena formula. Nobody was ever thinking that Butcher was going to win, but I liked the path they took to Moxley's finish. Butcher really got stuck on that piledriver and DDT! Moxley limped his way through and never went on a big hulked up run, and his small comebacks were handled well, especially knowing he has that bulldog choke as his big silver bullet.


What Didn't Work

-Kazarian actually dropped a "You might be playing checkers, but we're playing chess!" If there was a post match promo I assume he would have talked about how tomorrow is another day, and they have to take this one match at a time, gotta move forward and forget about the past.

-Joke cutting smug heel Young Bucks are not something that interests me, but we'll see how it translates in the ring I guess? FTR just standing there like goofs after Matt superkicked Schiavone made them look so lame. "Oh, you're just gonna kick him? We're right here," they say, as they don't move and allow Matt Jackson to walk away. I don't think anyone came off well here, and Tony isn't someone who gets routinely attacked, and yet it came off like a non-event here.

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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 9/2/20

What Worked

-I tuned in late and missed a Chuck Taylor match. That works.

-The 8 man tag was fine, I guess. I would rather see most of these guys in an 8 man rather than in a traditional tag, so that's a plus. You'd think some of the spot set up would be a little less meh, but a lot of the stuff looked good. I thought this was a good Isiah Kassidy performance, really dug his middle rope springboard rana and thought he was slick at getting up for some pretty complicated double teams, and his partner Quen bumped big for a Jungle Boy lariat. Kazarian's springboard legdrop still lands well, Luchasaurus still looks like a goof doing anything, but this was fine.

-Loved Jericho/Janela, with Jericho beating the blood out of Janela while Cassidy looked on. Janela stood in there and took his beating to put over someone else's match, and Jericho really stiffed him up. Janela looked good in a multiman last week, but I like him getting roughed up by short knees and hard punches even more. Jericho was really clonking him in the temple with big fists, then worked over a cut with more punches as Janela bled. Hell yeah.

-Kingston came out and immediately out-talked and ran right over Taz and Jake Roberts. The in ring schmozz after was entertaining, tons of guys took painful bumps over the top and off the apron to the floor, Shawn Spears was throwing potatoes, Kingston was weirdly paired off with Billy Gunn for a long time, and it kind of lost steam after coming back from break. Still, a fun schmozz, and Brian Cage is a goof for going after Kingston with a flimsy superkick. This guy ran you down, and you run up to fight him with a bad superkick? What a goof.

What Didn't Work 

-Omega/Page/FTR came off like guys who being naught because they drink beerz and say swearz. They all came off like dinks. It didn't make me more interested in whatever wrestling they're building to.

-I didn't even realize Serena Deeb was even wrestling, so it was cool to see her, even if she looks more like Selina Majors/Bambi now. Thunder Rosa is someone with strong execution, who always needs to get her shit in, so you knew that whatever story is being told in the first half of a match will not matter at all. So I really liked the pre-commercial part of the match, dug Deeb slamming Rosa's knee into the mat and dropping her with a neckbreaker over the middle rope. A lot of Rosa's stuff looked good, but a match worked around Rosa selling a leg would have been much more interesting that Rosa roaring back like Deeb hadn't ever been in control. Her dropkick to Deeb's chest in the ropes looked good, she had a hard backfist, dug the battles over a backslide, and the Thunder Driver looked painful. But I can never get into her matches where she takes moves until it's time for her moves.

-Can't call that go home segment with Moxley beating up Mark Sterling. I don't know if I've heard a quieter AEW crowd. I would have called MJF bloodying up Moxley afterwards a win, but AEW already has done WAY cooler bloody builds for TWO other matches on this PPV. You aren't going to beat the blood that has been spilled between Hardy and Sammy, and this MJF segment played almost exactly like Jericho beating up and bloodying Janela not one hour before. Except Jericho wasn't yelling like a doofus into the camera. Bloody angles are cool! But this just came off like them building every singles match nearly exactly the same. MJF is a much better wrestler than a talker. The talking just doesn't come off naturally for me.

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 6/24/20

What Worked

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


What Didn't Work

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

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 5/6/20

What Worked

-I liked Nyla Rose's cannonball off the top, and her powerbomb delivered a nice flat landing. But somewhere, some man is crying about it.

-I overall liked Moxley/Kazarian, though I liked more what they were going for in the first half than the second half. After Janela's goofy brand of dancing, I was getting into these two just basing a match around heavy chops and headlock takeovers. And I thought the layout was much stronger, even if there was some shady execution on some of it. This should have been Moxley beating Kazarian down while Kazarian does his best to keep up and fight back, and that's mostly what we got. I liked Kazarian utilizing "holding my leg out" two different times, letting Moxley run himself into a boot off the top to the floor and in the ring. And Kazarian took a couple of tough bumps, including getting backdropped out of the ring onto the ramp and landing on sprawled knees. Finish was simple and easy, no need to have someone kicking out of your best stuff, and I appreciated that.

-QT Marshall did his best to make Archer look good, and I think QT has some of the best strikes in AEW. He's exactly where he should be within the AEW hierarchy, but he's become a guy I really like seeing when he shows up.

-Loved Britt kicking Brandi in the stomach and hitting a nice DDT on the floor. But for all of JR and Excalibur showing concern for Brandi when Jake's snake was crawling on her, nobody ever asked how awful it must have felt for the snake to see Brandi wearing snakeskin shorts.

-The peaks of the main event made it work, even though it still had that weird combination of "pretty dangerous bumps but also yuks" that they always go for. Can you picture Buzz Sawyer getting punched in the head and thrown hard into a guardrail, and then hit with an inflatable pool float? No, because that would be pretty stupid. There's always this weird vibe when they do a match like this where they have to do some crazy stuff so that they're taken seriously, but this weird shame where they don't want to be the guys taking something like pro wrestling seriously. I don't understand it myself, but it's clearly the house style. Sammy Guevara took a lot of big bumps and is the best guy to be teaming with Jericho in something like this, to take all of the big bumps while acting as his hype man. Sammy takes a gnarly powerbomb into a roll up door, and leans way into a golf cart bump (much better than Jericho, who JR immediately had to give a "well luckily I think Jericho got out of the way of that cart..."). Omega was much better doing wild stupid stuff like that awesome moonsault off the cherry picker, than he was at simple brawling (I'm not sure why he was throwing punches a foot past people's heads in a brawl, but there they were). Even Swagger takes a big bump through a stack of guardrails. Those type of things kept the match up here.


What Didn't Work

-I really liked the opening of Janela/Rhodes, loved the fast scramble small package nearfalls especially, but disliked it the longer it went and thought it was pretty lousy by the end. The longer Janela matches go, the more he shows that he has no idea how to transition back to offense other than "take someone's move fully, and just get up and go on offense". That kept happening throughout the match, and it looked worse each time. There were moments that were good on paper, like a chop exchange ending with Cody goading Janela into throwing one more, only to have Cody kick his arm as he chopped. But with Janela it's really obvious when a spot is going to miss or hit, as he telegraphs things from a mile away making it clear when something is going to whiff. He started that chop while standing 7 feet away from Cody, made a cool on paper spot look silly. Beyond that it was awkward positioning (like Cody's moonsault off the entrance way that Janela had to casually walk 10 feet to take), or awkward movements Janela's silly little run to miss a ramp charge, or that sad little flub where he couldn't hop up onto the apron to finish a spot). By the end of this I was already tired of Cody hitting something big, Janela kicking out with a dramatic nearfall, and then that nearfall meaning nothing when he just stood up to do his own move. Moves trading sucks when someone just stands up after a reverse superplex. The strike exchange in the home cement was shit dressing on a turd salad.

-Why does Lance Archer pick his weakest looking offense to finish matches? His twisting splash off the middle rope looked better than anything he used down the stretch of the match.

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 3/4/20

What Worked

-AEW should utilize the 8 man format more, because the opening match was a very fun use of several guys I don't really love. Colt Cabana was given the spotlight in his debut, getting the opening run, playing hammy apron guy, and then getting the finish run hot tag. But everyone else really held this together and made good use of the 10 minute runtime. Evil Uno is a goof but his plays to his role well, and Dark Order feel appropriately represented with him directing traffic. Their group beatdowns and orchestrated attacks are good enough, and they all bump well. Cabana at least had a nice pair of back elbows and nice headscissors, but SCU had a really polished performance. Kazarian was the standout with a great fiery hot tag (probably my favorite section of the match) with him running in hard on everything, hitting an especially impressive straight arm lariat and a great flying forearm. There was a cool stacked attack with Daniels hitting a slingshot elbow, Kazarian hitting a slingshot legdrop, and Scorpio hitting a slingshot splash, cool old man Kaientai stuff. There was weirdness, like SCU's Lambda Lambda Lambda rap entrance, or John Silver/Alex Reynolds being under masks for some reason but still referred to as John Silver and Alex Reynolds. But who cares because Stu Grayson looked like he crushed his shoulder taking a Cassandro bump straight into the ringpost. Well timed, nicely paced multiman.

-Big Swole squash was what it should have been, and the wind up punch finish should be played in every single hype package and commercial.

-Great Hager squash, started easy with a couple nice slams from Hager, but jumped up a level with a nice QT comeback before getting put down. QT is a fun job match babyface in the same vein as Bob Cook, where he'll throw a couple nice worked punches in before getting absolutely worked over. That's a good guy to have on a roster. Post match big brawl was good too, and while Hangman's drinking gimmick is as dumb, and his clothes scream "Guy who hangs around rodeos but can't ride a horse", he at least hit Hager with a big clothesline and Hager bumped it on the leg of a chair.

-Main event was a great segment, and another superstar performance from Darby Allin. Moxley got taken out and strangled in the concession area, so Darby was left to defend himself in a handicap match against Jericho and Guevara. The latter are great at stalling and delaying a beating, allowing openings for comebacks by cockiness, and Darby is obviously someone who is going to be great at quick comebacks. Guevara bumps all over for the cause, Darby hits the Coffin Drop onto all of the Inner Circle, really flattens Guevara with a senton, and topes right into a Judas Effect. You knew he'd be great at being outnumbered, and he didn't disappoint.


What Didn't Work

-Opening segment felt like an absolute eternity to me. The scars looks like cool Jack Pierce monster makeup, but this felt way more like a dragged out Raw opening segment than the typically more efficient AEW promo segments.

-That was too much of a Chuck Taylor match and somehow not much of a PAC match. PAC just went 32 minutes with Omega, he did not need to give a big rub to Chuck Taylor the next week with several close nearfalls.

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 1/22/20

What Worked

-Is it possible to like a tag match without liking any of the guys involved? Because this felt like it had a really good structure and ramped up much better than a lot of AEW matches (which seem to have no rhyme or reason to their build because it's ALL finishing stretch). This built really nicely, just with guys mostly doing things I didn't care for. But build is important and also yes, JR did compare Frankie Kazarian's headlock to Danny Hodge and Ed Strangler Lewis. Kenny twisted Scorpio's wrist for a long time and contorted his body like he was holding in painful gas, Page throws punches so that his inner wrist is smacking against his opponent's head, and there are plenty of do-si-dos that look dumb. Fans also chant Cowboy Shit at Page after he does a kip up, and I foolishly think they are saying he's a shitty cowboy before realizing they are into it. Gross. Page's lariats actually looked good, Omega's chops and shoulderblocks landed big, Page took a gnarly Kazarian German suplex on his head, and I thought the big suplexes and top rope danger came at a good time in the match. We got a real good save and the pacing actually felt right. This was a very good bad tag match.

-She eats up a ton of TV time, but Britt Baker is in the Bahamas and she got the vacation braids to prove it. Needed some beads to seal the deal, but that is a white woman on a cruise. UPDATE: Janela did it better. THAT is a man committing to being a white woman on a cruise. Goddamn Britt, do SOMEthing right.

-Jericho's body is getting midway between Ishii and Park, and I dig it. Beefier the better. Weight belt to hold in that tummy overhang and love handles? Hell yeah, great damn idea. Jericho and LAX are a fun team, liked them all in their trios. Didn't really love the match itself, that's below, but Santana and Ortiz bring professionalism to a tag like this, and Jericho needs to just start working like mid 2000s Pierroth.

-MJF's grade school play heel shtick is unbearably bad, but I like that he held a tight body vice during the small screen commercial break, really posted up on his arms to sell that he was tightening that vice. That's a nice touch.

-Moxley/Pac was a good main event worked around a silly premise: Moxley had his right eye bandaged, and PAC kept going after it because it's his weakness. Elbows to the eye, great kneedrop to the eye, would always go back to that eye whenever he was in a jam, and the commentary crew (Jericho included) all talked about how smart PAC was by going after Moxley's weak eye. But...IT'S AN EYE!! It is literally ALWAYS a weakness!! If you target somebody's eye throughout a fight, it doesn't matter if the guy's eyeball started at 100%, you're TARGETTING A FUCKING EYEBALL. How many weaker parts of the human body are just sitting out in the wide open to target? "Well, Moxley had a sore throat earlier, so it's really smart for PAC to be stomping right on his larynx like that"..."You know I saw Moxley riding his bike around shore earlier today, and maybe too much. Word is he has a tender groin, and PAC dropping several knees right into Moxley's balls is only weakening his scrotum"...If they all think it's a smart strategy for PAC to be targetting Moxley's dumb eye, and PAC is fine just targetting someone's eye, how is this not his strategy for every single person he faces? Moxley had a bandage on his eye, thus making it a target, thus making me think I made a mistake putting this match up top here. "I think my 'Please Don't Stomp On My Tender Foot Bones" shirt is already making very clear my stance on stomping on my foot bones, sir."


What Didn't Work

-Britt Baker is really really terrible at running the ropes, and a ton of her offense is based around running the ropes. Why do so many of the AEW women look like they're moving in slow mo when running the ropes? They do some misdirection rope running here that was so bad, so slow, and so ugly, Kelly missing a super slow clothesline while Baker power walks right by her, changes direction, slowly passes her again, just awful. She needs to do the Santino power walk spot and figure out a way to get heat from that. Kelly has a great look for TV, but they keep bringing these girls in to debut against Baker, and Baker clodhops all over them without giving them a ton. It's rough.

-You think Hager has a dedicated polo drawer, or hangs them all neatly in a closet?

-Jericho trios was kind of a mess, almost entirely due to the babyface team. Stunt is a charisma machine, but I am getting very very tired of him playing to the crowd for several seconds before any single move he hits. It's the worst of RVD, just making people stand around while you mug to the crowd, then make them stand some more when your move requires other people to lift and swing you into opponents. The babyface team doesn't have enough super impressive spectacular spots (though Stunt's 450 did look great) and none of them are good at gluing any of it together, so the interactions always come off so awkward.

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 10/30/19

What Worked:

-The non-wrestling stuff in this show worked for me. I thought the Tony Schiavone limo ride with Cody was great old school stuff. The Dusty and Willie Nelson story was great and the whole presentation made the contract signing seem like a big deal. Jericho is pretty great as a bloated creep leading a pack of wolves, heel Rock of Love era Brett Michaels is a great fucking gimmick, I can just see him faking an OD mid ring only to roll up his opponent when he tries CPR. Dustin's broken arm is a great way to heat up the PPV main event, although that might mean we don't see in ring Dustin for a while, and this show could desperately use him.

-Similarly Santana and Ortiz beating down the Rock and Roll Express was simple pro-wrestling storytelling. Ricky Morton is an all timer at taking a beating and Santana and Ortiz are really great as out of control thugs, you can tell they are from that JAPW family tree (speaking of which, sign Homicide and Eddie Kingston already AEW, what are you waiting for). I liked them jumping the Bucks too, nice use of the Rick and Morty gimmick which actually gave that goofy thing some purpose.

- Moxley's promo was fine, and he is undoubtedly over. I miss the old Moxley promos where he was talking about his mom turning tricks where he came off like a real unhinged psycho, but he is clearly in a different place in his career. Don't love Tony Khan showing up as an on air character. AEW should stay far away from Authority Figure angles, it has been a stain on wrestling for two decades now, and no one is ever going to approach Vince as a performer. If you need a Jack Tunney for an angle, give it to Arn or Bob Armstrong or something and just have them make pronouncements and don't have them do anything else.

-The six man tag was the best of the car crash matches on this show. It isn't really my thing, but the Bucks have clearly mastered that formula, and Jack Evans is still breathtaking to watch. If they did one of these matches a show it would work great, unfortunately that isn't what is going on.

What Didn't Work:

-God, is the ringwork on this show one note. Every match is worked at the same pace, with the same headdrops, 2.9 counts, dives and near falls. They need some fat guys, some mat workers, a couple of guys with good punches, anything to break this up.

-Why is Adam Page doing flips and dives? Isn't he your tough Cowboy character? A lariat does not need a fucking front flip. I liked Sammy faking a dive and instead slapping Page, but outside of that this was just white noise

-Why does your undercard women's match go 15 minutes with the same dramatic near falls as every other match. Is Shanna even part of the roster? If you have plans for Shida, why is her debut undercard squash worked like a main event title match. Outside of a couple of nice knees by Shida (and there were a bunch that looked bad too) the work didn't particularly move me, and there needs to be an agent telling people that they can't use up all of the tricks in every match.

-Why in god's name does your comedy squash have an insane headdrop finish? If your comedy guys are doing moves that look like they should lead to a stretcher job and six month hiatus what does that mean for your main eventers? Just insane escalation which is going to lead to someone breaking their neck trying to outdo the undercard. On the plus side, I think they may have tweaked the Orange Cassidy character enough to make it work for me, having those kicks be a taunt as opposed to something their opponent has to play along with, makes a big difference. The hands in the pocket tope stands out in a show with dozens of crazy dives. Shoot the Best Friends into the sun though.

- Fenix is really special to watch, on a show where everyone is working as some variation of his style, he still outshines them. I almost feel sorry for Kazarian and Scorpio, those guys are old, and they are still trying to work a gogo highspot style. Cut off the ring or something. No wonder Kazarian almost broke his neck on that rana to the floor, Vince Carter isn't still trying to thunder dunk every time he gets the ball. You guys are almost 40, work on a midrange jumper.

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ROH at UMBC 10/12/18

TKG: So I haven’t been to an ROH show since maybe Sinclair maybe earlier. But a couple guys at bar had gone to All In (my favorite story being asking Blue Meanie at Meet and Greet if he had any of his merch in XXL and him responding “Of course all I have is 2XL and up” and they were talking about going to ROH in Baltimore and a couple more guys were down for it, and I was like “sure”. We kind of got lost stumbling around UMBC for a while but got there a little way into the Jeff Cobb v ROH trainee match

Jeff Cobb vs. trainee

TKG: This was surprisingly back and forth. The trainee had a second who you expected was the manager who was going to eat a bunch of suplexes after match and didn’t. I was told that was trainee’s tag partner who was legit injured. Not sure why he was out there.

Briscoes vs. Beer City Bouncer/Bryan Milonas

TKG: Also thought this was going to be worked less evenly. Briscoes still have that kind of Sabu/Sandman aura of anything can happen. Mark did a kick through ropes, chairs were thrown in air, guys were thrown into guardrails and there was a tower suplex spot. But this was mostly really impressive showcase for Mark and Jay’s selling as they really made you believe in the Bouncer/Milonakas team and made you buy into idea that any moment all hell could break lose.

Marty Scurll vs. Hurricane

TKG: Last two matches had no real face/heel structure and then this one which was advertised on paper as hero v villain and they could have theoretically worked as Hurricane heel v Scurrl face but….Scurrll is super over with crowd and was going to get cheered for everything and any move done against him was going to be booed. First four minutes I thought they were going to go with a Hurricane heel v Scurll face dynamic with Helms working over Scurrl in a cloverleaf. But then it Scurrl just went to his stuff. Scurll was also a guy who had a real Sabu/Sandman what the fuck is he going to do feel when I first saw him on tape but here he was just a guy running through his stuff some heelish (match died whenever Scurll slapped on a hold), some faceish, some just there…till a shmozz finish. Post match, Hurricane’s mask is stolen and Helm’s makes sad-contemplative-and then-serious-Command Bolshoi-with-mask-off face.

Summe Sakai and____________vs. ____________&_____________

TKG: I think Sumie Sakai’s tag partner may have been an Adam Cole girlfriend, cousin or sister or just facially looked like Cole as audience yelled “Adam Cole Baby” whenever she hit a move. I think her belly ring may have snagged the woman who speared her which was kind of interesting but this felt like it went way too long. I went to find the Brothers Cooke during this and we talked wrestling and they’re both still hilarious. No intermission, I swear ROH used to have intermissions.

They do a backstage interview segment with Bubba Ray hosted by Caprice Coleman. Always liked Coleman, is he no longer wrestling? He kind of did more bug out eye selling off Ray’s mic work then necessary but fine interview segment.

Bully Ray vs. Jonathan Gresham

TKG: I had mostly seen early niche grappling Gresham and on way to show talked about this match not making any sense on paper. I’ve no memory of ever seeing Bubba work a mat exchange. But it ended up easily being my favorite match on show. Bubba comes out takes the mic and does less profane but more obese Joel Gertner mic work. He calls out audience talking about how there is no one with any athletic experience in the crowd, challenging people to fight him, mocked fans inability to hit him with streamers and talking about how proud he is of his New York heritage, mocks the Orioles does more about the greatness of New York, when Gresham comes out he points out that supposed fan favorite got no standing ovation and cheers (of course leading to crowd standing and cheering), don’t anyone say Tracy Sucks, don’t call me Paula, etc mic work and it was great. The women's match may have been face v heel but not sure, this was first one on show where it was really clear and Bubba doing essentially Dirty White Boy’s “I’m from New York” act but without any of DWB’s big brawling spots made for a really fun match. I have no idea how this will play out on tape but live this was the match of the night. Bubba brought a table in ring which got knocked over and forgotten for a big chunk of match, no one chants for wanting tables at this point and I was super looking forward to idea of match with table in ring where never gets used. Eventually set up and you get the PE in WCW, guy brings table in ring to eat a spot on table. But outside of that no real big bumping a couple chair shots , just match structure, selling and cool setting up of face offense and comebacks. Gresham with dropkicks, an octopus, sleeperhold and chair stuff was perfectly at home in this match too. Gresham not niche guy but well rounded in way wouldn’t be out of place working fired up babyface opposite no knee pads Budro.

Cody Rhodes/Team Macktion vs. So-Cal Uncensored

TKG: SCU started with some “I hate the locals “ mic work which was absurd to do after the Bubba match where entire match was built around I’m from New York City. Rhodes and Kazarian are apparently co-owners of a cigar company and both wear wearing shirts advertising it and they did a bit at beginning of match where they cut an insincere commercial shocked to see the other in matching shirt and talking about the cigar company they owned together. In the 90s I remember wrestlers telling me about how Jimmy Valiant was a genius because he understood the money in wrestling wasn’t in the gate but in the merch sales, and he wouldn’t want to work main events but instead the last match before the intermission to increase merch sales and would make sure to work a gimmick he was selling at his merch table into the match. He understood that better than anyone not named Vince Sr or Jr. With internet on demand sales, you don’t need to actually spend the time hawking wares at table and can work a semi main. The Gabe by way of Heyman booking is you work this spotfest multiperson match at end of show to send crowd home happy and enthusiastic. PE v Eliminators, Chilly Willy, Balls v Baldies, Smackdown Six, SAT v. XL/Devine Storm, Special K, Second City Saints v Generation Next, etc. This was that although worked in the semi-main. Christopher Daniels was kind of a known quantity in 2002, felt like a guy from a veteran of earlier generation as opposed to rest of ROH guys who were experimenting and trying to find themselves work out something new. Everyone felt like that here or maybe less like that and more like I was watching a solid workrate sprint between Riggs, Kidman, and Riggs v Riggs, Riggs, and Kidman. Both a throwback style and match that was less of a “HOLY SHIT I have never seen that before” and more like an AJPW old man wrestling match/or Russo era WWF where it was all built on pops for signature spots. It was interesting, nothing was missed that I noticed, Cody & Kazarian had more presence than I expected and fans left it happy. Some un-masked white guy named Savion came out with a belt and started filibustering about how he’s beaten everyone and deserves respect.

Jay Lethal vs. Silas Young

TKG: This was a fine title match with challenger coming out confident, champ takes control with wrestling, challenger responds to wrestling with putting up dukes and wanting fisticuffs instead, some ringside brawling, champ continues to control with wrestling, challenger keeps on threatening dukes, they do a I have a reversal of your reversal segment, than heel takes over for a big run, face champ tries finisher and build finish run. I dug this. The “reversal to reversal segment” never became as corny as those things can become. That’s a segment that normally goes about three minutes longer and it didn’t. Segment that often ends in a standoff restart and it didn’t do that either. It ended right where it should have with heel control. For a match where heel challenges fisticuffs, I never bought that it would happen. But this won the crowd back after the 6 man. Post-match Cody came out to challenge for the title and was interrupted by Kenny King who did the same speech as Savion about all the people he had beaten and how he was deserving of title. I haven’t seen King since maybe a Jeff Peterson memorial and he was really good at doing this bit and kind of stupid to have Savion who isn’t as good stumbling over the same talking points earlier on the show. Cody then did a Tommy Dreamer, Triple HHH, Ian Rotten post show state of the biz thanking fans for coming, “we do this all for you, and this company that means so much to us” speech. Cody was surprisingly endearing at that speech. He moves really well from smarmy to Eddie Marlin sincere and then back and then back again.

Overall fun show with both Bubba v Gresham and Lethal v Young being things I would be interested in revisiting.

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Big Time Wrestling TV 8/12/16

1. Short Sleeve Sampson vs. Robbie the Giant (5/13/16)

Hank Renner Jr. informs us, as he often does, that this is a "main event anywhere in the world" and also says these two worked the Tokyo Dome which....well I don't think either of those things is true. And a couple minutes in I was already getting the urge to fast forward. You know that first midget match you saw, 10? 20? 30 years ago? That was this, same spots, same order. Ref does a pre-match pat down, Sampson pats him back. You know that spot where a midget kicks out, and the other leaps into the ref's arms, and the ref throws him back, and it repeats? We did three different run throughs of that spot, meaning we saw Sampson thrown into the ref's arms about 10 different times in the first few minutes of the match. This was unbearable. The crowd naturally ate it up. They always do. These spots always work, they've worked for as long as I've seen midget wrestling. Maybe I wouldn't be too keen on changing up my game if I knew just how easy it would be to get fans eating out of my hand. I'm stunned nobody bit the ref's butt. And then, something happened. Robbie the Giant (who I had never seen before) took over, and suddenly things got good. Suddenly it wasn't the same midget match you've seen your entire life, suddenly we had a heel midget doing nasty chokes in the ropes, dropping great elbows, and generally working as a good heel against Sampson's fired up face. We start getting cool spots like Robbie locking in a nice camel clutch and Sampson powering up all the way out of it to an electric chair. We get Sampson going for a crossbody and Robbie just burying him with a world's strongest slam. We get a great tope from Sampson. Robbie hits a massive cannonball in the corner, and it gets paid off towards the end of the match where Sampson makes a comeback after Robbie misses another and takes a nice Psicosis bump. The whole thing went from being every midget match trope you've ever been sick of seeing, to two guys who happen to be undersized just working a match. Yes, the match ended with Sampson's apparently "world famous" worm, one of the most "dynamic moves in wrestling" according to Hank Renner Jr. (I have zero idea what that even means). But after the first 4 awful minutes, if you had told me it was going 15 total minutes I would have magically skipped ahead. But Robbie the Giants made me glad I didn't.

2. Frankie Kazarian vs. L'Empereur (10/20/06)

L'Empereur is a longtime BTW comedy guy who probably could have done more in his career if he wanted to. As far as I know he only worked BTW, but he had good comedic timing a a solid hold on the basics: He knew how to bump and knew how to take a comedy pratfall, threw a nice back elbow, sturdy chop, nice clubbering forearms, and cut low on missed clotheslines. He was a pretty complete worker and the gimmick with his ability would have played great in almost any indy. And this match was plenty of fun with he and Kazarian having a nice rapport, dug the spot with L'Empereur locking a nice sleeper on Kazarian, who the drops to his knees in a jawbreaker, leaving L'Emp to do a great face flop. The only thing bad about the match was Hank Renner Jr.'s affected laughter during the WHOLE match. We don't need a laugh track, we don't need to be told that L'Empereur is funny, we don't need our hand held through basic comedy spots. "Oh my, L'Empereur keeps me constantly entertained." Yeesh. It's so phony. Just let the guy's spots land.

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Ring of Honor on Destination America 11/18/15 Review

1. Silas Young & Beer City Bruiser vs. War Machine

So now instead of overtly passionate men now we just get jokey segments with Young teaching the Boys about being men. It's all still clearly gay, I mean it is at a highway rest stop, but now it's getting too winky and hokey. This basically felt like Slick teaching Kamala how to bowl. But the match was real good so *shrug*. We get a lot of meaty bodies crashing into each other and War Machine actually felt like hosses instead of the usual hoss cosplay (hossplay?) that especially Hanson comes off as. I loved the early shoulderblock exchanges with Hanson eventually sending Bruiser flying, we got avalanches, cannonballs, big splashes, the kind of stuff you'd want. Rowe kinda whiffs on a superman punch but makes up for it later in the match. I dug Beer City Bruiser here, he really dumped himself on suplexes a couple times, hit a big frog splash, a wild cannonball off the apron into The Boys, and yeh this was good.

Steve Corino gets in the ring with Nigel wanting to reinstate him, but Corino talks about how 79 tours of Japan (but who's counting!) have left his body broken, and he needs serious neck surgery so will not be able to wrestle. He really should have thought about that before working so many non-ROH indies this year.

2. Michael Elgin vs. Kevin Lee Davidson

Booooooooo. Davidson is a big lumpy fat guy who I immediately get excited to see, and the match ends after one okayish clothesline. Elgin as HHH is tired.

3. The Addiction vs. The Kingdom

This match can kind of be summed up by one Daniels missed corner charge. Daniels threw Taven into the buckles, watched as Taven stopped himself by kicking his legs up and back. We see Daniels watching Taven, waiting for the right moment to run underneath him while not getting kicked in the face, because that's how the spot goes. So Daniels watches Taven kick up and over, runs towards the buckles and ducks WAY low to avoid Taven kicking him in the face, and then, when arriving into the turnbuckles, he stops and confusedly looks around, flabbergasted how he ended up chest first in the buckles instead of bumping dicks with Matt Taven, or whatever move he was pretending to do while just running towards the turnbuckles. Dur durdur where did he go General Daniels?? You threw him into the buckles, but when you arrived in the buckles seconds later, he was gone! Look around some more, did he sneak past the ring pole? You watched him not hit the buckles, you ducked really low to run underneath his body, but then his body was not in front of you! That body that you just ran underneath!

We got all four guys realllllly showing off their comedy chops in this one. It was terrible. Tons of yuks. Daniels looked so bad. The guy telegraphs everything to an insane degree. We got a dive train spot where nobody knew how to catch anybody else. Ref bump. Comedy spots. Contrived double teams. A real triple threat!

And to think, I won't even get the privilege of watching this on television in a couple weeks.

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Ring of Honor on Destination America 9/9/15 Review

1. Young Bucks vs. The Addiction

Kazarian's vest is still one of the more embarrassing pieces of wardrobe you've seen, but I actually like Daniels' General's Jacket, even though I assume it means something dorky like RING GENERAL.....in fact now I'm stunned it does not just say RING GENERAL in large letters across the back. The jacket does have tons of little badges, most likely awarded to him for "Most Times Overshooting Your Finisher" and "Overuse of Abdominal Stretch Behind Ref's Back" amongst others. This was a match of two different parts, separated by an ambitiously terrible piece of Daniels offense. First half was fine, but it was the same Bucks match you've seen before, and Daniels/Kazarian don't take their offense as well as other teams. The Bucks' stuff looked good, I just really hate how Daniels takes offense. The finishing run was real hot though, with superkicks (duh) all around, some well timed interference with the Kingdom, guys leaving and entering the ring, working spots in and out. The Bucks' timing kept it all together and it all built to the Meltzer Driver with Daniels pulling the ref out and just the last moment. Great false finish, actually got duped into thinking the Bucks were winning it. Daniels later runs in with some horrible belt shots, and it all led to the announcement of an awful sounding triple threat tag match....but that finishing run was hot and ain't nothing gonna change that.

2. Roderick Strong vs. Jay Lethal

New Japan main event epic as Ring of Honor main event legendary classic. Did not work. 2015 Jay Lethal feels a lot like 2003-05 HHH. He has his idea of a main event epic, and he's going to do it all, even if he's not terribly good at it. The few "stand in the middle of the ring" punching segments were awful, Lethal looks like he's been getting worked punch training from Matt Bentley. I mean they were bad, Girl Scout gently knocking (or TAPPING for you crossword enthusiasts hung up on  "gently knocking". Also, later in the puzzle, the game played with curved wicker baskets is "Jai Alai") on a door, and he insists on doing these standoffs a lot. Too much. We get the House of Truth frequently interferring which was odd since a major part of the first match was Chris Sabin immediately getting tossed the first time he interferred. House of Truth aren't that good, but Dijak at least took a great bump into the rails off a Strong dropkick. Strong was not great in the match, just not as bad as lethal. Strong has had a fairly must see year so far, but here he looked off, punches looked weak, some of his knees which often look brutal looked more like thigh slaps accompanied by a kneeing motion. And this match got some tiiiiiiime. That added to the 2005 HHH NWA touring champ epic SLOG as it goes almost 25 without having anywhere near enough happening to fill that time. Lethal kept transitioning back to offense with a superkick, all match long, and it just feels weird to have this many superkicks per show, when we're supposed to buy them as 2 counts while also viewing them as transitional. Lethal got kind of famous aping Macho Man, and now that he's established he's started aping Shawn Michaels and HHH, which is an impressive step backward. And just like that I realize Lethal's horrible punches remind me of Michaels' horrible punches. Lethal should keep doing that superkick, change his name to Shane Lethal, and work a 1997 east coast indies tribute gimmick. The Lethal Injection is an impossibly preposterous finisher for anybody to be using, let alone your figurehead singles champion. Nobody can look natural standing around that long waiting for a handspring. Well, maybe Finlay could. But how upsetting would it be for Finlay to return to pro wrestling only to wrestle Shane Lethal? Awful moveset, misguided match, Corino on commentary is horrible. Bluucch.

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Ring of Honor on Destination America 8/19 & 8/26/15 Review

1. Silas Young vs. Dalton Castle

Awesome little TV match, one of my very favorites since I started watching their weekly TV. Castle jumps him at the bell with headbutts and punches and it's clear right away these two just work real well together. Castle bumps big taking an awesome Jerry bump that didn't feel set up from a mile away, really felt integrated into the match nicely. He also bumps big into the railing and later takes a great tumble over the top, tackling Young. Young actually works more like an asshole here, as opposed to working like Chris Sabin...which I suppose is just working like a different kind of asshole. More backrakes, less flips. Both men move really well in there and everything was laid out great, nice build and logical progression. One of the eunuchs takes a big bump, and postmatch Young wants a stip added to a future match where HE gets possession of the eunuchs if he wins. I love it. Castle kept taunting him with flamboyance and it drives Young mad with seething passion. Him demanding the eunuchs is so obvious. He's accepting a dare that nobody at all was daring him to do. "Okay guys, FINE, I'll take the eunuchs." It's like Lindsey Graham saying he'd spend a night in a rest stop men's room if he wins any primaries. Nobody else is asking him to do it, clearly just a guy offering to do it. Silas Young's character makes so much more sense if you think of him as a closeted gay man.

2. Will Ferrara vs. Moose

They do the tale of the tape and Kevin Kelly actually says "No mention of heart, though". Ugh. This is the best I've seen Moose look, so this accomplished what it set out to do. He's still kinda sloppy and still seems lost, but the offense he chose to do worked, and he did neat things like take a spike tornado DDT on the floor. Plus the all white gear looked brilliant.

2. Young Bucks vs. RPG Vice

***NOTE: I'm not sure what happened to my write-up of this match. It got gone. It once was, but no longer is. Long story short, did not love it. Rocky Romero is horrible. Romero working schtick is unbearable. Bucks had a couple nice cut off moments, notably cutting off Trent during his apron ass hattery. Match went too long, Bucks weren't as violent and twerpish as they can be.

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1. Bloodbound Warriors (Grey Wolf & Red Scorpion) vs. Briscoes

Never seen Bloodbound Warriors before, but they appear to be shortish God of War or Warhammer cosplayers, and they've clearly committed to it and instead of making gay-intensive Vines they've focused it into pro wrestling. GREY Wolf is covered almost entirely in RED body paint, which is confusing. He's also not very good. Mainly he staggers around selling for Jay, so it's not like he got to do a whole lot, but his staggering wasn't very good. Scorpion has a big HGH belly and was much better. He had a couple nice press slams and I like a good press slam. Mark took a head first press slam over the top off the apron, takes a wild bump into the railing, and later got flipped over the buckles to the floor. Mark was a maniac in this. Jay hits a wild tope on Wolf, both guys kick the hell out of Scorpion (with Mark hitting a huge pump elbow off the top and Scorpion getting dumped on the back of his head with a clothesline). This was really fun. I'd actually like to see BW back, just because they seem a bit different from some of the ultra super serious workers we usually see.

2. Donovan Dijak vs. Roderick Strong

This worked! Checking my pre-match predictions, and yep, I was in the "this won't work" camp. But it worked. Dijak has a ways to go, his "reeling" especially looks horrible. And since this match had plenty of strike exchanges it also had plenty of him reeling and just...looking stupid while waiting to be hit. He can break out some impressive fast sequences (his 360 pump kick looked killer) but doesn't have any of the little things yet. He could get there. Roddy has had a great year and looked good here. He smartly built the match up to some good nearfalls that tricked me. Truth actually had some of the only good stuff I've seen from him. There was a really nicely timed spot where Roddy jumps over potential Truth interference while on the apron, and then Dijak belts him. The timing in this was spot-on throughout. Really solid stuff. Dijak just needs to figure out what the hell to do with his body and face while waiting to be hit.

3. Future Shock (Adam Cole & Kyle O'Reilly) vs. Addiction

Frankie Kazarian's vest is ridiculous. It's trying soooooooooo HARD you guys. It's like he went into Spencer's Gifts and bought every single patch they had, then ironed them onto his vest in a super organized fashion. They run the full gamut of "bands who are well known enough to sell patches at the mall", so he's got the Rolling Stones on his shoulder and The Beatles on his back and Led Zeppelin on his side. Hey, man. I'm a man. A man with a vest. I am definitely a man who has patches of bands that every human listens to. So many inches of vest are filled up with these personality-free patches, all of them placed on the vest as properly as possible. It is truly a vest that was workshopped by moms. It might as well be one of my mom's old appliqué holiday vests, like the Christmas one with felt gingerbread men and candy canes. It's that awful. Except my mom loved her holiday vests. She had all of autumn and winter covered: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas. They spoke to her personality and she would still be wearing them today if that damn Stacy and Clinton didn't constantly put them down on What Not to Wear. They've ruined the vests for her. Frankie Kazarian's vest tells me nothing about him, except that he has zero personal taste of his own. His vest looks like it was decorated by a 45 year old man who is in charge of decorating teen bedrooms on sitcoms. "Looks like that back wall could use another rock & roll poster, Gary."

And the announcer calls The Addiction the "World Tag Team Champions of the World". Why is this a thing? I'm pretty sure Corino called them this a couple weeks ago. The Ring of Honor Pro Wrestling Champions of the World of Ring of Honor Pro Wrestling.

And this match bleeeeeewwwwwww. For a guy who is known for his cold, bland, robotic execution, Daniels sure does execute a lot of things horribly. He's like one of those replicants from the show Humans who is at the end of his shelf life, so the muscle memory is there, he's just really horrible at doing all of his programmed commands and sometimes ends up lost in the forest, his A.I. caught on a low hanging branch. Here we get really awful thigh slaps, overshot moonsaults, clunkily moving into position for offense, all really bad. He did a slow tortured walk to try and catch O'Reilly on the ropes that was the just the worst community theater Frankenstein's Monster walk you've seen. At one point Cole/O'Reilly do a shitty legsweep/clothesline combo on Daniels and no physical connection is made by anybody. So you have three bodies all moving to their own beat, with Cole whiffing a legsweep, O'Reilly whiffing a clothesline and Daniels back bumping to nothing. If one segment could tell the story of the match.

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Ring of Honor on Destination America 8/5/15 Review

1. War Machine vs. Young Bucks

Still have not seen a War Machine match I like, seems like they're kinda fake burly asskickers, in the same way Silas Young is a fake asskicker. They look the part, but then I get all excited to see them leveling dudes and it just never really happens. All of their offense makes a lot of noise and crashing mat sounds, but it's just because their big bodies crash into the mat while the contact on the opponent is minimal. The more shocking development is that I definitely like the Young Bucks. They're more entertaining on shows where the crowd is not filled with fans who are "super smart" and cheering all their wink wink heel antics because they're "in on it". I would love to see them run their schtick in the deep south on some no name indy show. THOSE fans will be driven up the walls. Them working heel in Memphis as little John Tatums would be wonderful. We got an injury angle during the middle of this when Nick hit a flip dive and came up limping. So Matt is FIP for awhile (wait I thought they were the working heels in this one....) and eventually AJ Styles replaces him because I guess that's a thing? Rowe throws an okay overhand right but man I'm just wanting meaner offense from these two. Hanson will throw a nice elbow drop, but then more of that offense that sees 95% of his body crashing into the mat while a limb kinda grazes a Buck. Rowe even bodyslams Hanson onto Matt at one point, but pretty much just slams him past him so Hanson's shoulder grazes Matt. It looked like Rowe was just slamming Hanson and Matt happened to get in the way a little bit. Corino is really horrible throughout this. His enthusiasm comes off so phony. Bucks use the superkick in good spots here, especially early in the match where Nick nailed one on the apron before then kicking Hanson in the face. So yeah. Liked the Bucks here, War Machine are losing me, and the match was way too overbooked for what it was. And RDRR Nick's ankle injury was alllllll a ruse. So...the master plan was for Matt to take a 2-on-1 beating for several minutes? Wow, Kewl plan guyz.

2. Cedric Alexander vs. Romantic Touch

I had never seen Romantic Touch before, and once he threw a bad punch I put 2 and 2 together and immediately guessed it was Rhett Titus under a mask. I'm assuming that's common knowledge. Cedric has a bunch of intricate thigh slap offense. Titus shoves a fan and takes Cedric's stupid sitout-powerbomb-on-own-knees nicely. But I could not see Titus again and be happy. And Cedric is one of those dime a dozen chest out/butt out indy workers who all seem to have the exact same offense. I have a pain in my foot right now.

3. Adam Cole vs. Kyle O'Reilly

Rachel walked through the room and heard O'Reilly's name and thought it was a play on the band Rilo Kiley. I laughed. I mean, that doesn't make much sense to make a pun out of, but Rhett Titus as a masked guy still wrestling like Rhett Titus doesn't make much sense either so fuck it. Kylo Riley it is.  We get about 3 minutes of Riley holding a limp headlock while the fans jackoff to chants of "Headlock City" (Headlock City: You Might Not Even Notice You're Here!), then Christopher Daniels gets involved, throws a horrible double clothesline, Riley throws some of the worst brawling punches you've seen (unless he was aiming for a spot 6" behind Daniels' head, wherein his aim would be spot on). And this sets up a tag match.

4. The Addiction vs. Adam Cole & Kyle O'Reilly

Corino keeps calling the Addiction "The World Tag Team Champions of the World" and it doesn't sound like he's doing it to be funny...he just thinks that's what it's supposed to be. This was too short to be much of anything, and had an awkwardly placed commercial break to boot. Adam Cole's brainbuster to his knee is just impossibly stupid. In what world is that more dangerous than just giving a guy a normal brainbuster? This was 4 minutes of technically proficient, mechanically cold and overly rehearsed wrestling. And then Chris Sabin came back at the end which I can't even imagine hardcore ROH fans being very excited about.


Man I am losing some steam on this show. About a month before I started watching I heard from trusted people that this had really turned into a great weekly show, but I think I've enjoyed one? maybe two? episodes since they've been airing on DA. It's some combination of them featuring guys I don't care about, with underperformances from the guys I do like. We'll see, I suppose.

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Ring of Honor on Destination America 7/1/15 Review

1. The Addiction (Frankie Kazarian & Christopher Daniels) vs. Gedo & Kazuchika Okada

Well, this was very long. Also, this was not very good. Nothing about it was even actively bad, they just did not need this much time for what they ended up putting out there. So...a lot of people really seem to like Okada. Is it because he's Japanese? His popularity kind of confuses me. For people that like moves, a lot of his moves don't really look that great. His matches never seen to have a very coherent build. Is it because he's a good looking guy who sometimes cocks his eyebrows in charming ways? Is this like when people were into Naruki Doi? I am still a Gedo fan but really he just mostly throws punches now. I like his punches quite a bit, and always like a guy who throws a crisp jawbreaker, but watching him take a bunch of Daniels/Kazarian offense doesn't do a whole lot for me.  Kazarian and Daniels don't look bad at all here, just really forgettable. Kazarian threw a nice high kick on Gedo, their leg sweep/clothesline looked nice, but there wasn't enough here. Also, Corino and Kelly are flat out bad on commentary. It's shocking how much they just disappear during matches. They literally talk as if they barely pay attention to matches. They rarely call the action, just occasionally point out something that is likely happening. It will be quiet and then Kelly will make an observation like "Gedo is looking to tag in..." Also this match had alllllll the fucking Red Shoes horseshit smeared all over it. If you've been looking for visual examples of why Red Shoes is terrible, look no further. This guy talks with his hands so fucking much and it's horrible. So horrible. It's like he's rehearsing for a loud hammy, brassy drag queen production of the "Snap out of it!" scene from Moonstruck. You guys, I hate him so much.

2. Adam Page vs. Watanabe

Ehh, this wasn't much. We're joined in progress with Colby Corino on the floor helping Page cheat.  Colby is not acknowledged at all by Steve Corino, which I suppose it not too surprising considering Kelly/Corino just disappear constantly on commentary. If you tried watching some of this show with your eyes closed you would have no clue what was happening. A couple moves will happen and nobody will say anything, and then they'll go for that same move that wasn't called and Kelly will just yell "AGAIN!" or they'll do some moves on the floor and instead of calling any of what's happening Kelly will just yell "ON THE FLOOR!" They're quite passively terrible, and now that I've noticed them I'm afraid I won't be able to stop. Fans seem way into Watanabe and I really have to assume it's because he's Japanese and wrestles in Japan and is therefore "legit". At least this match he doesn't do any of his awful Church Lady selling. He throws these awful missed clotheslines that look like he's throwing a baseball. I mean that arm is coming nowhere close to Page's head. Page has that bland level of indy polish, where he takes things fine but does nothing very memorable. Here he takes a nice bump to the floor, runs into a boot nicely, but then hits some sort of goofy shooting star shoulder block thing off the apron and you just go "yep, that's indy!" Next.

3. Adam Cole vs. AJ Styles

Cole is back from his shoulder injury and is sporting a new post injury dad bod that was all the rage for one day on Facebook. Cole works a little like James Storm, moves similarly, even gets distracted by his own long hair in the same ways. This match was pretty bland but going moving pretty well down the stretch run. I'm getting real tired of moves done on your own knee. The brainbuster on your own fucking knee is just needlessly cute. I mean, a brainbuster drops a guy on his fucking head, on the mat! That's a hard thing to make more painful. Is getting sloppily dropped on the guy's knee really so much worse than being driven full force into the mat? It just looks silly. And speaking of silly, Cole needs to come up with a better way to set up his flipping piledriver. He went for it a couple times but it was avoided by Styles, so Cole just ended up doing these dainty little bunny hops off the middle rope. Cole must have a steel plate in his cranium as he gets dumped on his dome a few times and they never seem to have much impact on the match, including Styles dropping him with a nasty brainbuster on the apron, and later on a couple of piledrivers. A couple of the reversal segments looked good in here, my favorite being Cole ducking out of the way of the Pele Kick to hit a superkick of his own. The Pele Kick rarely misses so it's nice seeing somebody actually scout it.

This whole show was inoffensive. I don't think anything was very good, don't think anything was very bad. It also wasn't memorable. If I wasn't writing this show up as I watched it I would be fucked.  This was definitely an hour long show that featured professional wrestling.

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Ring of Honor on Destination America 6/10/15 Review

Actually liked the Kazarian/Daniels promo to start this, and "Hey I liked that Christopher Daniels promo!" doesn't feel like something I've said a whole bunch in my adult life.

1. The Addiction (Christopher Daniels & Frankie Kazarian) vs. Kyle O'Reilly

This was supposed to be reDRagon (also, I don't understand the name. Pointless capitalization? Meaning I'm missing? Accidentally misspelled when it got back from the printers, so they just ran with it?) but Bobby Fish is on injured reserve, so O'Reilly takes them on solo. Match only goes about 4 minutes and is actually pretty fun, almost entirely because of Kazarian/Daniels. O'Reilly looked awful and nothing about his flimsy offense looked like it would keep two guys at bay. But Kazarian and Daniels bump and do pratfalls like crazy for him and somehow make a lot of it look plausible. O'Reilly throws these embarrassing hockey punches on Daniels (at least I think that's what those were supposed to be...whatever they were they were hilarious) and throws really bad regular punches where he kind of aims somewhere over his opponent's head. But Kazarian/Daniels bump for his stuff, fly into guardrails really tough, even set up for a wild O'Reilly dropkick off the apron into both of them, who had been placed improbably in a chair. Eventually Daniels hits him with the belt and the match is thrown out, but this was probably better than it should have been when you factor in the participants, and that it was a handicap match.

2. Dalton Castle vs. Jushin Liger

Well this was fun! I have never seen Castle before, and he's like a cross between Michael York, Cassandro, John Tatum and Blake from Workaholics. He has a couple of eunuchs with him who fan him with peacock feathers, even has sparkly tights (under his awesome glittery Bowie jumper/cape) with a glittery peacock feather on them. The dude has got the look. His work was good too as he bumped all over for Liger (loved his big bump off the apron from a Liger chop, and the way he took the finishing brainbuster and sold it after was great). Liger dogged it a little bit, had some lazy little palm strikes a couple times that looked like a kitten batting at yarn, but he flew into Castle's knees off a splash, threw some nice suplexes and jeez the guy is 50 and certainly works more athletically than most other guys who are 50. My dad already hated going on walks when he was 50. Castle knew how to stooge for him, this was plenty enjoyable.

3. Brutal Bob Evans vs. Cheeseburger

Bob Evans looks like a David Koechner character; or, a line cook at an actual Bob Evans. He does not look like somebody who should be wrestling on a nationally broadcast wrestling program. Yet he comes off as more of a wrestler than Cheeseburger, who seems like a guy who used to populate opening matches of IWA-MS shows because he sold enough tickets to earn a spot on the card. Nothing he does looks very good. He tries a springboard knee that whiffs by a couple feet, looks scared to go fullspeed into a turnbuckle or even the ring ropes (noticeably slowing way down before hitting the ropes or the turnbuckle), throwing lousy strikes, just looking like a guy who is only given a job because he was promised one after completing training. Bob throws some light punches himself although they are close to being salvageable. Something tells me at the age of 42 he won't be working too hard to improve them. He hits a nice enough shoulderblock and I did really like the sideslam off the apron through a table. I didn't see that coming so the surprise was nice. But man these are two guys who should not be featured on TV.

4. The Kingdom (Michael Bennett & Matt Taven) vs. Doc Gallows & Karl Anderson

Oh, god I have to watch Red Shoes on the program too? Cahmannnn. I was hoping I'd get to see him working his Billy Crystal routine with multiple televised feds. Bullet Club seems to be all the rage amongst live wrestling crowds these days. Lots of BC shirts and whatnot. I don't get it myself. Bullet Club matches usually just mean a bunch of poorly executed interference and matches that would have been better if there wasn't interference. Maybe it's just a cool logo that white guys like to wear? I had not seen Taven before this. I do not want to see Taven after this. Man he looked bad. Taven, Cheeseburger, Will Ferrara...are these the kind of guys the ROH school is churning out?? Good lord. Taven undershot every moved he tried by a few feet, peaking with him going for a moonsault to the floor and landing about 6 feet short, so that Gallows had to sprint several steps just to get grazed. Earlier he got caught with a Gun Stun leaping off the top to the floor, but to make it work required him to land - again - about 6 feet short of his target. Dumb spot. Bennett and Anderson throw some unconvincing Frye/Takayama stuff, shove Red Shoes a bunch, Red Shoes works his schtick where he doesn't actually do anything worthwhile as a kayfabe ref, and instead focuses far more on mugging. Gallows looked fine, Anderson tends to look better in a NJPW setting, Bennett looked good enough, Taven dragged the rest down. Match couldn't have gone more than 5 minutes before the non-finish.

Well, I really liked Castle/Liger, and the rest of the show was...well, not as bad as last week. So that's some progress. They still threw us a couple Brisco promos which are always a great thing. The promos from everybody are actually a far stronger part of the show than the wrestling has been. Eh, where do I have to go on Wednesdays? I'll keep checking it out.

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JAPW Awaken 3/21/2015

JAPW has been around in some form for 15 years or so, and has been one of the great under the radar indies. They seem to run really sporadically, and I was really excited to see a new show pop up in the dark corners of the internet. I am watching this without a match list so I am pretty excited to see who pops up.

Opened with a 10 bell salute to Perro Aguayo, which Chris Dickenson comes out to interrupt. Dickenson is a really hit or miss guy, but he is apparently working Low-Ki in a grudge match, and he seems like a guy who will have a fun unprofessional grudge match with Low-Ki. Low-Ki is with MVP and Samoa Joe as part of their TNA stable, and I see Teddy Hart and Necro Butcher ringside, that is a bunch of guys I like (and MVP).

Silver Ant v. JT Dunn

Silver Ant used to be Green Ant and JT Dunn I have seen before as a member of indy workrate tag team Juicy Product. This was a Beyond Wrestling showcase, and very much felt like a indy wrestling showcase match. Lots of counters and dramatic two counts, and blah blah blah. JT Dunn is very much an indy wrestler, and he does lots of convoluted ways to hit cutters and faceplants. Nice tope by Dunn, but otherwise very forgettable

Steve "Monsta" Mack v. Jaka

On paper very exciting stuff, I am long time Monsta Mack fan, saw the Hit Squad live a bunch of times always enjoyed them, there is an awesome early Low-Ki singles where he works like Vader, loved the Hard Hitters team with a big white guy whose name escapes me. Jaka is Chris Dickonson's tag partner who kind of works an indy Haku gimmick. So this should have ruled. Unfortunately it starts with both guys no-selling german suplexes, and Mack badly blowing a jumping rana, and then right into a bad forearm exchange. One of the worst opening couple of minutes I have seen in a while. It gets a little better at the end as Mack just kills Jaka with some huge throws and clotheslines before pinning him with an awkward nasty powerbomb, still they couldn't dig themselves out of that early hole. Still love Monsta though.

Archadia v. Bandido Jr. v. Smiley v. Joey Janela v. Kimber Lee

Juniors five way with all the flaws that style promises. There were a couple of cool highspots from Bandido Jr. who is a undercard JAPW guy I have always liked, he did a crazy springboard rana, and a cool dive. Otherwise this was kind of mess. Finish was especially stupid, Joey Janela just randomly climbs to the top of a really high pillar, Smiley follows him up for some reason, and the throw some bad punches, and Joey Janela does a flip onto a bunch of security guys, I guess it was supposed to be a bump off the pillar, but it really looked like that what was he was trying to do, looked super fake and dangerous for no reason. Then when those two get back to the ring, everyone else is gone and Janela hits a suplex and pins him. Total mess.

Christopher Daniels + Frankie Kazarian v. Bravado Brothers

Indy wrestling workrate tag, which is a style I just can't get into. Everything was executed slickly (it is a Chris Daniels match) but it didn't add up to a ton. Kazarian does have some cool springboards, and the Bravados have some double teams which look good, but I forgot everything about this a minute after it was done.

Necro Butcher + The Hooligans v. The Viking War Party

The wild Necro brawls around the Rahway Rec center were my favorite thing about the latter day JAPW, this was in that spirit, but was surprisingly subdued. Necro actually spends a fair amount of the match in the ring, instead of reckless fling chairs in the crowd. There was some good craziness including the fat Viking getting smushed through a guardrail, and the Littlest Viking eating a running powerbomb in the rail. This kind of thing is always fun to watch, but this wasn't close to  the level of the great Necro/Brodie Lee matches from a couple of years ago.

Azrieal v. Black Jeez

Surprisingly solid juniors match. Haven't seen a Black Jeez match in years and while he was pretty terrible in CZW back in the day, he was OK here, definitely should have put him on the list of black guys LU should have brought in instead of Killshot. He works pretty stiff here, and applies his stuff well. Azrieal was one of the solid JAPW juniors back in the day, he was no Dixie or Insane Dragon but probably a bit better then Elax the exploited child, he had a nice tope and some solid mid range juniors offense, still nothing about this leaped out at me and didn't stick out in my brain 10 minutes later.

Teddy Hart/Chris Hero v. Samoa Joe/MVP

There are tons of indy wrestlers in the world doing "crazy guy" gimmicks, but how many of those guys spend time training their cats. Teddy Hart is such a legit lunatic that he is compelling to watch. Teddy's valet comes down with a fluffy Persian who seconds him and Hero during that match. Joe and MVP are working their TNA gimmick with Homicide at ringside, pretty fun match. MVP keeps refusing to take any of Teddy Harts moonsaults including moving so he smashes some fans on a dive, it almost felt like a weird inter promotional Puro match where guys are not cooperating. The match was mostly shtick, although Teddy had some nice brawling with Joe. There was also a great moment where Homicide just decides to break a chair over Teddy's head for the hell of it, I love that feud, and hope JAPW runs some more of it. Postmatch had Hart making a lot of jokes about his Pussy and thanking Jesus, what a kook.

Low-Ki v. Chris Dickinson

PAS: I was pretty low on Dickinson in the past, I described him as a fake Davey Richards which is about the worst way you can damn somebody. He has removed a lot of the extraneous bullshit, and is now mostly working on stiffness and his despicable charisma. He has to be one of the most hatable wrestlers I can remember, he feels like the kind of high school linebacker who would organize a gay bashing or gang rape, and add in the crew of creeps he runs with and you get a really compelling act. Low-Ki, especially in JAPW is a guy you want to see beat the shit out of someone, and man does he beat the shit out Dickinson, although Chris dishes it out too. Match starts out with some karate sparing, which is an interesting way to open a match, and then some decent takedowns and mat wrestling before the asskicking starts, Ki would blister Dickinson and he would fire back with some big shots, and also some fun cheap shots, Dickinson has a great looking eye poke. One point Dickinson kicks Ki really hard in the back and Ki fires back with this awesome four punch combo which they replayed from five different angles, so awesome, and really fit the somewhat ragged and uncooperative feel of the match. This match also had one of the cool superplexes I can remember seeing as Dickinson through Ki almost to the other side of the ring.

ER: Really cool match with some inventive asskicking and painful stretching. We get some nice early mat stuff with Dickinson controlling Ki and Ki almost going for broke early with a couple of double foot stomps. This was a nice change-up as Ki doesn't normally go for those so early so it was a neat indication that he thought he was in trouble, outmatched. Dickinson counters Ki's early attempts to finish with nice little cheats, a low blow here and an eye poke there. Dickinson keeps trapping Ki in this nasty submission with Ki's arms hooked behind his back and Dickinson's feet pushing against Ki's neck. At one point Ki does a great job of getting to the ropes, but facially expressing that it's hurting him WAY more to get to the ropes than was maybe worth it. Dickinson ups the stiffness by booting Ki in the back, and Ki puts it over great by slowly standing up back turned to Dickinson, clearly in pain but not wanting to show it. And then he punches Dickinson a bunch in the face and chest and everything is great. There was some good struggle throughout, especially loved Ki desperately grabbing behind Dickinson's knees to block a powerbomb. Later Ki went for a vertical suplex but Dickinson tried to sandbag him, which backfired and ended with him taking a sort of brainbuster DDT that looked vicious. There were a lot of nice little things like that, and those little things elevate a match. Even the finish had one of those moments with Dickinson hung in the tree of woe and Ki going for the Warriors Way. Now usually guys have to just kind of hang there like dinguses and then find a way to look up before getting their chests stomped in, but here Ki stands on Dickinson's knees causing him to sit up in pain, and then Ki hits the Warriors Way. Nice.


Post match was fun with Dickinson's crew brawling to the back with Joe, MVP and Homicide and Monsta Mack saving Ki from a sneak attack, only to do a big turn on him. Could really dig heel Monsta Mack against Ki and Homicide, and I hope JAPW runs again soon.

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