2025 Ongoing MOTY List: Fallen Angel Dies a Texas Death

Hangman Page vs. Christopher Daniels AEW Collision 1/18/25

I stopped getting invested in authority angles a long long time ago, and I can't lie and say I was very excited about this one. But it turns out my mental approach was all wrong, because this was not an authority angle, and watching the match it was clear how unimportant that aspect of the story was. Far more important things were happening here. This was a man's last stand, his last match, a last chance to publicly die on a sword, a last chance to see how FAR he could push things before the inevitable. 

Christopher Daniels is 55 years old and that is a reminder of my own rising age. The first wrestling shirt I ever purchased was a Fallen Angel shirt, acquired at an APW show when I was 18 years old. My wrestling show attendance really kicked into high gear when I was 18. Mike Modest and Christopher Daniels were my favorite wrestlers who I was regularly seeing wrestle live. I felt lucky to see them wrestle so often, and their matches together made me feel like I was seeing something special before everyone else. A few months later, I was wearing my Fallen Angel shirt on my college campus. A stranger pointed me out in passing and said, "Hey, nice shirt!" Months after that, I saw that same person waiting in line to get into ECW's Heat Wave 2000 and struck up a conversation with him and his friends. Those guys (Devin, Jason, Sean) became my best friends. I saw more live wrestling with - and watched more wrestling together in our respective living rooms with - those guys than anyone else in my life. Devin lives in Oregon now so I don't see him much, but Jason and Sean are still my go-to guys to watch wrestling with, live and in my living room. I don't know if that happens if I wasn't wearing that Fallen Angel shirt. 

Tastes change, favorites change. Daniels went on to have a 2,000 match career and now it's over, and he gets to go out having what could be called the best singles match of his career. Isn't that incredible? There's no hyperbole in that statement. Is it possible one of the TNA AJ Styles or Samoa Joe matches is better? Sure. There were two iron man matches in 2005 alone that could be better, and nothing will replace the memories of the two Modest/Daniels singles matches I saw live (and the multiple times I saw them tagging, including the great Modest/Daniels vs. Boyce LeGrande/Robert Thompson match from December 2000). But if any of those matches are better - I am not going to watch all of them before writing this - it is far more meaningful to me to have your last match ever be in the discussion with the greatest matches of your entire 30 year career. That's not just special, it's incredible. 

I don't always connect with the Texas Death stipulation. Sometimes it is killed by slow counts and frequent stopping, all momentum killed so that we can have a 40 second 8 count every other minute. But this was different, because Daniels and Hangman delivered the kind of damage that justified the repeated 10 counts, and gave the match (and each other) necessary breath while making any temporary recovery believable. They stayed within their respective roles the entire time. Nothing was even. Every part of the match reminded you who the fresher, more resilient man was. Watch the way Daniels gets knocked around by Hangman's stronger elbow strikes that were "worth" more than Daniels' strikes. Both men felt like they were selling the other's strikes exactly how they looked, matching the strikes and selling to their roles. But while Daniels was outgunned, it didn't mean he wasn't constantly trying to upset (and anger) Hangman. 

Daniels hits what I would wager, having seen hundreds of Christopher Daniels matches, his greatest ever baseball slide dropkick, firing through the bottom two ropes square into Hangman's chest. There are hundreds more Daniels matches I will never see, so anyone who's seen him do a harder baseball slide dropkick, let me know where it happened. But this was not a match about Daniels hitting a lot of offense, and that's clear when he gets pulled down roughly to the apron the floor attempting a split legged moonsault and is bleeding soon after from a chair edge to the face. I, not realizing how hard they were going to go in this, was appreciating how well Page did a HHH style "my hand is covering the edge of this folding chair back and I'm going to jam it at your face in a way nobody has ever used a weaponized chair before" chairshot and thought this was going to be a professional brawl where they tighten up the important strikes and work some smoke around the rest. Then one minute later Hangman is just slicing Daniels' head open, using barbed wire to saw into him like he was using a cheese wire, and the rest of this was not the professional Good Hand match I had expected. 

I always like when a guy gets choked over the ropes, but it is elevated to impossible levels when the guy getting choked is streaming fresh blood down the bridge of his nose and you can hear it dripping onto the mats below. The Fallen Angel is psychotic. Anyone who has a 30 year wrestling career has to be, but most men you can say that about haven't taken a powerbomb kidneys first through folding chairs, which is just one of several ways they actually shocked me during this match. Taking a fallaway slam on the floor onto those same kidneys right after is some real salt in the wound, and the way Daniels getting flung splatters blood across the mats looked like Hangman experimenting with abstract expressionism. When Daniels gets the top of his head run full speed into a chair, my admiration of Hangman's "worked" chairshot earlier feels silly. 

On commentary, I thought Matt Menard did an excellent job getting over Daniels' blood loss as a hindrance, talking about how it clots in your eyes and can't be wiped away, impairing vision while leaving you feeling depleted. He was so sincere and speaking from experience, that it gave me new perspective on what Daniels was going through. Just as I gained this new perspective, they shocked me again when Daniels gets double stomped through a table. It highlighted the fact that Hangman was not wasting any part of the match trying to finish Daniels off. He understood the rules he was working within, and was a man working like he was actually trying to win, never worrying about going "too far" because his only goal was to keep a man down for a 10 count. 

Daniels: Bloody, mostly defeated, refusing to quit/not knowing when to quit, hits his greatest ever BME. It is his greatest, because it lands as well as any other BME he's ever pulled off, except none of them were executed by a 55 year old man. If you can hit a clean moonsault, with impact, in your mid 50s, then you have miracle knees or are insane. It's almost surely the latter. He does another with Page under a barbed wire board because things hadn't gotten bad enough. Once Hangman survives that, there is nothing more. How can you handle a man standing tall after you have plumbed the depths to give him your worst? Well, you can't. That's when it's over. Daniels sells the Dead Eye like his neck got shoved up to his ears, so painful that it made everyone watching it also pray for Daniels' retirement.  

I thought this was brilliant, emotional, and downright shocking. If this really does turn out to be Daniels' public send off (so far so good, but 55 or no, you can never trust pro wrestlers) then few could ever hope to go out on a higher note. 

2025 MOTY MASTER LIST

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 7/14 - 7/20 + Bonus All In

MD: On the run this week so I'll have to double back for Shibata vs Rush later.

AEW Dynamite 7/16/25

Kyle Fletcher vs Mascara Dorada

MD: Pretty much everything I want out of a TV match here, given hierarchy, styles, moment in time, purpose. This is the sort of match you drop hours before the show to get everyone talking. It was a rebound for Fletcher after All In. It was a spotlight for Dorada (because while we know how great he is, it's good to give less familiar fans contrast between him and Komander or the CMLL guys). It kicked off the show after Hangman's promo and set the tone for the night. 

They set the tone for the match immediately, with Fletcher rushing in with a big boot and stomping away to a wonderful round of boos. The lack of a feeling out period to start was important because the next few minutes would be all Dorada, all shine, all Fletcher basing. It was a showcase with him hitting some spectacular stuff and Fletcher stooging and stumbling around the ring as he took it. When he tried to get one up on Dorada, he'd end up stumbling through the ropes instead. Selfless stuff. 

Fletcher was going to take the middle, was going to take the win, and had that initial flurry in the corner, so it gave him space to let Dorada soar here (and during his equally spectacular comeback. You had Tony and Taz on the call noting they may have never seen the unique springboard Dorada did early or the twisting 'rana he did off the top during his comeback.

What really made it sing was the heat though. The shine ended as Fletcher, bigger, stronger, resilient, caught him off a dive and hit a twisting slam. He then slowed things down to his own pace, slamming, grinding, denying. The fans had gotten a taste of just what Dorada could do. Frankly, they know what Fletcher can do as well, not just in basing. But he was going to sit there and stare out at them, would draw their chant, would play to it when it came. He built up the pressure by controlling the pace, and that, far more than rapid fire action, is what wrestling can do like nothing else.

It meant when Dorada came back, the fans were wild for it. And it meant that when they went into the stretch hitting the counters that the crowd had wanted all match, each and every one resonated and mattered. They made them matter too, pausing after each one, letting the action sink in. They twisted and contorted and played with expectations but after the fact, they reacted and showed how it mattered. When Fletcher finally put Dorada down, he came off as skilled and underhanded, as if he accomplished something meaningful himself, but also tremendously lucky. Dorada looked better in defeat. Fletcher looked vulnerable in victory. But he won nonetheless and he'll take that momentum into whatever he does next. Just good, quality TV wrestling. 

Jon Moxley, Hangman Page, and the Miracle in Arlington

It's hard to even document the number of things the match had going against it. A stadium show in 2025. A crowd that had sat through 7 hours of wrestling including some of the most amazing spots one could imagine. A match full of blood and guts and interference. Two huge anticipated returns. Catharsis and redemption. 

I've watched these crowds for four years now. I witnessed Ospreay vs Danielson where a crowd all but overdosed on its own elation, ignoring each and every plot point in the name of mindless chanting. 

This was the culmination of nine months of story, of a belt and a company and main event scene held hostage, of over two years of story, of a hero who lost his way, of two tales that came together to become greater than the sum of the whole.

And the fans were invested. They wanted this. They needed this. Maybe this wasn't where the story had first seemed headed but it was where they wanted it to end.

It's a testament to the wrestlers and the creative force behind them that the fans were invested in the destination, that they cared about the outcome.

That's not what made this a miracle though.

The miracle is that despite all the factors the match had against it, the fans were there for every moment of the journey.

In a situation like this, that's incredibly rare. This was a crowd that you'd expect to chant for themselves, to chant for the match, to chant for the moment, chant for the company. This is a crowd that you'd expect to shout "This is Awesome" or "AEW" before the match, at the first sign of blood, as Danielson hit the knee, as Darby rappelled down from the ceiling, at glass and nails and barbed wire. 

I don't remember hearing the chant once. 

This is a crowd that should have been staring to the back the whole way, like an Attitude Era crowd, like a crowd in a modern story driven WWE match where all that matters is the destination. 

They knew interference was coming. They knew that the mid-match Death Rider onto a chair probably wasn't going to end it. They knew that they were going to eat well, be rife with sensation. 

Yet they were there for every second. Right at the start of the match, Hangman had Mox down in the corner and stomped away and they were there cheering. Later on, Mox gained an advantage and stood on the second rope to survey his kingdom and they were there booing. 

When everything is awesome, nothing can be truly awesome. Here, because nothing was awesome, everything somehow became so. 

The crowd cared about every punch and stomp, every weapon, every interloper.

Some of that was the patience of sticking with the story. Some of that was the infamy of how Moxley started it all in murder and betrayal. Some of it was Hangman being the heart and soul of AEW.

So much was the layout of the match itself, the way things breathed and mattered, Hangman's performance, struggling to his feet and swinging for the fences, Moxley reveling in his own violent urges, roiling with fury each and every time he was foiled.

It was how all of the interference was set up to be taken out by the calvary of babyfaces. Perfect symmetry. It was how they arrived without music or fanfare (save for one video from the top of the world). It was how everything came back to Mox and Page at the end. 

And yeah, it was on this crowd that let pro wrestling, real, true pro wrestling, into its heart on this night, that let themselves be part of a miracle.

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2024 Ongoing MOTY List: Darby vs. Hangman

 

12. Darby Allin vs. Hangman Page AEW Dynamite 7/31/24

ER: I don't buy Hangman Page as a character. I don't buy the wild card persona that they push on commentary, I don't buy this threats to the referees, I don't buy his emptiness any more than I buy into the emptiness of any man. I don't think his strikes fit his villainous turn. He needs better shitkicking kicks. When he throws a kick to the ribs of a grounded man, his body language is far too flowy, too West Side Story High School Production. If Page is indeed a Bad Guy, I want to see him kick Darby in the ribs. Darby will do worse things to his own ribs in every match, and I need a Villain to not pull his kicks like a background fight scene Jet. 

But it doesn't really matter whether I but Hangman or not, because I fully buy Darby Allin. I buy into the level of punishment Darby is able to absorb, because he is literally right there absorbing all of that damage in full view with no smoke and mirrors. Darby absorbs inhuman punishment and he walks through the fire, and it's the most entertaining act in wrestling. He makes up size like nobody else and he does things that nobody else will. And while I might not buy into Hangman Page: The Character, I do think he works great as a Darby Opponent. Now, I also think that nearly everybody works as a Darby Opponent, but Page seems to understand even better just what he can do to Darby in a match, and knows how to take his offense in cool ways. 

I was really impressed how Page made his catches not feel like catches. When Darby Coffin Dropped off the entrance...circle?...Hangman didn't wait for him with his arms out. He stood there wobbly with his shoulders in, leaning forward into it the Drop like he was trying to counter it or block it, but at the same time he's making a perfectly absorbed catch. When he gets his ass knocked off the ring steps with a battering ram tope, a real weapon, he sticks with it and takes all of it. Darby does not need Page to lean into his offense to come off dangerous, but it sure doesn't hurt. You know he is going to make Page's offense look as great as possible - those three weirdly Too Sexual powerbombs he took on the apron and violent post-coital breakup fallaway slam into the edges of the ring steps, and how he didn't have to take the Death Valley Driver as vertically as he did, getting turned inside out attempting a Buckshot lariat - because that is who he is. But it's his dedication to making everything look good is what sets him so far above the rest. 

Darby Allin understands Walk and Brawl better than almost any ECW wrestler. Nobody tries to make Walk and Brawl look good, most just, well, walk. When Darby walks Page back to the ring with a tight headlock, his free hand pulling at Page's upper jaw, it looks fully believable that a guy Darby's size would be able to force a larger man to walk with him, like he is giving him no choice at all. He takes spots that others sleepwalk through and makes them matter. Look at the way he works a 10 count on the floor. There's no rolling around until 8 and then sprinting back into the ring. This man took real damage, he's selling that damage on the floor, but when he needs more than 10 he slowly rolls in to break and then slowly rolls back out, still selling everything he should be selling, no miracle  resurrections. He is small, but knows how to make his offense look effective against men of any size. His shotgun dropkick, back elbow, coffin splash, all of it lands like a heavyweight, and the way he lands lower on the hips always makes his Code Red set up look like he understands the physics of all his offense. 

I didn't love the finish and didn't love the set up for the majistral, but I buy into Darby, and love how he makes me buy into others. 

2024 MOTY MASTER LIST

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 11/18 - 11/24 (Part 1?)

ROH TV 11/21/24

Athena vs Leila Grey (Proving Ground)

MD: Athena makes a tricky finger of death because there are some diminishing returns in my writing about her. I'm not necessarily interested in structural issues (like where she places the magic forearm in her matches; I'm not sure this match even had it) or in narrative ones (like how in this match Grey, due to the hierarchy, was mainly able to get opportunities by using her athleticism to help enable banana peel slip moments of Athena missing shots). I'm interested in Athena's full immersion, the way she's always on, always reacting. 

I'm interested in taking a match and watching her facial expressions and body language the whole way through, taking for granted that the match will make sense and be narratively compelling and sound, that the execution of moves and her bumping will be very good, just focusing entirely on how she reacts to everything that happens. Buddy Rose was always on, but from what I understand, he wasn't able to explain it. It was instinct, natural; it just happened. With Terry Funk, I always get the impression that his brain just worked more quickly than everyone else's, that he saw opportunities in the moment and was able to choose which one would create the biggest ripple. Maybe I'm wrong. 

I wonder a little which it is with Athena. Grey here did a very god job of reacting. At times you could see exhaustion or desperation or hope in her face. There was often a momentary gap, just a blip, and it's nothing to hold against her. It's human. I'd argue that the majority of wrestlers have that gap of making a conscious choice of how to react, how to sell, how to be, and because most wrestlers do it, there's no reason to even notice it. Athena doesn't have it though. With her, it's seamless. In some ways, you watch her matches to see just what the reaction will be, but sometimes you watch them to see what's not there, to revel in the absence of that gap and the extra semblance of immersive reality that she can create that almost no one else in wrestling in 2024 can. I'm just not sure how interesting it is to people for me to keep writing about it.

AEW Dynamite 11/20/24

Darby Allin vs Claudio Castagnoli

MD: Sometimes when someone's not going to be on the PPV they get a feature match in the week around it. That seems to be what we have here. Even though he lost, this was maybe the first time that Darby really looked like "the guy" to me. There was something about how he carried himself, a certain confidence. It's not that he was ever lacking it (no one as fearless as he is could possibly be lacking it), but it's always been a sort of of outsider edge and now it felt more mainstream, more central. He didn't feel like a pillar. He felt like a main eventer and it felt like he knew it. I'm curious if he can carry that forward in the weeks and months to come.  

Some of that was Claudio putting him over. You may ask how he put him over; it was by treating him like a legitimate threat right from the get go. Yes, there was a size and strength advantage. Yes, it played into the match, but Claudio treated him as dangerous nonetheless. The first couple of times, when he retreated to the floor (and he retreated to the floor in the first place), he quickly got out of Darby's line of fire. Then, instead of trying to aggressively overpower Darby, he took over by luring him in and catching him. If you've ever read anything I wrote, you know that I feel like details can matter. All of this can matter. Claudio choosing to take over in the way that he did, especially given the strength differential, meant that Darby was someone worth being wary of. That matters.

Of course, Darby, being who he is and the size he is, enabled Claudio, who could do almost anything to anyone anyway, to do amazing things. The endless gutbusters, the walk up the stairs, the swing into the guardrail, the press slam that all but ended things. There's some question of whether Claudio doing such impressive, crowd-pleasing spots is counter productive in some way. Some of it comes down to execution. A lot of it is on his opponent. They care about Darby. Darby makes them care. That matters. It makes the difference. If you have an over babyface, it can work. If you don't, then Claudio will just get himself over. Here, it worked, and Darby made it work, constantly fighting from underneath, biting, scraping, and even almost picking Claudio up, something that made Darby look just as unreal in his own way, as all of Claudio's big power moves. Again it's because they made things like the differential matter. They kept it consistent, they leaned into it, they reacted and sold what was happening, not just the physical toil but the emotional weight behind it all. That turns Darby lifting Claudio in a fireman's carry out of a hold as a hope spot from just another spot, a checked box, to something with massive emotional resonance that will get the crowd chanting not for the match or for the company or for each other or for action for the sake of action, but for Darby Allin to overcome.

Darby finally came back by combining his bite hope spot with Claudio's luring tactic earlier in the match, getting him out to the floor and biting a face instead of a finger. They went into the sort of finishing stretch you'd expect all building to the huge spot off the table. Darby valiantly crawled back into the ring to beat the count only for Claudio to wipe him out for a sort of surprise pin. All in all, Darby wasn't hurt by it and it was a win Claudio probably needed relative to his current role. I will say that the climb back in, even after such a huge spot, wasn't as impactful as it could have been. I think of early-mid 80s NJPW where they occasionally did huge countouts. While it was incredibly unsatisfying when one or both wrestlers went over the rail for the DQ, the countouts still had oomph. Some of that was the fighting spirit element of it, but a lot of it was because they actually happened. People loosely understand the symbolic idea of a countout now, the notion that someone who makes it back to the ring is heroic and deserving of praise, but the element of risk of Darby NOT beating the count wasn't actually there. It never happens. If it did, then people would care more when someone beats the count. The baseline isn't someone not making it. The baseline is someone making it, always, even if they just barely make it. You can't push against something that never actually happens and expect for it to hit as well as it might have. In this case, I actually wonder if Darby might have been more over for even getting up and crawling towards the ring and almost making it and NOT beating the count. That wouldn't have been about the spirit being unwilling but just the body holding him back. Just something to think about right?

-----

BONUS: On Hangman Page, my most improved wrestler of 2024 (with every bit of implication that statement carries).

This should be a pretty safe one right? A positive message. Adam Page is my most improved wrestler of the year. I think he's taken extremely well to the maligned heel act.

Except for one little thing. He's not my best wrestler of the year. He's my most improved wrestler of the year, and to be improved, well, you had to start from some sort of deficit.

And yeah, did he ever have a deficit in my mind. When I started watching AEW in fall 2021, I had never seen Adam Page before. On paper, there seemd a lot to like. Hard hitting cowboy. An undeniable expressiveness that went hand-in-hand with the whole depressed millenial sensitive guy deal. A fairly solid person behind the character with a good social media presence.

So I gave him a shot. Believe it or not, that's what I do. I saw him win the title, saw him on his first few defenses. And deeper into 2022. I come from a school of thought that tosses conventional wisdom out the window. Other people can help guide you places, but once you get there, you delve in yourself and make your own judgments. And judge I did, and I found him wanting.

When it comes to conventional workrate metrics, he was aces, right? Worked hard. Hit hard. Had big spots (big enough at least: the fall away slam, the death valley driver, the moonsault, the springboard clothesline).

It was just how he used them and how big spots seemed to be all that he had. He was lacking simple things: punches, kicks, a standard clothesline, a corner clothesline, a bodyslam, any of the stuff that you'd normally expect early into a match. And lacking that early and mid-level offense, he started dropping the bombs too early.

It worked well enough when someone huge (like a Lance Archer) controlled the match. Then he could hit a fall away slam or even a death valley driver as a hope spot or a big comeback spot. He was a dominant presence though, a lead babyface, and he went too big too quick, and then there was nowhere for his matches to go. He was consistently hitting something like a death valley driver in the first few minutes and it meant multiple finisher attempts and finishers later on when he should have been hitting some of those bombs that he might have theoretically saved instead of used earlier in the match.

The thing was, it worked for him. Maybe not with me, but it worked with the crowd. Some of that was buoyed by his personality and his connection with them, but a lot of it was because he was giving them gratification and plenty of it. A lot of sensation. A lot of reason to pop. That it ultimately wasn't as memorable as it could have been, that it wasn't sustainable over time, that it didn't always build to emotional beats, well, it was beside the point, because he was rewarded.

Page has an art nerd background. I get the sense he's a creative guy, that he often tried to pop himself and his friends, do the things that he thought would be cool in a match. And it meant he was rewarded repeatedly for things that didn't necessarily hold up narratively, things that might have worked over the span of months or if he was used as an attraction, or if he had an opponent who could bring the right sort of structure to the table but that faltered against certain opponents. My least favorite match of 2022 was the Takeshita match, because Takeshita is very similar. He was new to me too and I didn't know the criticism of him from DDT, but both of them rushed to as much cool stuff as possible without building it in a way that feels earned or paid off. 

So yes, it works, but it doesn't work nearly as well as it could potentially work. It leaves things on the table. However good you might feel he is, he could have been so much better. This year, he has been.

A heel turn alone isn't a magic fix. I'd argue that Takeshita still stumbles with a lot of the same pitfalls. Action without substance. Payoff without build. Athleticism without meaningful escalation.

Page, however, has leaned into it far more thoroughly. He's captured a mood. He moves with purpose. He's found that mid-level offense. He leans on opponents, takes the air out of them, out of the room, oppresses them, an imposing presence that now wrestles from the incensed, hateful, look in his eyes outwards. He's channels a methodological presence in the best of ways. Now when he hits one of his bombs, it resonates with narrative force. I've gone from dreading how he might structure his matches to looking forward to it.

People felt things in certain of his older matches. So much of that was due to the set up outside the match. Now he's the one creating the mood and tugging on hearts with his actual wrestling. And he deserves all the credit in the world for it.

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2023 Ongoing MOTY List: Dark Order vs. Blackpool Combat Club

 

6. Stu Grayson/Evil Uno/Hangman Page vs. Jon Moxley/Claudio Castagnoli/Wheeler Yuta AEW Dynamite 3/15

ER: AEW is often at its best when it hits the level of a 4th match of the night trios from the middle of a 2003 NOAH show, and that's what this felt like to me. Everything hummed and flowed like the best NOAH trios, and almost everyone hit like they were wrestling in a NOAH trios. Evil Uno works like an old fat All Japan undercarder who's having a big night anyway, so it only makes this even better. He's like old ass Mighty Inoue or Mitsuo Momota breaking out of old man comedy and coming alive and showing everyone that he's still the guy they might have seen on a 1979 IWE show. But the big story of this very cool match is Stu Grayson. 

Stu Grayson is a guy who I haven't had an active thought about at any point of my pro wrestling fandom. It's a name I relearn every time I see a Stu Grayson match and then it just as quickly drifts away, just out of reach. Like a night's dream you're trying to recollect, the more you attempt to recall the name Stu Grayson, the farther away you feel from catching it. Except Stu Grayson exists beyond that plane of waking life, as you never once get the urge to actually recall your memory of That Time You Watched A Stu Grayson Match Because You Were Home On A Wednesday. How many Stu Grayson matches could I have actually watched. Half a dozen? A full dozen? I am no longer a religious weekly watcher of TV wrestling, while also being a person who constantly watches wrestling, including a lot of AEW and WWE. I am a pro wrestling Hardcore Viewer while simultaneously being the elusive Casual Fan that has been lusted after demographically for literal decades. And that is the reason why I have probably seen eight Stu Grayson matches. Without remembering any Stu Grayson matches. Maybe those matches were all actually John Silver or Raymond Row matches. 

But in this match, this Stu Grayson Match, I found his excellent babyface energy captivating. He really started connecting with me when he took a cool fast bump through the ropes to the floor, and the BCC did a sick group piledriver on the floor as The Thing to kick off their big heat on him. I thought the Combat Club were awesome at making quick tags so that every member could inflict their own personal constant damage, tagging in to suplex and hit and kick and uppercut Grayson. The heat was all really well done and the action was seamless, giving Grayson time to credibly sell while also believably not leaving him spaces for a comeback. When he did make a one move comeback - with a huge running knee straight into Moxley's mouth - it was a huge hot tag moment. A well built and well timed hot tag is always a thing to be celebrated, but I loved how they used the hot tag as the means to build up to another run towards the finish, not as the actual run to the finish itself. Uno had a big senton atomico and all of the quick hit car crash action perfectly cleared the ring for Moxley and Page...which was just a way to quickly settle things down into the run towards the real finish, as Yuta took out Hangman with the ring bell. 

Despite being an early-AEW supporter of Evil Uno - one of the guys who consistently made the What Worked side of that first year or so of AEW Workrate Reports - I wouldn't ever call myself a Dark Order Guy. And yet here I was, completely losing it thinking that Uno and Grayson could plausibly pin Jon Moxley. Their entire finish run, from Grayson's flip dive over the ringpost, to all of their chained together offense and double teams, all made me actually think - and be excited for -  Uno and Grayson were actually taking out Jon Moxley. The Fatality nearfall was huge, and Yuta's best moments of the match were him saving Mox from that finish and then running over to pull Uno off the apron to stop the tag and ice the momentum. Stu Grayson makes the great looking finish look like an even greater finish. It's cool seeing him hit 450s and big ranas and dives with real distance, but I love how he Athletically Eats Shit taking Claudio's pop up uppercut. This was NOAH trios perfection, and if I manage to forget about Stu Grayson again in a couple days, it is likely merely the signs of my advanced brain rot and not anything that is the fault of Stu Grayson's ability.  

2023 MOTY MASTER LIST

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2022 Ongoing MOTY List: Archer vs. Hangman

2. Lance Archer vs. Hangman Page AEW Dynamite 2/9

ER: I love when two guys who I'm a low voter on combine forces into something big. I expect good matches from my favorite guys, and that's typically why they're my favorite guys. But a great match from guys I don't look forward to watching? That hits a different, less used part of my brain and I love it. Page especially has really won me over as a big bleeding babyface, because how can anyone not get into a guy who bleeds for the people, who bleeds for his belt? Before I thought Page was a phony cowboy with bad offense, but leaking blood all over your face and body does a lot to cover up questionable offense, and the man has won me over in mere months. Archer is another guy who always seemed risible in different ways, a guy who washed out of the WWE well over a decade ago and is somehow putting in the best work of his career in his mid-40s. I saw the praise for their match and was skeptical, but thought this won me over. The Texas Death stipulation worked really well for what they did, and the prop usage was excellent. Texas Death stip means you won't get guys milking 2.9 kickouts before they get up and do it again, and also gives someone plenty of time to set up props while their opponent is being counted. Because of those two things, I don't think this match would have worked nearly as well had it been a standard pinfall or submission match. 

I bought into the possibility of Archer actually getting beaten early in the match with the Buckshot Lariat, and the ref's count made that possible. In a pinfalls match we would have known in just a couple seconds whether or not Archer was kicking out, but the long 10 count turned that possibility into an actual moment, and I love when a heel survives a babyface's best shot and gets to his feet grinning. I was always drawn to Heavies on 70s or 80s TV shows, and the best TV babyfaces (Jim Rockford, Matt Houston, Rick Simon, etc.) always had great reaction facials whenever they'd punch a heavy and then watch that heavy take the punch and smile right back. Dan Lambert removing the top rope to eliminate the Buckshot was some great pro wrestling bullshit, and I appreciate how damn quickly Lambert was working his hands to undo that rope. The idea of a top rope being removed lowering Page's odds of victory is silly but perfectly in line with what we've seen in his matches. This same strategy would not work on Adam Cole, as it would just make it easier for him to get into the ring. But freeing that ring hook was the real turning point in the match, as Archer gouged into Hangman's eyebrow during the Picture in Picture and when we came back Page was well on his way to having some incredible color. 

The blood in the match was fantastic, with Hangman's color being among the best juice jobs in the history of TV title matches. But I loved how Archer didn't make the match about exclusively weapons and props, as he filled in the time between the big moments by beating on Page with big clubbing arms, and doing annoying little things like walking up and just booting him in the eye. At one point Archer even produced a fork, and I got a huge smile when Tony yelled out "Where did he get that fork!?" Jake Roberts has been a fun presence in Archer's corner, but he doesn't really get physically involved in things, so I lost it when he rocked Page with the short arm clothesline and called for the DDT, wearing flowery button-up that made him look like the most dangerous version of Cam from Modern Family. That Archer didn't want Roberts to use his DDT only made Archer look like an even more violent heel, and it made Hangman's DDT mean even more. Archer has been billed as a big man monster for the past decade, and this match is one of the few times I've actually seen that in front of me. 

When Archer hit the Blackout on the upended ring steps I thought Hangman broke his arm, or worse. It was a brutal landing, and yet it could have gone worse in so many different ways. It's an insane spot that would have likely won the match, maybe should have won the match, but the stipulations and Archer picking up Page to inflict more damage saved him. The Buckshot Lariat off ref Paul Turner's back (while he was down picking up the barbed wire that got brought into the match) was tremendous, a great use of Ref As Prop, believably set up, paying off those tables that had been set up 10 minutes earlier. Archer had some strong moments earlier, good at almost going through the tables but not, and I love when a match like this is good enough to make us forget about tables and then bringing them back in an impactful way. This match made me sincerely excited for future Archer and Page singles matches, two things that I have never been excited for now. I love when that happens. 

Phil also wrote about this match over at The Ringer, so be sure to check that out. 

2022 MOTY MASTER LIST

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AEW Five Fingers of Death Week of 1/3-1/9

AEW Dynamite 1/5

Bryan Danielson vs. Adam Page

PAS: Hell of a way to start the year in wrestling. A classic, bloody hard fought world title war.

One thing that is challenging and unique about pro-wrestling is that you can’t just tell the story alone, you have to tell the day after story as well. Page climbed the mountain, but how does he live his day by day. What is the second date like for Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves when there is no exploding bus? Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks kiss on the Empire State Building, but how do they combine their finances and decide who moves where?

Narratively Page’s story was over with his title win, and while it was playing out (and while Page was out on paternity leave) two of the biggest stars in 21st century pro-wrestling CM Punk and Bryan Danielson joined AEW, and the focus of the promotion shifted. The feud between Danielson and Page was focused on Danielson running through the Dark Order and taunting Page, Page felt like someone reacting to Danielson, rather then the protagonist of his own story. It felt like the promotion was at a crossroads, they could either shit the title to Dragon who had multiple clear directions to go as champion, or try to make Page into not just a man fighting to climb a mountain, but a guy standing on top.

AEW kicked the booking decision can down the road a bit by having the first match between the two go to a time limit draw, and they came into this match with a trio of judges at ringside in case this match went the distance as well (leaving everyone to expect a Terry Funk from someone, smart for AEW to let it lie). One of the good things about AEW’s booking so far is that they have usually gone with the narratively satisfying finish rather then trying to do a swerve for swerves sake, here however there was no obvious direction this match would go, there were sensible arguments for either guy to win, so there was real drama in every near fall.

Danielson controlled the pace early, countering a Page tope by bealing him into guardrail damaging his arm, and drop toe holding him into the ring steps opening up a cut. Danielson then worked both the damaged shoulder and the bloody head, surely putting Page behind on those hypothetical scorecards. Page however was able to block a Danielson attempt to drive his head into the ringpost, which was something Danielson successfully did in their first match (and legendarily did to Nigel McGuinnes 15 years ago during their ROH feud), Page was drive Danielson into the post insted badly open him up with the same move. AEW has distinguished themselves from WWE by bringing back the red to mainstream pro-wrestling, recently however they have been hitting the ketchup bottle heavily, the previous week they had a very gory women’s tag match, it might make sense for them to leave it dry for a bit.

From that moment the sides were leveled with both men badly lacerated, Danielson especially going the extra mile, his face and hair soaked. We had a compact and impressive sprint to the finish with multiple callbacks to the previous match between the two and to wrestling history, including a bloody Danielson failing to skin the cat, a neat way to show how much danger he was in, and Page getting a 2.99999 kickout on Danielson’s running knee, the move he used to win the WWE title from John Cena. The buckshot lariat which Page used to win was maybe the nastiest of his career, and a great way to end this rivalry. It will be interesting to see where AEW goes after this with both guys, there aren’t clear directions for either, but the match got me much more interested in a Page title run then I was before, which is something great matches can really achieve.

MD: I thought Danielson was, once again, excellent here. This had a few extra story beats, most specifically the judges; he worked well towards them and towards potentially winning on points early but still did things like look at Lynn after the "Gotch-style" cradle pile driver late. Talk about maximizing narrative opportunities. Danielson has definitely reached that point of combining physical intensity with trying to squeeze out every bit of oft-literal blood from the storytelling stone. In a lot of ways Page held his own. I thought his reactions were good, his selling was good. Where he struggles, and this is about the style he came up in and lords over now as much as anything else, is mid-level offense. Fall away slams, German Suplexes, and death valley drivers especially are pretty big bombs to be used as hope spots here. A slam, a belly to back, a samoan drop all would have served him better in the places in the match he used them. That's not entirely his fault. The actual transition/comeback was all about Danielson getting absolutely opened up and once that happened, every second had him bleed out more and more energy towards an eventual defeat. The other story beat towards the end was them paying off all of the different finishers he used to defeat the Dark Order (and others before that) with Page surviving them all only to win off of one buckshot. It was as solid a blowoff to the last couple of months as I could imagine, even if I ultimately enjoyed it and the pacing less than the draw.

ER: Jim Ross's "Who's ready for some Cowboy Shiznit?" is truly one of the worst ways anyone has ever kicked off what would turn out to be one of the best matches. Also, this is literally the most I've ever seen Phil write about one match on Segunda Caida, so guarantee this review is a special sneak preview of Way of the Blade 2. It feels almost pointless for me to talk about a Danielson match and say "this is one of the greatest Danielson performances we've seen". He's the kind of guy you say that about and then run the numbers in your head and know that he has a hundred performances you can say that about, but it also doesn't make the statement any less true. It feels ridiculous to make statements about a guy for 20 years, but he just keeps having matches like these that make it undeniable. This was also probably the most I've ever enjoyed Hangman Page. This could have easily been a total Danielson show, and while Danielson gave a huge performance, I don't think Page wasn't overshadowed as champion at all. I liked the immediate story of Page trying to put the match away one minute in. I would have loved to see the reactions live and online if Danielson hadn't rolled to the floor away from that Buckshot lariat, losing without getting any offense. 

But it quickly goes into Page really getting punished, when he gets matador'd into the guardrail on a big tope. Page had some great crashes after that missed dive, getting thrown painfully into the railing, into the ringpost, and getting busted open on the ring steps. Page throwing his body into out of the ring bumps like Matthew Justice is a great version of Page. But his offense was also really strong once he started making his way back into the match with an awesome vertical (yet safe) Death Valley Driver, and a harder corner lariat than I'm used to seeing from him. What I wasn't expecting was Danielson getting even bloodier than Page over halfway into the match, after Page pulls him hard by the arms several times into the ringpost like it was 2006 ROH, when Champions tried to see if their heads were harder than ring posts. I thought this was going to be a savage Danielson bloodying but ultimately losing to the champ, not the champ rising up and making his foe lose even more blood. Once both men were fully masked there were some incredible bits of character. Page getting lightheaded and dropping to his butt with a Kawada sell after doing Danielson's jumping jacks taunt back to him was fantastic, and a bloody Danielson collapsing just before he would have gotten leveled by the buckshot lariat was the kind of wrestling idea that would have secured Danielson the #1 spot on both of the 2001 DVDVR 500s. Danielson's busaiku knee decapitated Page like that that log sliding through the trucker's cab in Red Asphalt, and he gets destroyed by a backdrop driver and buckshot lariat. Nothing like starting the year off with a match that we'll still be talking about in a year.

AEW Rampage 1/7 (Taped 1/5)

Eddie Kingston/Santana/Ortiz vs. 2.0 (Jeff Parker/Matt Lee)/Danny Garcia

PAS: You put some New Yoricans in a street fight and I am going to be into it. This had a JAPW arena brawl vibe to it, lots of moving pieces, big shots and great little moments of character work. Eddie Kingston is the best wrestler in the world, and is the highlight of every match he is in. I loved the ground and pound on the floor, with Kingston trying to clear Garcia's guard, and all of the leg selling was killer. King hopping across the ring to hit the Exploder ruled and was a heck of babyface hot tag spot. 2.0 are just great filler guys, can pretty much play any role up and down the card and make it work. Garcia is obviously headed for bigger things and I am excited for them to revisit the Kingston feud down the road, I could easily see it as a main event match for a big title.  

MD: I don't want to be mean about this, because the effort and layout were both very good for the TayJay vs Ford/Bunny match, but a brawl like this exposes what happened with them as a lot of bells and whistles. Again, not anything necessarily wrong about that, but this is striking, as it didn't need any of that and it was still gripping. I'm generally the low SC vote on Santana/Ortiz, but here their double teams (which usually feel more like ends unto themselves than means to achieve a greater purpose) worked as a tool for them to assert dominance whenever the action actually did make it back into the ring. Kingston's selling and overall sense of defiance was spot on as always as was Garcia's dickish targeting of the leg on the outside. 2.0 got to show some extra versatility here proving that they could take a lot of stuff and fill the space properly in a garbage brawl. From a structural standpoint, it felt a bit off to me how after Garcia/2.0 eliminated Kingston and therefore had a theoretical numerical advantage for the stretch, they still lost. Maybe you could play it up that they paid some sort of greater cost by being so focused on Kingston, but it raised a flag. I probably would have liked this more if it ended after the bell shot.

ER: I have been loving this feud, and this was the best match of the feud so far. It really did capture that classic 2000s indy brawl feel, the kind of match where you can have 6 favorite guys. Jeff Parker was a huge standout for me. I was an Ever-Rise fan, and like that he's one of the few guys left who throws a strong fistdrop, but here he looked like a heel indy legend. He's out there in perfect street fight gear, sporting a mustache and haircut that makes him look like Eric Roberts in Star 69, which is a fucking great way for a wrestler to look. Santana and Ortiz had some fire double teams in this, some great timing on a cutter where Santana slid into the ring to toss Ortiz back into Parker, and no matter what the Inner Circle did Parker had the timing and ring placement down precise. Parker also threw the best punches in a match that has several good-to-great punchers and really fueled the big babyface comeback. Matt Lee is a great unhinged idiot and also kept gluing himself into things, working in and out with everyone and running into constant chaos on the floor. The Kingston/Garcia was some awesome story advancement, with Garcia taking advantage of a Kingston slip on the floor and immediately going after his knee like an asshole. Kingston was his perfect self, egging on his own beating, never able to help himself from making his beating worse. They worked a hot finishing stretch into a brawl that was more about stiffness and strikes (like an old JAPW or IWA-MS brawl) than about modern AEW garbage stunt brawling. There were some big spots, but they managed to convey a ton of violence without using blood, and it takes a great brawl to stand out like this without the AEW crimson. 

AEW Battle of the Belts 1/8

Dustin Rhodes vs. Sammy Guevara

MD: Combination of good smart work from Dustin plus a few big set pieces that made full use of Sammy's athleticism. It stands out so much watching Dustin as basically the only guy (save a few exceptions) in the roster that draws claps up or does the ten count punch in the corner. Then he'll turn around and do the Canadian Destroyer through the table. That said, he probably was the wrong opponent for Sammy. Either you need a heel that'll base for him and try to tear him apart or a younger face who can really go to highlight Sammy's offense. Dustin started and ended with a handshake and while he played savvy vet at times, he was just too over as a face to make the most of things. I hadn't seen their previous matches so I'm not sure how those were worked, but this never quite gelled the way I would have liked. I did think the finish, where Dustin tried to repeat Cody's success, was very good. All that said, what people will probably remember in the end are Sammy's bump for the first CrossRhodes, the big dive, and the Destroyer through the table.

PAS: We really haven't seen Dustin work a highflyer before. It's too bad we never had a Dustin WCW run in 1997 or so, I imagine he would have had some awesome Worldwide matches against Juvi or Billy Kidman. I liked the early sections where he tried to match speed with Sammy only to get winded, and I liked him working the leg to slow him down. Lots of big spots here, including the Sammy TAKA style double jump dive and the Canadian destroyer through the table, which is something you expect to be sloppily done by an indy scrub in a deathmatch, not perfectly executed by Dustin Rhodes of all people. Fun stuff, and every Dustin match we get these days is a mitzvah. 

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AEW Five Fingers of Death Week of 12/13-12/19

AEW Dynamite 12/15

Bryan Danielson vs. Adam Page 

MD: This is one of the rare ones where I kind of want to crib off of Eric or Phil's notes, but I tend to get in first on some of these, and with this one, the only record we have of Phil was "I liked the Kingston match more." Thanks, Phil. Anyway, I caught this twice, or at least one and a half times. 8 pm is tough for me live as I have kids to put to bed, but I caught a good amount before the TNT app froze on me and wouldn't come back. Then I followed back the next day with the international feed. That was a preferable experience since you didn't lose any of the match or crowd noise to picture-in-picture but seeing a chunk the other way makes me want to raise a point right at the start. There are a few interesting elements at play with this one: Danielson's approach to it relative to his long 00s matches; Danielson's heel role and how he worked the crowd; how well or not well Page was able to hang in probably the most challenging match of his career (probably as I don't think I've ever actually seen him before except for in clips); but maybe the most interesting to me is how they managed the commercial breaks.

I guess more accurately, the interesting factor is that they had to deal with them in the first place. I haven't gone back and watched the long WWE TV matches of the last twenty years, but here it obviously shaped the match. On paper, you'd think that would have an impact when it came to suspension of disbelief. Why is Danielson working this hold for so long? Why is Page bleeding out on the floor so long while Danielson works the crowd in the ring? Because it's a commercial break. We know it, the wrestlers know it, the production team knows it, the crowd knows it. A necessary evil, right? (Except for that one break right after Page missed the second moonsault to the floor where Danielson pulled back the mat and hit the DDT; except for in 2021, that's not that big a spot, I guess, and the call sheet could just have been "Danielson does damage to Page on the floor.") Yet, here was the striking bit. When the sound left for commercials during that first break that started with Danielson working an abdominal stretch, the crowd was up and excited. When the sound came back at the end of it with Page reversing a surfboard, the crowd was up and excited. Listening to the TNT feed, I wasn't expecting it, and it hit like a sudden wave. They'd changed gears, slowed things down for the commercial break, and they still had the crowd. Likewise for the break where Page was bleeding out: yes, towards the very, very end the crowd started to turn on the doctors at least and a small bullshit chant started, but for two or three minutes before that, Danielson had their full attention, doing jumping jacks in the ring, giving them the finger, completely indifferent to Page's plight and drowning happily in boos while literally nothing was happening but some doctor pouring water into Page's mouth as commercials sludged past for the US audience. If the crowd didn't care, if it really didn't impact viewing on the international feed, if it maybe even helped the overall pace of the match by letting things breathe when modern inclinations are to go, go, and then go some more, then it was a potential problem solved.

So much of that was down to Danielson being fully invested in every moment of the match. He was completely on from bell to bell, bringing logic, purpose, attitude, and meaning to everything he did. When I was on Phil's pod the other week talking about Bock vs Hennig, one key factor to me was that you could draw a line from any spot in the match to any other spot and explain easily, logically, and with satisfaction how they got from point A to point B or back. I wouldn't be quite so quick to stake that claim here, but after a bit of hesitation, I probably would agree to it anyway. Moreover, nothing felt like time-killing other than the obvious commercial time killing, and like I said, even that was over and effective and interesting as a thought experiment, even if you don't always want thought experiments in your big title matches. Danielson moved from body part to body part, but he did so based on the current opening and the current opportunity. It almost always built on what came before in the match and it led to what came next. It opened possibilities minutes down the line and was informed by eventualities from minutes previous. It was less on Page to have a gameplan and more on him to just hit his big offense when the chance arose, but he never seemed out of place or lost or like he wasn't carrying his weight in the match.

I came in thinking there were no good booking choices, that they had just gone with this too quickly if they wanted to maximize Danielson and protect Page's reign and all the time spent to build it up, and in the end, they made him look strong to outsiders without hurting Danielson too much, but that was only because they punted the ultimate decision down the field a few weeks or a month. They'll still have to cross that road later, but this draw is going to make things at least a little bit easier for them when that time comes.

PAS: This was a match I liked a lot, without absolutely loving it. It is difficult to keep me engaged in a match this long at all, and I was definitely engaged. I really thought Danielson kept the match together with his heel work, the taunting, the ripping at the wound, the mix of cocky and vicious which he has really mastered. Page was pretty good too, especially for a guy I am not invested in. This wasn't Danielson against a broomstick, he brought plenty, from the huge bump to the floor, the bleeding, the big clothesline. He also kept cardio pace, it is clear that the wrestlers today have the wind to work a 60 minute match at a faster pace then most wrestlers from the 70s and 80s, but they had the sense to do plenty of selling as well. I did think the match got a bit your turn my turn at the end, I think it would have been more satisfying narratively if you had just one guy trying to survive at the buzzer rather then both guys having a chance too, and I also didn't love the long break on the outside with the doctor, feels like there is a count for a reason and if it took that long for Page to get back into the ring, then he should have been counted out. I had a Ringer piece I was pitching on the booking dilemma AEW found itself in, and the draw kind of skunked the piece, but I am interested to see where they go from here, Danielson seems to have way more juice in him for a title run then Page, but I get why Page is important to the promotion and their fans.

AEW Rampage 12/17 (Taped 12/15)

Eddie Kingston/Santana/Ortiz/Pentagon Jr./Fenix vs. 2.0 (Jeff Parker/Matt Lee)/The Acclaimed (Max Caster/Anthony Bowens)/Daniel Garcia - GREAT

PAS: I think it is really smart of AEW to run these six, eight and ten man tags. It's a great way to get a bunch of people involved without burning singles matches. High energy stuff which was really highlighted by the Kingston vs. Garcia feud, loved the high energy finish and the roll up upset. Also was really impressed with Bowens, who was hitting hard, and Santana and Ortiz who carried the workload. Enjoyed how this kept breaking down and coming together and it had fun action throughout. This is what you want to deliver for a TV main event. 

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 3/3/21

What Worked

-Shaq went through a table on a Wednesday night, and I cannot not enjoy that. 

-Even with a truly putrid Luchasaurus performance and a dumb finish with clunky interference from a "masked individual" (the return from a several month absence of the legendary Shawn Spears), it was impossible to not absolutely love the performance from Tully and FTR. They even got JJ Dillon (great touch) and he blasted Jungle Boy with his loafer. But Tully wrestled so much better than anyone could have reasonably expected, and I honestly have no clue how this guy hasn't been putting in a few high profile indy performances every year of the last 25. He had great body shots on Marko and some awesome knee lifts, and was great at working bullshit from the apron (like standing on Jungle Boy's hair!), and for a quick paced match there was not one moment where it looked like things had to be slowed down for him. He was integrated into things perfectly, and that's not really too shocking as his timing has always been excellent. But seeing how good he looked here just made me want to see more, and also want to desperately know how he worked off any ring rust. And that was BEFORE he hit a slingshot suplex! Seriously how has he not been cashing in on indy dates?? FTR also looked excellent, really brutal, Cash Wheeler especially. He was great cutting the ring off, threw a fantastic uppercut, really felt the most like prime Arn I've seen in ages. FTR worked quicker than the much quicker JX, and managed to look punishing the entire time. Awesome performance for all three of them, even though the Arn Horseman fingers during the post-match couldn't have come off more forced. 

-Max Caster's pre-match rap actually got me to choke a bit on my coffee when he dropped the line about Lady Gaga's dog walker. Caster's pre-match raps are easily the best thing about his act, but it's a good part of the act. Match goes below. 

-Marq Quen is great at taking high backdrop bumps and beals, and that is a genuine skill. His regular backdrops look great, but his flipping 450 "backdrop" that landed him on his face looked amazing, incredible height and a wicked landing. Everything else he does goes down below. 

-John Silver had a fun performance in the main, a guy who can chain combos together without making it look like the opponent is waiting to get hit, and a compact powerhouse who believably launched Quen around the ring. Silver beal tossing Quen across the ring looked like Bradshaw throwing around Kaientai. 

What Didn't Work

-Mixed tag worked about as well as it possibly could have, but it was quite the mess. A fun mess at times, but a mess nonetheless. The sight of Shaq in the ring was enough to make me enjoy this, loved how terrible his form was on his overhand chop and it still sounded like the hardest chop Cody has ever taken. The Shaq powerbomb looked great, and I thought it was incredibly stupid that Cody was up seconds later and actually body slammed Shaq. Bodyslamming Shaq 4 minutes into his first pro wrestling match is definitely something that HHH would have done had the WWE been able to bring him in (and seriously, how the hell did WWE never make Shaq a big enough offer to appear at Mania!?), but that doesn't make it any less stupid here. Jade Cargill is going to be a big deal if she sticks to it, but at this point she is maybe almost as good as Midnight? Almost everything she did looked rough (although I liked her spinebuster), and Red Velvet was not the seasoned pro who was going to be able to lead her to anything worthwhile. Nobody else in the match did Velvet any favors either, and having multiple people miss a catch on a moonsault to the floor is something AEW has shown to be unparalleled at. The table spot was great, Cody riding Shaq down into the ground, but a lot of this was bad, even with the lowered expectations of having essentially two non-workers in the match. 

-Fenix/PAC squash match stunk, but at least it was over quick. John Skyler waited bent at the waist for a PAC sliding kick that didn't look good, and Fenix missed a legsweep kick by more than maybe any missed kick I've ever seen. Fenix later did a cool rope walk punt on Skyler's partner on the apron, and that missed by at least a foot. Thigh slap was there though. 

-Tully, you're 67 years old. Just wrestle without a shirt, buddy. Nobody cares if you don't have abs, you don't have to dress like a bike courier.  

-Women's match was rough, so many of the spots looked downright bad. Rose had a really nice face first bump off the apron to the floor for a convincing count out tease, and almost everything else in the match looked bad. Rose seems to have no lifting power whatsoever, her slams all looked like Mizunami was doing all of the lifting herself. The superplex was so bad, and if you can't make it look like you're at least attempting to suplex someone, maybe you should not do a superplex. Mizunami didn't look much better, and her guillotine legdrop may be one of the worst in modern wrestling. The bad spots kept coming throughout, peaking when Mizunami had to stay hung over the ropes for 15 seconds waiting for Nyla's kneedrop, like this was a year 2000 indy match. And for as much as the commentary crew were blown away that that kneedrop didn't finish the match, Mizunami sure was back on her feet immediately doing her own big offense. Bad layout, bad execution, bad match. 

-Ten vs. Caster definitely felt like one of those dreadfully dull matches that would happen before a Raw main event, so it was fitting that this went on at 9:35. Ten especially looked bad, looked like a guy who was wrestling with a concussion. He moved slow, threw bad strikes, and laid around a lot, really odd performance. You'd think a guy would be more excited to get on TV. Caster is real hammy, which is fine, but he needs some offense that actually looks good. Everything looks way too light, bad arm strikes, soft stomps, uninspiring arm work, bad at tying any of the action together. Nice brainbuster, which is something. 

-On a night with a lot of bad offense, Marq Quen had the unreservedly worst offense on the entire card. Show me someone with worst stomps or worst strikes, and I'll show you someone who should consider another profession. You wouldn't expect a non-wrestler to have offense as bad as Quen's, and in fact this show had TWO non-wrestlers with better looking offense! Honestly he should just be a manager. He can take a great backdrop bump while managing, and then wouldn't have to do any offense, which he can't do anyway. 

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 2/23/21

What Worked

-Good opening squash. Moxley looked motivated and threw some hard crossfaces and a great back suplex, but he was also no doubt helped by Nemeth's ability to take punishment in cool ways. He really flung himself back hard on that suplex and took the double underhook DDT like a 90s jobber looking to sue the company.

-I liked the highspot beating Pillman Jr. took in his tag match, tough gig to play FIP while Cage and Starks suplex you and scrape their boots on your face. Pillman hit a great baseball slide dropkick, nearly hanging himself on the ropes but it looked wild. Starks had a couple of cool pinfalls where he really laid back with all his weight, and the Garrison hot tag had some fun moments (nice jungle kick, huge no hands plancha where Cage may have saved Garrison's life by standing his ground), but the beating Pillman took was the highlight. Dropkicks to the face, a screwdriver to finish things, rough night. The whole segment was fun, loved Darby's skateboard shot and Starks' bump over the top for it. 

-Hager's finishing lariat looked great, even though he made Brandon Cutler wobble around in place forever, like he was about to take a Fatality. If you're going to make someone do that, at least he made it look like a fatality. 

What Didn't Work

-I still can't get into the Sting return. I guess I'm not the audience for it, and that's fine, but it's funny to me that Sting took a hard powerbomb from Cage last week (not an unprofessional powerbomb, but a powerbomb harder than a 61 year old man who doesn't need the money should be taking), and Sting claimed he wanted REVENGE. And that revenge? His reverse DDT. I know we're technically supposed to view all finishers as equal, but Sting taking out Cage with a reverse DDT after Cage had been doing nothing but big slams, hard clotheslines, and dangerous drops, and now I have to buy that a reverse DDT might put him down? 

-Jake Hager decided to catch Cutler's tope con giro by flopping onto his stomach look a goof. 

-Craig T. Nelson is making that Young Sheldon money, I don't know why he needed to guest on Dynamite just so Jericho could smear some Smuckers on his head. 

-WHO among us thought Hangman Page/Isiah Kassidy should have gone as long as it did? Kassidy is a guy who seems like he's regressed as a worker since joining AEW. He was far more interesting when he was working as a Red trainee who wrestled like Red. Nobody wants to see him work unconvincing arm locks, not one person thought for one second that Page was going to be slowed down by Kassidy's long arm work section (he was not, didn't hesitate one bit when he hit a rolling elbow, though he did sell the arm after), and I'm not sure there was one thing Kassidy did that looked convincing. It's hard to work convincing control segments when you can't even connect on simple stuff like stomach kicks, while also looking like you're unsure how to apply holds to the limb you're supposed to be working over. Then we had to go through a long series of Kassidy kicking out of things that I did not buy him kick out of. The world did not ask for, nor need, dominant heel control Isiah Kassidy. This was enough. HOWEVER, if Kassidy actually stuck to the limb work and got good at it, I would really love a heel Amazing Red who also did Catch Point matwork. I would even take a bad version of that. And with some more work, Kassidy could be bad at this. 

-I could not get into Britt Baker/Nylas Rose. I don't think it was bad, but it felt like they were more going through the motions of having an epic confrontation without doing the actual match that felt like an epic confrontation. Nyla Rose always looks like she is stumbling or falling over while delivering almost every piece of offense, but rarely in a way that puts her opponent in danger. She's a monster, but doesn't do a lot of offense that makes her come off as a monster. I more like Baker's avoidance, and her mocking kicks to Nyla's face, and was more impressed with Nyla's suplex bumps than with any offense she did. Her best was probably the match ending sitout powerbombs, and even those looked like she was in danger of falling over while lifting. Very basic matches that are treated like manic wars always get under my skin. 

-I love a good wrestling style clash, but I don't think that good wrestling style clash will ever involve Lance Archer. I am getting sick of seeing this guy so often on TV. He moves like he has two town quads and can't bend down, and he constantly throws timing off. Fenix is a guy who at his best can fire off precision timing, and Archer just makes a lot of that look bad. Fenix was falling all over the place in painful ways, and you see him doing it to make Archer look good and just think "for this?" Fenix does some of his unhinged things like his always great tope con giro, and another where he fell face first on the entrance ramp from the top rope after Jake Roberts held his ankles too long. But Archer made him look like an idiot several times by mistiming when to take kicks. And who out there wanted to see Archer in a ladder match more than they'd want Fenix in a ladder match? Get this doofus away from the AEW guys I like. 

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 2/3/21

What Worked

-I was most excited for Britt Baker/Thunder Rosa, and I thought it was worked exactly like it should have been. A lot of AEW women's stuff just turns into a series of iffy timed spots with minimal face/heel alignments, and it made this stand out more. Rosa should have dominated the match while Baker was reeling, and that's exactly what happened. Some parts went on a bit too long, some segments looked off (Rosa had a kick combo sequence where none of the kicks hit), but this was a good layout for them. I liked how Baker stumbled around ringside while taking her beating, liked the idea of whipping her hand into the ringpost to possibly affect her Lockjaw attempt later, and thought the Death Valley driver on the ramp looked mean. I wish Rosa would drop some of the iffy combos and stick to things like dragging Britt around in a cravat, and my favorite part of the match was Baker paying back that cravat, yanking Rosa's head into some nasty knees. Or was it Rosa's dropkick in the corner that Britt covered her mouth for when she saw how hot Rosa was coming in. Either way, more of that. 

-Hardy/Page tag was what it should have been. Luther missed a cannonball off the apron and hit an amusing avalanche (squishing Serpentico in the process, while Serpentico was waving his hands going no no no). Hardy was moving really well, thought his strikes in the corner looked great. Page still has the worst pescado, but Serpentico got wrecked by his spinebuster and lariat. 

-That wedding segment was far more entertaining than I expected. A lot of the inside jokes actually landed, and for what it's worth Sabian and Ford looked really nice. 

-Eddie Kingston is obviously a guy who is going to be great in a lumberjack match. They weirdly didn't have enough lumberjacks (Dynamite is swarming with wrestlers, how do they only have 10 people out there?) but Kingston makes use of the stip and kept throwing Archer out to his boys, and then caused a big ruckus one of the few times he was thrown out. The way Kingston got rolled back into the ring by Billy Gunn, then just scrambled back out to punch someone looked like King doing a Ronnie Dobbs tribute. Archer was pretty clunky setting up his offense here, but all of King's stuff looked killer. He was throwing these wicked knuckle punches and hard kidney shots, his Saito suplex looked monstrous, and I dug the backfist while Archer was preoccupied with Bunny. Archer didn't bring a ton to this, though I liked when he ran himself into the ringpost like a goof. 

What Didn't Work

-Battle royal was pretty uninspiring, hate the new battle royal style of 20 guys hugging the ropes so someone can run spots in the middle. Luchasaurus stood in place slapping parts of his body while guys ran into his limbs, then couldn't lift Stu Grayson on a chokeslam elimination. John Silver really flew on his elimination, and Jericho's Judas Effect elimination on Darius Martin was timed really well and Martin really flew. But most of this was guys not really knowing how to fill time before most decided to leap over the ropes within one 2 minute stretch. 

-I'm still not quite sure how this Sting stuff is supposed to make me feel. I don't know if I understand the payoff here. There are several 60 year old luchadors I like who wear face paint, but they all bleed in dirty rings. There's a high bar for 60 year old wrestlers right now. 

-Main event was a real mixed bag, filled with some big spots and tons of big misses. All of the throws looked really great, especially that German suplex Pac gave to Omega after running him into the ropes. And a lot of the timing on big spots was great, but the execution on strikes was poor throughout the entire match. Fenix incorporates speed and cool spots into matches better than most, but every single kick he threw came up inches short. Omega's kicks had the same kind of curse, just no kind of contact, and that's been Moxley's game for a few years now. Gallows and Anderson not only can't catch dives, and they're even worse at getting into position for dives. At least KENTA showed up and missed a G2S by a foot. Fenix's tope con giro was the highlight of the match, but this was a match that had a lot of good highspots. It was all of the stuff tying the spots together that looked awful. Still, would probably make a cool 2 minute highlight video. 

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 1/27/21

What Worked

Eddie Kingston vs. Lance Archer - GREAT

ER: Opening a show with Eddie Kingston is always going to give you a good shot at landing up top, and the bonus here was getting one of the best Lance Archer singles matches. Favorite Archer Match is basically like saying Favorite Car Insurance Payment, but this was more Archer working Kingston's match before blowing Kingston up, and that's going to land well with me. Kingston makes Archer's offense look better than a lot of his offense against juniors. He has modern big man syndrome, meaning he too often tries to work down to his opponents when they're juniors, and seeing his offense take down a bigger guy like Kingston is more effective. Kingston takes offense really well; not athletically, but in terms of making offense seem effective. He lands in ways that you can feel. I loved him picking Archer apart with punches. He threw a straight punch right into Archer's kidney, followed that up with a couple body shots on the other side, kicked at the back of Archer's knee, bit and clawed at Archer's face, King shit. JR on commentary nicely pointed out that "Kingston knows all the right spots to hit someone" and they talk about him being a street fighter from childhood. 

Kingston takes an insane bump to the floor, looking like they were trying to recreate the Vic Grimes XPW bump from half the distance. King lands hip first on the apron, gets upended to the floor, could have easily landed on his head. Nuts. And King continues to get beaten around the ring (there's a great moment where Kingston gets run face first into a camera, which feels like the kind of shot that winds up in TV show intros), takes a bunch of hard slams, Archer hits a cool standing splash out of the corner, all building up to what looks like a Kingston dying on his sword performance. The finish could have been more interesting (Archer gets distracted by Butcher and Blade attacking Jake, Kingston hits the backfist) and would have played better if Kingston just won with a loaded backfist. You want to protect Archer, have him decimate King but then eat a roll of quarters to the jaw, don't make him stare away at his opponent for a long time and then lose. 

PAS: Great Kingston performance, which he really could have had against anyone. Eddie isn't really a stunt bumper, so that chokeslam hip first on the ring apron was really shocking. He also really laid out for some of Archer's slams, and did a tremendous job selling a back injury. Archer was pretty shitty in this though, constantly making "I'm Evil" faces in the camera, what a cornball. He stopped after every move to do a bug eyed glare, and mouth things like "you are in my playground" "death has come to take his reward". Just the worst home movie horror film shit. There are so many 6'6 guys who have washed out of WWE in the last decade, can't they dig up Mike Knox and give him Jake Roberts? Vladamir Koslov? Hell even Snitsky would be better then this. Archer also really has trouble moving, he executes his moves OK, but he can't really run the ropes or even walk well. Kingston is incredible and this is a virtuosos one man show, I just want a better dance partner. 

-Jericho ending his match with a great Lionsault and smug look to the camera is an awesome way to end a match a week after bouncing his head off the mat on a Lionsault. It's petty, but it was the right move. I liked the tag, liked that MJF is getting better at being a stooge heel, better at stooge heel bumping. Pillman and Garrison had good fire even though a bunch of their offense didn't look great (Pillman has weirdly been throwing a lot of his dropkicks over the shoulder just past his opponent, often enough that it has to be intentional), but I liked it. 

-Segment went way too long, but I liked Arn's promo, understanding that Cody's head wasn't all in the ring, focusing on the importance of his baby. It will probably end up feeling like a dumb thing to construct an angle around, don't think most within the feud have the acting chops to pull off that kind of family drama, but Arn is one of them. Arn's promo up here, segment as a whole down there. 

-Baker/Shanna is another match that felt too long, but it's the best I've seen Shanna look. She was on Dynamite in a couple longish matches a year ago and looked completely out of place. She whipped herself over on suplexes really well, missed a gnarly low dropkick that landed her hard on the bottom rope, and really I liked how she took all of Baker's offense. I even liked her jumping stunner! Baker had an awesome crossface chickenwing that looked like she was trying to misalign Shanna's jaw, and I think that viciousness throughout the match was more important than showing the ways Shanna has improved on Dark. Baker has a big match with Thunder Rosa coming up. She shouldn't be taking close 2 counts against Shanna. 

-Truthfully, I didn't pay a ton of attention to the main event. But John Silver really stood out above all the rest, a guy who has really been justifying his increased TV time and has been working like he's having the time of his life. That kind of thing is infectious. 

What Didn't Work

-I hate how Adam Page works his showcase "squash" matches. I mean it's kind of cool that a guy who washed out of WWF developmental could get a chance to show off his 2013 WWF offense for an extended TV look, but it's also kind of weird. Another thing I don't understand is him keeping his rope flip clothesline as his finisher. In this match alone he hit two clotheslines BETTER than his finisher, including one where he just brick walls Ryan Nemeth. If Page dropped the rest of his frilly shit, he's not far from being a guy I'm interested in seeing. 

-Feels rude to put Harwood/Jungle Boy down here but this went twice as long as it should have. I think things would have been just as effective as a normal match, and I thought the extended finishing run did them no favors. Jungle Boy worked a long fast home stretch segment without really missing a beat, but my problem with it was that it felt like a guy focusing on not missing a beat. He didn't look like a guy who had taken a pretty body tenderizing beating from Harwood, he looked like a guy keeping his steps straight. I really really liked everything up past Harwood's awesome slingshot sitout powerbomb, but once things went into overdrive I was ready for it to end at any point for several minutes. JB showed me some neat things in the first half, like I noticed how he was really sliding for Harwood's ankles on a dropdown, attention to basics showing how he's improving. Harwood ran into him hard a few times, and this felt like a really good Bret/Waltman tribute match. But then things shifted pace and it just felt like the exact same kind of match we get a couple times a week on AEW. The thousand yard stare on Jungle Boy's face, not thinking a lick of the beating he took, and practically mouthing the beats as he thinks about how to properly roll out of the kickout to the next spot, is the stuff I hate. 

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 12/16/20

What Worked

-My WCW muscle memory kicked in when the snow started falling after Cody's win, and I actually said "Glacier" aloud, to myself. 

-I actually really liked The Acclaim's rap AND Kazarian's rap before their match. Honestly, the raps probably made me enjoy the match more than I should have. I don't think the match was very good, but the wrestling on this show has been dreadful so...I thought Christopher Daniels's jabs looked really good?

-Diamante decided to have her whole butt hanging out of her trunks so that seems like it works? 

-Omega/Janela was about as dumb as it gets, nothing but stunt spots segueing into stunt spots with no flow to them. BUT the stunt spots look good so fuck it, need to populate the top side of this write up a bit. Janela's tope looked good and Omega plastered himself into the guardrail a couple times, Janela took a bulldog face first on a chair, got hilariously into place for an Omega top con hilo, etc. Every spot was a restart, but the landings looked sick enough and Don Callis on house mic commentary was great. This is the best Omega's V Trigger knees have looked in lord knows when, really looked like he was going to cave in Janela's face with them. After seeing those 1/2 speed knees he through past Moxley's head last week I was thinking Omega had lost his speed, but I really loved the aggression he used to wreck Janela. 

What Didn't Work

-Opening trios was pretty disjointed and didn't have any kind of flow to it. It slowed down at weird times and never felt like it had any kind of consistent (or good) pace to it. NOAH knew how to throw six random guys into a trios and have a nice high floor, but this had very little going for it. It's great that Alex Reynolds is confirmed Alive after definitely not being knocked out cold, and Hangman had a couple nice lariats (including one that Kassidy bumped onto the side of his head). But a lot of this had bumps that felt a little too disconnected from the offense they were supposed to be taking, and it never came together in a meaningful way. 

-I think there is a potentially good Cody/Angelico match, but this was not that match. I'm not into match layouts where one guy does his stuff, and then the other guy decides to stop taking offense and start doing all of his own offense. I liked the Angelico wrist control do-si-do arm drags but didn't love much else. Neither was great at taking the other's offense, and that's going to hurt a match that's nothing but guys taking turns on offense. Angelico is good at taking headstand plants on cutters or DDTs, but the way he just stands there waiting to take something never looks good. Cody had kind of a similar thing where he would just stand there waiting for Angelico to run into his offense, and it all sucked brother. 

-Lance Archer interrupting Eddie Kingston's Airing of Grievances like 30 seconds in while wearing the shittiest ripped and distressed jeans I have ever seen is a big damn heel move

-I like when Butcher wears his butcher's apron, but why is Blade out there in one? Wearing his dirty jeans, t shirt, and apron he just looks like a Whole Foods burrito bar employee at the end of his shift. 

-12 man had the same problems the other matches have had so far, real weird energy and a lot of people on a different page. Jericho/Pillman stuff was decent, and I loved Jericho's straight right hands more than anything else in the match (other than Sammy Guevara's awesome folded over his knees sell of a Trent kick), and that's because most of the match didn't work. When you have a match like this and a bunch of guys who have never been in a match with 11 other people, you're going to have a bunch of people getting in each other's way. There were several guys who didn't look ready for prime time (not sure I've ever seen a sloppier slingshot legdrop than whatever it was Griff Garrison did), but I did laugh a bunch when Jake Hager - on the apron for most of the match - finally got in the ring. Not only did he trip over the ropes, but then he hit one of the ugliest, sloppy "F10" finishers I've seen, just a lazy spin that basically resulted in Garrison being dropped in a weak body slam. That's what gets a pin? Total mess. 

-You give me Ivelisse in a tag match and I'm going to want to see that trademark unprofessional Ivelisse work. But this was mostly just Diamante and Swole going through some rehearsed sequences, some of which looked good, some of which looked like a couple people standing around counting out their steps. It's hard to get any kind of heat or maintain much interest when it feels like the in ring is just going through the motions. This whole damn show has felt like it's going through the motions. 

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 11/25/20

What Worked

-I liked most of Hangman vs. Silver, good way to start off the show. Silver is a fun guy to feature, a compact power pack who was really good at cutting off Page. One of my least favorite things in Page matches is how unnecessarily complicated some of his offense is, and how it is never reversed. I liked how Silver cut off a lot of signature offense, like hitting a rana to counter the rope flip lariat. It made Page approach things differently and made for a more satisfying story. Silver has a low center of gravity and can use it in cool ways, like dropping low to the ground to do a quick go behind and snap German suplex. I wish Page had treated Silver's kicks a little more seriously, as it felt like we were building to something really cool when Silver was kicking away at Page, not letting him up, dodging right when he needed to, landing a big hooking kick to the jaw, but Page kinda just stood up and beat him anyway. Also, Silver doesn't need to do the half gainer flip bump every time he takes a clothesline. He did it three times here and you really don't need to be doing the same signature bump three times in three minutes. However, he also planted Page with a brainbuster and took a nice high backdrop bump, and there was more than enough here to make it work. 

-When Lee Johnson makes it onto Dynamite, you know you're getting a nice squad match, because he always takes the best beatings in squash matches. I need to seek out some of his Dark matches to see how he does with actual offense, because I like the way he bumps for lariats and other big offense. He doesn't take intentionally athletic feather soft bumps, his bumps look like he is being hurt. He made that lariat on the floor look brutal, and I don't think Will Hobbs has a very brutal lariat. 

-I do like that AEW is the kind of fed that makes mention about how cool it is that Jericho and Chris Daniels are meeting for the very first time. That's always cool to me when two guys who have been in wrestling for so long finally cross paths in the ring, like Buddy Rose facing Kerry von Erich in WWF. And let me tell you, if this was the year 1999 or 2000, I could not tell you just how over the moon excited I would be to see a Jericho/Daniels match. But this 2020 version is probably about as good as could reasonably expected. Jake Hager was my favorite guy here, and Hager might be THEE guy that I am absolutely never excited to see on my TV screen who can actually deliver something cool. He always gets an "oh sheesh this guy?" reaction from me, but I can't deny how much I enjoy Hager's meathead mouth breathing style. The best part of this was when Hager was driving his knee right into Danielses' back while throwing fists right into the ribs. It looked nasty as hell. 

-The gear AND choreography of the Omega Sweepers has improved every week. It's really satisfying to watch performers get better at their craft in real time. Moxley beatdown was strong. I want Moxley to wreck this guy. 

-Shida/Anna Jay was better than I expected, mainly because Jay doesn't even have 20 career matches work. Obviously there are going to be some glitches, so I'm more impressed with the things she can pull off naturally. She is really strong at making up the difference when selling strikes, like when Shida threw a dropkick that landed a little low and Jay sold her jaw convincingly. She goes to the jaw/mouth sell a bit much, did it right before that dropkick when missing a charge into the buckles, but it's a strong looking sell so hats off. I liked a lot of the ways she would counter Shida offense, like blocking the running apron knee with a downward strike, and especially her shifting weight at the last minute to land on Shida after a vertical suplex. I thought it was just a bad looking suplex at first, but I love a reversal that actually makes it look like the move wasn't pulled off quite right. Reversals in 2020 wrestling are so clean that they usually don't look like they're reversing anything. This looked like Shida tried to do a suplex and wasn't expecting Jay's weight shift. The nearfall kickout by Shida was perfectly timed, actually got me to buy into Jay sneaking away with the upset. 

-Fenix running into Blade's awesome powerslam, that works.

What Didn't Work

-Taz dropping silly shooty comments like "creative has nothing for me" or "wish me luck in my future endeavors" does nothing for me. Taz does not come off threatening to me at this point, and there are too many guys on the roster who could have locked in a better looking submission. Cody's burn about Taz's son (Hook!) training with Cody and not Taz was strong. 

-I feel bad for all the people who have strongly backed Rusev and have been gifted Miro. 

-I love Jack Evans and would rather see him on Dynamite than any number of other less interesting flippers that have been featured. But it's also really weird to give Top Flight a big Dynamite match last week ago, a match that got them buzz and made a big impression, to then bring Evans and Angelico back to Dynamite just to beat Top Flight. I don't think the match worked as a match, as all of these AEW flyer vs. flyer matches feel so same-y. I don't think Top Flight does much of anything that comes off natural, can't adjust on the fly; They can either do long semi-complicated sequences that end with something dumb like kicking Angelico in the arm, or they do weird things like adjust their several feet while rope running. It all comes off like guys just running through some spots that don't always feel like they belong to the same match. I did like the way Angelico went after Daunte's leg, thought his roll throughs to trap Daunte in leg locks and holds looked super cool and felt like old IWRG bleeding into AEW. Also, it is supremely annoying to give these guys names like Darius and Daunte, because there is no way I'm going to remember which one is fucking Daunte and which is Darius. Air Wolf I can remember, but Darius Martin? 

-I didn't think Fenix and PAC looked good as a team. They're two guys who, from their styles, seem like they would complement each other nicely, but their set ups felt long and things missed the mark. But I thought Butcher and the Blade looked good as heel opposition, thought Butcher looked great as a fist swinging bully, thought Blade worked some nice sequences with Fenix and especially loved Fenix aborting a flying attack off the top, jumping past Blade, and running hard into a great snap powerslam. But the match overall felt scattered and like it would have been a real mess without Butcher and Blade. 

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AEW Full Gear Live Blog

 PAS: Wife and kids are visiting the in-laws today, so I figure I would check this out.  I am incredibly excited about Eddie Kingston vs. Jon Moxley, Kingston is an all-time favorite of mine and I am so excited to see what he can do with the biggest opportunity of his life. I also think Darby vs. Cody should be good as usual, and there are some other matches which might be good too.

Allysin Kay vs. Sereena Deeb

PAS: Not sure the point of having two different women's titles that aren't particularly booked well and that folks don't really care about. This was a solidly executed match that never did anything to stand out past solid. I liked the stuff in the ropes with the neckbreaker by Kay and later the dragon screw in the ropes by Deeb. This never broke past OK, although that is a pretty good rating for the AEW women's division.

Hangman Adam Page vs. Kenny Omega

PAS: This was OK I guess, this isn't really the type of wrestling I like, and the parts where they just exchanged, and then exchanged finisher, I was completely out. Also Page has a shockingly bad looking shoulder block from a guy I assume was trained by Beau James. I did like the finish with Page fighting the One Winged Angel before falling, and some of the chops and knees looked really good. Page hit a really nice regular clothesline and should probably ditch the goofy flip and just throw that. This is the kind of thing that Meltzer will give 5 3/4 stars too, and I thought was closer to watchable.  

John Silver vs. Orange Cassidy

PAS: I dug this a bunch. I am someone who found Cassidy's indy stuff relatively insufferable, but he tweaked it a bit in AEW and it is more of a way to frustrate and taunt his opponent then something that breaks the rules of wrestling. Silver was great as a steaming hothead, and I thought the ripping of the pockets was fun frustrated response spot. I haven't seen much of Silver before, but I dug all of his short man power spots, the one armed gorilla hold was really cool as was his spinning backbreaker, and his wild strike combos were stiff and cool Cassidy does have great body control and his escapes and counters looked great, just a compact exciting little match. A real surprise. 

Cody Rhodes vs. Darby Allin

PAS: I thought this was well on it's way to being a classic until a bit of a flat ending. Cody has had some undeniably great matches in his AEW time, but he has always felt like the canvas other artists were painting on, here he added some color and texture of his own. Here he actually had some killer offense and brought plenty of great offense of his own. All of the arm work of Rhodes was super nasty, the hammerlock throw to the stage looked like one of those crazy bumps Allin would take against Ethan Page. I also loved him shifting his weight on the Darby armdrag and dropping him on the bad arm. The top rope Cross Rhodes was brutal, as was the top rope counter to the sleeper. It was building to an amazing finish, but the series of rollups just didn't look great and the finish fell flat.  Darby has so much great looking roll up offense, having him win on some lame reversal was weak. Still overall this was killer and this PPV is super delivering with the main event still to come. 

Nyla Rose vs. Hikaru Shida

PAS: This PPV is delivering even on the things I wasn't looking forward too. The only other Shida match I have liked was against Aja Kong, so she must be best against big ladies she can hit really hard. I liked all the knee work by Rose, and she really knows how to use her size to make it hurt. Shida kept it pretty simple and just smashed Rose over and over again with nasty knee strikes until Rose was done, no problem with that finish at all. 

Young Bucks vs. FTR

PAS: I liked big portions of this, but think it eventually bloated past the point of great match. I really enjoyed the insane bumps Cash Wheeler was taking, just flying to floor like a luchadore losing his mask. I also thought the stuff with Harwood's busted hand was cool, not sure if that was an improv, but they did interesting things with it. The Face in Peril section was great, lots of interesting cut offs and a fun escape to a hot tag. The finish run just went on and on though, running through too many tribute spots and too many near falls, there was stuff I liked and would have liked as finishes, but they just ran too many finishes. At 20 minutes this would have been great, at damn near 30 it just was too much. 

Final Deletion

PAS: Not sure what the hell that was. Why it was so incredibly long, and I am not sure why they ended a comedy match with a horrifically violent murder. The last couple of minutes were some sick stuff, not sure how much of that was camera tricks, but it sure looked horrid. The bump from the apron was nasty, that chair shot to the forehead was gross as was the last chair shot on the concrete. Then they go back to weird call backs to other Hardy cinematic matches. I am not sure it was bad, but I am not sure it was good either.

Chris Jericho vs. MJF

PAS: This was pretty good stuff too, I thought the Jericho miss of the Judas Effect into the post was nasty stuff, and MJF's arm work was pretty good, although hurt by the Cody and Darby match being worked the same way. MJF still needs to work on the little stuff, although the big stuff normally looks OK. Goofy finish, although appropriate for what they are trying to do. Everything on this PPV hasn't hit it out of the park, but everything has at least been good stuff and you can argue that everything has over delivered. Very excited for this main event!

35. Eddie Kingston vs. Jon Moxley - GREAT

PAS: My expectations for this were sky high, Kingston has had so many stone cold classics, two matches on our All Time MOTY list, and this was him shooting his biggest shot ever on a PPV main event. This is a match I am going to want to watch again, but on first impression it didn't reach the heights of his best stuff. I thought the first brawling exchange looked great, the Frye vs. Takayama exchange almost always looks bad, but they were winging punches at each other with real force and violence. The tough guy chop exchange is also something I don't normally love, but worked for what they were trying to do here. I thought when this delved into death match stuff is where it fell a bit short. The barbed wire baseball bat is pretty tired at this point. I did like how Eddie sold the internal damage with the bloody mouth, and the craziness of wrapping his fist in barbed wire for the backfist was pretty great. Didn't think we needed either the thumbtacks or the alcohol, and a lot of the match was built around those as the big spots. The Eddie kicks to the nuts were great, as were all of his little quick jab slaps and crossfaces. I think we needed one more big Eddie near fall, and while the bulldog choke with the wire is a sick finish, I wanted it milked a bit more. The big dramatics in WWE matches are tiresome shit, but Eddie Kingston can do big dramatics better then almost anyone ever, and I needed this to be a bit more high key. I still thought this was a heck of a PPV main event, and one of the better matches of the year, but it won't end up in a Kingston top 5 or maybe even a Kingston top 10, and I wanted this to be his masterpiece. 

JR: It’s pretty rare that I feel way off base after a match compared to our little bubble, but I seem way higher on this than everyone else. I suppose I’ll try and articulate why? I think after a show on which everything felt bloated and over booked, this moved a clip that I was comfortable with. Eddie Kingston has strengths that have been touched upon here many, many times, but one I think that stands out in this performance is his ability to mine emotion and narrative without the WWE style negative space that every big main event has come to rely upon. I didn’t want an I quit match with two guys laying around after big moves and then grimacing and then doing something again. I wanted what I got here; a match which someone trying their hardest, pulling out every stop, and then when they ran out of ideas, coming to terms with their own limitations. Moxley was good here as well, working with enough pace to not indulge in some of his bad habits and very clearly wanting to give the brunt of the match to Kingston. It really felt as though this match played to both of their strengths in a way that doesn’t often happen anymore. We see workrate epics up and down the card, especially in AEW. I trusted Eddie to give me something that felt like a Kingston title challenge rather than an AEW main event and he delivered. While I’d listen to an argument that he has had a bunch of better stuff this year, I thought this stood out as a worthwhile entry, at least as an exercise as a single person building an internal narrative. 

ER: I am definitely the low voter on this one. This was probably the best promo build to a match we've had in who knows how long, with Kingston giving the kind of promos that come across the timelines of people who aren't on wrestling Twitter. Everyone I know who watches wrestling regularly was excited for this match. Universally anticipated. And it earned that anticipation. It just didn't deliver for me to the level I thought it could. They had ideas, and I think they went for maybe more of those ideas than they needed to. I think that the build felt so real, and the payoff felt so fake. I didn't like the use of weapons, and didn't think the match needed them. I don't love baseball bat shots in wrestling, especially when they're coming around the halfway point of the match. Maybe I associate them too much with Russo, but it's a bad connection either way. But I didn't buy into the barbed wire usage, even though both men's acting throughout was good. If you're going to have several spots where wire is scraped on someone's head or face or neck, somebody needs to blade if that wire is from Party City. Barbed wire wrapped fist is cool, but someone has to bleed because of barbed wire wrapped fist. The alcohol poured onto thumbtack holes is a cool bit that they did well, but I also don't think the payoff was good enough to necessitate tacks even being in the match. 

I don't think they needed that, and I think it would have better for the real match build for them to have more of a straight brawl. I think their work with chairs was good, and if they just did 2-3 extra things with a chair they wouldn't have needed any of the stuff with the bat, wire, or tacks. Fill in the time with more brawling. Kingston was also weirdly quiet throughout. He's used his mouth to legendary heights during this feud, the kind of promos that would have been memorable coming from a strong promo era, so it just felt really weird to me when he didn't utter a peep in this match. Kingston is one of the more amusing wrestlers of my life at working a couple of good verbal reactions into a match. A regretful yell after throwing a punch with a hurt hand, and angry insult after taking one leg kick too many, but here he was silent. It made things feel less dramatic to me, and I didn't feel as connected to it as a result. I thought the early parts of the match were great, and felt like they were building to something as strong as expected. Both of them were good at throwing chairs at each other, and Kingston brings such wrestling value to walking brawls. He's good at selling honestly and filling time, doing things like blocking a thrown chair with his hands, but not pretending to sell his head. Kingston shakes and rubs out his wrist after getting his hands up, and ol' JR doesn't pick up on it and first says it hit his head and then covers and says it was blocked mostly. Excalibur saves it and actually puts over Kingston's more nuanced selling by saying you could tell it affected his hand and wrist. 

That kind of attention to detail will keep the floor of a match high. So this was not a bad match, not at all. This was a match worked with a high floor, by two guys who can and have done well with matches like these. Their acting and selling was strong without, even if it did feel like it needed more passion. I grade Kingston matches tougher than anyone else's matches these days, because he's wrestling at a higher level than anyone else right now, I think he's been the best wrestler in the world for at least the past two years, and he's been a great wrestler forever 15 years now. He has consistently impressed me as much as any wrestler the past few years especially, so he's just going to be on a tougher curve. There are plenty of wrestlers who could have likely had this same match, and I would have come away impressed. This one just didn't move me like the best upper Kingston matches do. 

2020 MOTY MASTER LIST

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE EDDIE KINGSTON

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