AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 8/12/20

What Worked

-Opening tag was fine, although it drifted too far it overly cute move combos, but I think Evil Uno's performance was strong and he kept this thing together. Dark Order beat the bandanas off of Young Bucks, and some of their double teams were nice and sly. The best was Uno doing a blind tag without Matt Jackson noticing, and when Matt went to leapfrog over Stu Grayson, Uno caught him in midair from behind and dumped him with a German. That spot could have come off real manufactured but all parts of it looked smooth. Nick took a nice bump through the ropes to the floor, Matt did a big flip dive off the stage (past literally every member of DO, oh well), Grayson walked over Uno's head to hit a rana, and the winning pin by the Bucks was handled really well, with Grayson believably diving in just a split second too late with the save. Match could have used less cuteness and more direct tag formula, but Uno is really good, good enough to hold something like this together.

-Parts of the in ring segment with FTR, Young Bucks, Arn, Tully, and the Rock n Rolls felt like one of those HHH segments where he would have Flair out to tearfully yell about how HHH doesn't everything Flair did, but better. But it was also a chance to hear Arn talk, Tully talk, get a glimpse at Ricky's awesome outfit (he looked like an old Navajo woman wearing ice blue Converse and a sequined jacket), and see Ricky take a freaking stuff piledriver. That stuff is a win.

-Every person they have used to bump around locker rooms for Lance Archer has been golden. This is the best use of Archer, just throwing guys into walls and ceilings while Jake the Snake talks to the camera.

-Jericho/Cassidy worked, but I don't think it ever came close to capturing the lightning of their first match. The expectations were higher for this one obviously, as this one has come with 5 weeks of build, a debate, promos, a destroyed jacket, and a big 10 man tag. This match was good, but that match was unexpected and kept building into one of Dynamite's strongest main events. This one had a stipulation attached and should have felt bigger than it was. Their first match felt like a big stip match, and even though this stip was kind of silly it would have worked great had they treated it like a big deal. I liked the build of their first match, the way it started with a little comedy and kept ramping up. This maintained a similar pace throughout, and that just meant that it felt like three other matches on this same episode. Darby doing a hands in pockets Coffin Drop looked good, but it feels like we already have Darby doing the same kind of wild trust fall, there's some value in letting guys have their thing. I liked Cassidy's diving forearms and how Jericho caught him in the lion tamer off a top rope rana. But other stuff landed soft or clunky (I wish Jericho would just drop the lionsault). The distraction brawl on stage didn't look great, and Hager's big powerslam did look great even though I was disappointed with where it lead. Overall I enjoyed the match, but it just made me like their first singles more.


What Didn't Work

-I think MJF has really improved a lot in ring over the past year, and he has a lot of poise on the mic. But the material isn't already there, no matter how confidently it's delivered. It's the kind of thing that works a lot better without a weekly segment, but I have a feeling we will continue getting weekly segments, at least until the PPV in a month.

-When the Scorpio Sky/Cody Rhodes match was brought up early in the night, Jim Ross stated "Scorpio Sky and Cody could have the match of the year", which, look....it's good to have an optimistic outlook in life. Virgil or Max Moon could have won the Royal Rumble, and Scorpio Sky and Cody could have the match of the year. Blue Demon Jr. was in the best match of 2019, a thought that would have sounded completely absurd even just 5 years ago. And this was not a bad match, but at the end of the night it won't even be match of the night, let alone a match that anyone will remember at the end of the year. It was better than the Warhorse match, never for a second approached being as good as the Kingston match. Scorpio Sky's offense is too floaty to ever come off very threatening. Cody was good at making his cutter variations not only look good, but he was good at occupying himself to account for the lag in delivery. Scorpio Sky is one of those guys who always looks like he's taking a bigger bump than the person taking his move, and I typically can't stand those guys. You need to be an expert crash and burn artist like Darby to pull something like that off. Scorpio Sky hitting a big hangtime flatliner just looks like a guy taking a big uranage. It also feels weird to let Sky kick out of a Cross Rhodes. Not every dude in the fed needs to be a split second away from the title.

-Nearly every time I'm done watching an Omega/Page tag, my initial thought is always "well that was too long". I'm pretty sure every single one of them goes to 15 minutes, which isn't a lot, but it almost *always* feels too long. It's not always Omega's fault, but he's the one in there choosing to make these matches feel long. Luchasaurus is the A1 reason this thing felt too long. Every sequence he was apart of looked terrible. This guy has the worst hot tags in AEW, all ugly kick combos and people rushing to get into position for bad looking offense. His kick combos are so trash. There were fun moments, like Jungle Boy eating a snap dragon on the floor, or getting powerbombed from the ring onto Luchasaurus. But overall this wasn't good.

-Hikaru Shida isn't good. She never gets her kicks up to where they are supposed to land, she requires opponents to do all the positioning work while hanging them out to dry, and it's not getting better. She has charisma, she is pretty, but her in ring is lousy. I have seen Heather Monroe live before and thought she had great live charisma, but she really wasn't here to show any of that. She sold well for Shida, and they kept it quick.

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Pro Wrestling Revolution Road Report 3/9/19

ER: Jun Akiyama has been wrestling for 27 years, and he decided to work his first ever match in the United States on a Saturday night in San Francisco high school for a lucha fed that doesn't have any actual lucha on it. Why not? We hit up Papito on the way down, me, Tim Livingston, and our friends Sean and Jason. A good crew for a wrestling show. Papito is this great Mexican place owned by a French guy who makes fantastic food. I foolishly had a late lunch, so just sat there sipping sangria and munching chips while Tim got shrimp tacos, Sean got a pork/duck meat combo, and Jason got a great big burrito. I was jealous, but it was my choice and being gluttonous at 38 isn't as fun as it was at 21. That chorizo hamburguesa with queso fresco, avocado, and caramelized onions was staring me in the face on the menu, tempting me with greasy memories. But eating that close together would have had me feeling like total trash through a 3 hour show, so I sad eyed my way through it. We got to the show a little late, and then there was a very long line for being 20 minutes past listed door time. Our saint from above, our friend Brian was inside having come from a different direction, SAVING four other seats. This show was genuinely PACKED and that move probably got him a couple aggressive stares. It was loud as hell throughout a large portion of the night, real cacophonous gym with a full crowd, lots of air horns.

We got there late from dinner and the long line in, so we missed a 6 man scramble match. Our friend Brian - who had saved FOUR seats through a 20 minute late start time AND a full match - when asked about his opinion of the scramble match, wrinkled his nose and narrowed his eyes, and tilted his head a little. A wordless, unimpressed dismissal of six men's nights' work.

Papa Esco/El Dinamita vs. Viento/Rey Leon

ER: This was a perfectly fine tag. One of the tecnicos comes out to Sweet Child of Mine which is one of those cheesy things that means your brain is wired to become a professional independent pro wrestler. Papa Esco is a fun fat guy with a singlet that even says Fat Boy. He has a good fat guy build, nice and sturdy, bald head and big beard. He's not mega fat, but he looks like someone left Monsta Mack in the dryer a little too long. Viento appeared to be the better of the tecnicos as far as fluidity, but he was also in there more with Esco, who is the much better base. Dinamita was really clumsy during some sequences, especially poor at taking offense (which is not a good sign from a rudo), but Esco is really good at taking armdrags, has that great chubby base pendulum style bumping down. This was fine. Esco is one of the PWR homegrowns that I like, so was at minimum hoping for a decent showcase for him, and got it.

Puma Negro vs. Sonico vs. Arkedy Federov vs. Matt Fury

ER: Matt Fury was originally supposed to be Jungle Boy, but due to the week's circumstances Jungle Boy was obviously not here. I didn't catch the name of his replacement, but he was a black flier who my friend Sean kept referring to as "athletic" and wasn't sure why Jason and I kept giving him a hard time about it. He didn't repeatedly refer to Federov as "hard working" so the likely scenario is that Sean doesn't know sports code. Fury got good height on some things and hit a pretty spectacular springboard shooting star press into the entranceway onto everyone, but felt like he put more thought into ways to do high leapfrogs instead of transitions. My favorites in the match were Puma Negro and Sonico. Federov was okayish, but had some really clunky set up on indy offense. There was a moment where he did some awful 9 step set-up kind of move, grabbing an arm, dipping opponent back into a backbreaker, pulling them to feet before locking into a pumphandle, you know one of those moves that needs someone to be perfectly still while you do your 9 point pre-check before dropping them on their face. But Sonico was a real pleasant surprise, a guy I'd love to see again around here. He got real high height leaping off the ropes for ranas and had a really great fast dive. Puma Negro was an Arkangel type rudo, had a nice stiff arm southpaw lariat just like Arkangel's, good base for Sonico's ranas, had a cool sunset flip variation. Federov ends the match with an awful waffle that looked super dangerous. Overall this is what you'd like from a 10 minute 4 way.

Nicole Savoy vs. Heather Monroe

ER: A 13 minute match that probably would have been much better off settling in around 9. Monroe showed a ton of charisma and personality during her ring entrance, really looked like someone who owned the ring and would be a great heel. Once the match started that completely vanished. The way she was stalking the apron and dismissing the crowd during her entrance felt like the kind of confidence that would immediately translate to the match, but the bell rung and she was completely silent. The middle of the match was a long Monroe control segment that was easily the most quiet the crowd got all night, and her stuff didn't look great. Savoy's moments where much better, nice high kick, even better German, tough fisherman buster, big tope (that Monroe caught nicely) but Monroe took way too much of this. It's only a matter of time before Savoy is in NXT, and she's super easy to root for, but the structure of this was all off.

ER: We had an ongoing bet over how long the intermission would go. I had 33 minutes, I laughed at Tim's guess of 25 minutes. To my shock they ended up coming back right at the 25 minute mark. I HATE intermissions, while begrudgingly understanding their purpose, and PWR's intermissions are filled with incredibly loud music blared into a cramped gymnasium. If I sound old, I genuinely don't care. So I leave to stretch my legs and in the hallway I run into Roy Lucier. Roy has been the true MVP of the online wrestling community these past few years, as he's been uploading a wealth of rare and unique wrestling footage in easily searchable categories, at an incredibly fast pace. Old tape traders seem like they always get along when meeting, and he and I got to chat for a good 20 minutes. He told me about a few things he's recently received that are VERY exciting. We even talked about saving it for Christmas because some of it is a gift that has been seen by very few of us. Talking about wrestling with people is fun, real glad we bumped into each other, been a long time coming. You'll be seeing plenty of Roy's uploads written about by us over the next several (!) years.

Tajiri vs. Super Crazy

ER: This feud was pretty important to late teens me, really was some of my absolute favorite stuff at that time and really worked as one of my gateways to wanting to see more and more wrestling from Japan and Mexico. It was cool seeing them run it back now that both are in the back end of their 40s, and this felt like a fun take on the familiar Tajiri/Crazy matches only done by guys in the back end of their 40s. The speed wasn't going to be there, but the ability to work a crowd was there and they knew what they could get by with. Tajiri was getting good reactions just stalking the ring, and he amusing worked the match like a Repo Man match. Tajiri kept going for headlocks and it was pretty great, due to their expert veteran timing. It really could have killed a crowd, as the buzz would be building, fans would start loudly anticipating a Crazy comeback, and right when the comeback was about to happen Tajiri would trick him into a headlock again. Every time the crowd reaction would get louder before the headlock, before Tajiri would quiet them. Tajiri doesn't do fast roundhouse wheel kicks or high kicks anymore, but instead threw a few nice front kicks, just pushing off with a couple stiff kicks to Crazy's chest or chin. Crazy is definitely chubbier these days, but he still gets the exact same height and rotation on his spinkick, hit a moonsault off the middle that looked just like a moonsault of his from '99, and even missed a moonsault off the top that had some of the absolute best arc and grace of anyone to have ever done a moonsault. His form is still that impressive. The finish was really fantastic as the ref gets briefly bumped, and in that brief moment where the ref isn't looking, Tajiri swings off Super Crazy with a cool armdrag...and mists Crazy while midair in the middle of the armdrag. Great visual.

Jun Akiyama/Ultimo Dragon/Misterioso vs. Vinny Massaro/Colt Stevens/JR Kratos

ER: So before the match they ran around passing streamers to ringside fans, and then promoter Gabe got on the mic and explained to the crowd how to throw streamers, and I think it comes off pretty silly to do a quickie "okay Japanese wrestlers only know you respect them if you throw neon garbage at them". Akiyama does come off like a boss during his ring entrance, wearing a large robe, clearly a guy who felt like a big deal to people (actually many in the crowd) who had no idea who he was. But damn if those streamers didn't look cool during his ring introduction (poor Ultimo was a Japanese man who was apparently shown zero respect, streamers for Akiyama only. We felt bad for Ultimo). Bay Area indies have been kicking around "Border Patrol" teams since at least the mid 90s and I'm thankful as hell we don't get any bad "build the wall" shtick from Stevens and Kratos. Vinny is in for a lot of this and the fans are way into Akiyama, which felt great. This wasn't going to be some wild match, it was going to be worked like a NOAH house show match, which was just fine, all that was needed. The rudos worked over Misterioso nicely, especially loved a long full arm lariat from Vinny, and a big release snap suplex from Kratos (a snap vertical suplex, but he let go so Misterioso flew across the ring, looked great). Akiyama came in on two occasions, laid in some nice knees including a great leaping knee into Stevens, and you knew we were getting at least one exploder. They mix it up and don't just go straight for the finish when he tags in the second time, and we even got a cool surprise nearfall from Stevens. I would have loved to see the reaction if Akiyama got pinned. But of course that wasn't REALLY going to happen. This was a perfectly fine crowd pleasing main event, and nothing more, and it didn't need to be.

ER: I've still yet to see a GREAT match from PWR, and they've been around for at least a decade now. But this was a packed house, a genuinely sold out show, with a crowd that stayed loud and invested throughout the whole card. That's a special thing.

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