2024 Ongoing MOTY List: Best Friends vs. Sabian/Butcher

 

15. Orange Cassidy/Trent Beretta vs. Kip Sabian/The Butcher AEW Rampage 3/8/24

ER: I wrote about this before I knew the Best Friends suddenly broke up. The concept of a team called Best Friends makes me think about a kind of indy wrestling I've set out to avoid since Chikara, but it turns out I didn't need to soften my stance on that wrestling, because the few who weren't canceled just got better. I didn't know when watching this match I was watching the near end of a great TV match era. Orange and Trent were a team I really loved, and two wrestlers who have turned into must see AEW for me. I'm going to miss the Jefferson Starship TV era. Pixies Cassidy doesn't quite hit the same for me. Anyway. 

There are probably better AEW matches that I've watched and will not be adding to the MOTY List for reasons like "it went on longer than I thought it should" or the more accurate "I recognize it was good but not good enough to move me to want to write about it". A match like this feels like more of an accomplishment than a 20 minute ****3/4 match. They're both going to be forgotten about the next week, so I think a great Kip Sabian performance is more memorable. When I think back to the start of AEW, I think about how awful Kip Sabian was and how much TV time he was consistently getting over...well, almost everyone. I think at one point he was the most consistently featured TV worker. Those were the dark days, with guaranteed Kip Sabian and Private Party and Orange Cassidy matches every week. I couldn't stand Orange Cassidy matches for years. Now it's 5 years later, here's a show with Kip Sabian, Orange Cassidy, and Private Party, and it's the same but everything has changed. Cassidy is now one of the guys that make me watch these shows and Kip Sabian is one of the most improved wrestlers on the roster. I guess not everything has changed, as Private Party are still essentially doing the exact same thing in the exact same spot with the same spots done slower. The main event of this episode was the weakest go nowhere match on Rampage. 

I never foresaw loving Orange Cassidy, and I certainly did not anticipate Kip Sabian ever being a wrestler worth watching. But he now is, that. It happened, and it's cool. Cassidy came into the match with his back and ribs wrecked from his title loss to Roderick Strong, and Sabian and Butcher went after those ribs with backbreakers. There were two very cool physical momentum reversals, where Cassidy was slowed and couldn't pull off his round the world DDT, and Sabian and Butcher each stopped his momentum mid-move in ways that felt like both were really fighting to stop it. Butcher had wobbling legs as he powered OC up for a powerslam, then lifted him up by the front waistband of his joggers high enough to drop him over his knee. Sabian always looked like he was fighting OC's momentum, even on roll-ups. 

When they weren't working over his back, I thought Sabian was great at working around Cassidy's selling and his shtick. I liked the spot where Cassidy was fighting to tag out with his hands in pockets, as Sabian expertly crashed around him and into Butcher, credibly fucking up repeatedly against an armless man. All parts of Sabian's game have been tightened. Five years ago I couldn't imagine Sabian as a guy with good elbow smashes, but now he has them. He was always someone who could bump, but now his bumps seem more directed towards the match he is having than an empty athleticism. His bumps are an essential part of Trent's hot tag, he's great at being in position for the finish sprint, and he does it all while taking in-character bumps. The way he kicked his legs in panic while getting tossed with a backdrop, or getting yanked into a Saito suplex and knowing just how to get where he needed to be to lean into a knee, he does it like him. 

Cassidy's Superman punch to set up the finish looked its best and came in with force, like he wanted to get it in quicker than the one earlier that had been caught by Butcher and ended with his back being punished by a half nelson backbreaker. Instead of flying right at Butcher he came at an angle, blindsiding him into a Beretta Strong Zero. Cassidy is impossible to keep down but stayed with it in ways that didn't make Sabian and Butcher's back work feel stupid, it just made him seem tough. It's been five years, the surprise of my Orange love has finally faded, and now I'm spending my time writing glowing things about Kip Sabian. I'm convertible. Who will be the next to convert me?  

2024 MOTY MASTER LIST

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 10/30 - 11/5

AEW Collision 11/4/23

Darby Allin vs Lance Archer

MD: As monsters in AEW go, Archer's up there. When I was first getting into the promotion in late 2021, his act on Elevation (dragging his opponent out as part of the entrance, mocking the fans by teasing chops or a dive, scaring kids) worked for me. He's capable of a couple of more agile spots without doing ridiculous or terrible looking things for the sake of getting a pop. He's experienced enough to take his time and let the beating resonate. He might have gotten the best, most productive singles match out of Hangman Page by short circuiting all of his poor match layout judgment. Plus he never wears out his welcome. You're always left wanting more. 

Darby is, of course, a natural opponent, and someone that never takes a single moment of a match for granted. He came in with a gameplan to chip away at Archer, only to get ragdolled about as you'd expect. He'd try to sneak in comebacks only to have Archer escalate the violence (most memorably the chokeslam over the top rope to the apron) in response. Having it be so one-sided protected Archer and made it more momentous when Darby beat him, and not just with a fluke roll up either, but with a high impact reversal to avert an almost assured flattening. The Jake stuff was a bit odd. He obviously got tossed so he'd have time to walk to the back (which takes time) to bring the Righteous out post-match. The announcers covered for it in fairly unsatisfying and contradictory ways. Part of me wonders if this isn't to set up a Copeland/Sting/Darby trios in advance of the PPV and with Danielson's injury they feel like they have to rely more on Copeland for Collision for a bit, but that's me laying down too many words on a booking decision we'll know about in a week. I will say that Copeland vs Archer is a weirder and more interesting idea than Copeland vs Luchasaurus was.  (EDIT: They just announced it, actually. I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing I'm vibing so heavily with TK's booing).

Mark Briscoe/Keith Lee/Dustin Rhodes vs Kip Sabian/Workhorsemen

MD:  This was structured for the time it had. The early bit where a proper Briscoe shine was replaced by him out-maneuvering a series of the Workhorsemen's best attempts at clever double-teaming worked for me because it highlighted just how good of a tag wrestler Briscoe is in a kayfabe sense. Also, while they were stretching the count as far as it could go on the inside, the actual moment of transition happened once JD had made it to the floor. Once Mark got the hot tag, that was pretty much it for the match, as he hit his dive and Dustin and Lee did their thing. The heat is the emotional core of a tag like this. It's the substance. It's the story. It's the second act. It's the drama. There's a little bit of intrigue over the heels getting outwrestled or outsmarted early and the question of how they're going to get ahead, but what carries the weight is the babyface eating a beatdown, having hope spots, getting cutoff, with the built-in pressure ratcheting up and up and up until things come to a head with the hot tag. The shine was practically nonexistent here. The comeback was lightning quick. The match still worked overall because it leaned in hard on the part that matters the most.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 8/21 - 8/27 Part 1

AEW Collision 8/26/23

Orange Cassidy/Penta/Eddie Kingston vs. Kip Sabian/Butcher/Blade

MD: One of those random WAR like six mans that we get just a bit too rarely in AEW. It's good to have Eddie back between the injury and the excursion and the fans felt the same. Penta handled most of the shine (against Kip who reacted but didn't do anything novel like I'd expect, though at least Penelope got to take out Abrahantes on the glove catch) and Cassidy most of the FIP (after a very solid transition, with Kip goading Cassidy right into a Blade superkick, which IS what I'd expect). Penta and Abrahantes did most of the apron-working, including a freshly squeezed chant that was perfectly timed, with Eddie's only contribution being a memorable face made at Butcher. Butcher and Blade were pretty vocal in there with their 1966 Batman Goon muttering, like Butcher calling out a powerbomb that would never come and Blade shouting "Butcher and the Blade!" in a moment of beatdown on Cassidy.

It was a bit of a consolation prize for Kip and co. for not making the Wembley card. It was a longshot but Kip is local and original and worked hard to reinvent himself and Butcher and Blade are loyal, capable soldiers who pull off whatever's asked for them. The crowd was behind Cassidy when he worked from underneath, but they really wanted to see Eddie and he delivered, coming in hot, chopping everyone, and then starting the chain reaction of spots and linked finishers that set off the stretch. This ended with a sort of WWE dark match main event multi-man feel, with everyone getting their stuff in, but with an AEW twist, as all of that stuff ended up connected together. Eddie capped it all off by debuting a sliding elbow (obviously "a move he learned from Japan," which if a more present announcer was there, might have actually been noted). Fun stuff to open up a go home show and set up the post-match in-ring interview that followed.

Sting/CM Punk/Darby Allin/HOOK vs. Swerve Strickland/Jay White/Luchasaurus/Brian Cage

MD: Challenge here was to follow a fairly similar match. Well, not follow because it was taped first but you get the idea. This had plenty of time to breathe, with heat on both Punk and then HOOK. Theoretically it was all leading to White and Sting because that was teased early in the match but it only got there with a chop block cheapshot by White, probably a combo of making sure to protect Sting before the PPV and teasing something for the future. That'd be a great interaction somewhere down the line. White is a guy who is just always on. He tries to make the most out of every second he's on the camera and he's constantly active. It makes for a good pairing with hyperactive guys like Juice and Austin Gunn. The most interesting things here were Punk interfacing with Swerve's offense (he didn't take the headscissors well but did take the rolling suplex fine; when they were just posturing it was great) and to a lesser degree White (including the Sting tease that they really milked) and then HOOK having to work from underneath, especially against Luchasaurus and Cage. In the end, the fact they didn't pay off Sting and White was fine. He had his big moment against Luchasaurus and Punk and Joe was the ultimate focus, with Punk getting to make up for the flimsy GTS last week with a pretty solid one on Cage, and then to use the Kokina Clutch to end it setting up the perfectly timed Joe (who was a total pro on commentary) run in. Fun stuff with big star moments, but maybe a little slight relative to other Collision main events.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 3/20 - 3/26

AEW Dynamite 3/22

Darby Allin/Sting/Orange Cassidy vs Kip Sabian/Butcher/Blade 

MD: There was a Dustin/Lee squash on Elevation on Monday but there's not much to say about it except for how fun Lee's nonchalant overhead throws were and Dustin having some fun with shifting his body around during the pinfall. He's about to be a granddad and if you follow him on social media, pretty nervous about it, so I'm glad they're keeping him busy.

Onto this then as there was a lot to like. I'm not sure I've mentioned this here, but to me, Cassidy and Moxley are two sides of the same coin. They're the ultimate grindstones that provide someone opportunity to really show their character. In wrestling, like any other form of fiction, character comes down to what you would do in any particular situation. What makes Wrestler A different from Wrestler B when faced with the same stimuli? With Moxley, he presses and presses and presses and you see what sort of wrestler exists under that sort of pressure. For Cassidy, it's endless frustration and aggravation. Moxley's "One Bad Day" involves car crashes and landmines going off around you and teeth piercing your flesh. Cassidy's "One Bad Day" is being stuck in line at a supermarket behind an old lady using coupons and a checkbook and dealing with that one asshole who's constantly changing lines even though you're in the middle of a traffic jam. Both of them will push you to a limit, but just what that looks like will be very different. 

Here, you could see him do it to Sabian early. I'm fortunate, I think, that I wasn't watching AEW a few years ago during the pandemic shows. The only Kip I know is after he took the mask off. As such, I think he brings a lot to the table, as he's very self aware. He tries to be a heel version of Cassidy in some ways, but as a heel, the act isn't nearly as genuine. It's hypocritical, a mask he puts on because he lacks the sort of easy confidence Cassidy lives and breathes on the inside. That's the character at least, and Kip plays it perfectly. He contrived a supervillain plan to throw Cassidy off his game to try to win the All Atlantic Title but even when it worked, it wasn't enough in the end because Kip will never be enough. There's value in that for a mid-card heel in a company that needs mid-card heels that can keep some heat in defeat. Anyway, that was a long way to go to say that I liked how the opening exchanged was summed up, with Sabian thinking he had the upper hand by escaping to the floor only to rush back in when Cassidy went to the pockets. 

And of course, Sabian got to then experience the thrill and the joy of not just one, or two, but three big moments with Sting. Speaking of confidence and awareness, Sting had big interactions with both Butcher, who beautifully missed his own splash, but Sabian, and he knew given the scope and the nature of the match, he didn't need a big dive here. What he needed instead was comedy and character, doing the Cassidy role to stymie Sabian, throwing the Cassidy kicks while Sabian was doing his down-up-arms fan interaction, and then finally just milking the Scorpion Death Drop forever. There were a few moments where things seemed just a bit off (I would have liked someone to break up the pin on Cassidy after Butcher and Blade Dragged the Lake on him, for instance) and this was a lesser match in the AEW Sting collection, but it was still a ton of fun and I'm happy for every heel team or trio that gets to interact with him, not just for the photo opportunity and adulation they likely feel, but because Sting puts so much effort and thought how to make the most of each and every match.

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

AEW Dark 12/13

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

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

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

AEW Rampage 12/16

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

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

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

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 11/18/20

 What Worked

-I'm never excited to see Kip Sabian wrestling on TV, but I appreciate that AEW has significantly cut down on his televised ring time. There was one point earlier this year where Sabian had actually wrestled more TV matches than anyone else on the roster, and I am thankful that AEW at least realized how fucking stupid that was and now only put him on TV occasionally, rather than weekly. 

-I like the level of temper tantrum unprofessionalism that pours out of Thunder Rosa during her matches, always makes things way more interesting than the typical bad women's matches they put on. There are always a couple of things that land in meaner than normal areas and you just don't see that in other AEW women's matches. I liked her hitting a hard senton right across Serena Deeb's chest, Schiavone says "Her reputation is well earned," and I think he was talking about her match quality but that's not what I think of when I hear she has a reputation. I like her unprofessionalism the most when it actually applies to a good match, and this was a good match. There was messiness, which is baked in at this point, and the roll up counter stuff at the end felt completely unnecessary, but I liked a lot of this. Deeb's Tenryu powerbomb after Baker snuck in a swinging neckbreaker on the ramp was a great nearfall (bad move hanging in the crowd after the match, Britt), some shots to the jaw landed great, loved Deeb scraping her boot on Rosa's face and hitting a cool diving shoulder tackle off the ropes. 

What Didn't Work

-It's cool that AEW gives high profile TV time to a team like Top Flight, but I cannot imagine a new team working a style I'm any less interested in than Top Flight. It feels like every single indy I have access to has 1-2 teams exactly like Top Flight, who all do at least One Cool Athletic Thing and really wholly on taking moves to reverse moves and need opponents to be in very specific locations for the bulk of their offense to work. There were a couple cool moves, and I liked the speed Duante brought to cartwheels and the impressive height he got on leapfrogs. But I'm going to need to see more than someone hitting the same tope con hilo that literally two dozen guys on the AEW roster can also (and do!) hit. I hate that kind of offense where someone takes a move, but then that move gives them the power to reverse a move. Duante took a Finlay roll from Matt Jackson and then just turned it into a crucifix pin. I guess it looked cool, but if you can just eat offense and act like that gives you leverage to take a pin, I'm probably not going to understand it. But I'm sure many people are stoked to see more guys on TV who can go through the motions of hitting a dragon rana, and not care that neither leg actually hooked the shoulders on said rana. 

-Kip Sabian is a good opponent for Orange Cassidy to work his hands-in-pocket offense against, because Kip Sabian's strikes never look like they actually connect with anything anyway, so it makes sense that Cassidy is so easily able to avoid it. Sabian's wrestling is really confusing, because him throwing elbows, or kicks to the stomach don't look like it is connecting anyway, so when he misses a clothesline I can't always tell if it is just Cassidy avoiding him or if that was Sabian's finisher. I liked Cassidy blocking the drop toehold and stepping out of it, because it looked like a drop toehold that would not have taken anyone down. Appropriate sell. Sabian actually hits two clotheslines during picture in picture, and they actually do make the same amount of contact as the missed clothesline earlier. He also makes the decision to throw a dropkick at a turnbuckle, which I can only assume was his intention because Cassidy moved away from the turnbuckle well before Sabian threw the dropkick. Odd choice. He also made it so his head only connected 1 of 3 times while being hit into turnbuckles, so there's a strong chance that Kip Sabian is playing some weird game of wrestling telephone, where he is interpreting movements as explained to him by several different wrestlers but without ever actually seeing pro wrestling. 

-THAT was the promised contract signing!? I love a good contract signing, and a decent contract signing is something that even the worst era WWE can still make look good. But this was one dry dick of a contract signing. Moxley attacked backstage and rubbing his head while Omega gets all his Observer accomplishments listed? Fuck man just shove a table onto someone. 

-You put Eddie Kingston on commentary and then cut right to a commercial? I had to listen to Miro mumble his way through a brutally bad Kip Sabian match with a far shorter commercial break. That's just the lousiest time management. 

-PAC/Blade was not the comeback match I assume the wanted for PAC. They did that dumb kind of shit where they chase each other back and forth to opposing turnbuckles and kick each other in the head, lotta boots to the head that didn't actually look good. PAC hits a missile dropkick that Blade doesn't quite get into position for so it just looked like PAC took the hardest possible back bump off the top. Blade's powerslam looked good, the superplex looked good, but a lot of this match stunk. 

-Sadly, I got into a very long and very pointless argument during the main event, so missed a chunk of the middle. That stretch I missed could have been very awesome. The parts that I saw were not good, primarily due to Brian Cage working like a really terrible joshi wrestler. Gimme them shitty enziguiris and keep working like a 140 lb. woman, yeah! I thought several moments looked off and I still do not understand all of the praise I see for Ricky Starks. Is this the same kind of praise that people gave to MJF when he first became a thing a year or two ago? Or the way a bunch of people thought Damien Sandow was the fucking future 7 years ago? 

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 10/14/20

 What Worked

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

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

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

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

What Didn't Work

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

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

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

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

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

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

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 9/23/20

What Worked

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

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

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

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

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

22. Eddie Kingston vs. Jon Moxley

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

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


What Didn't Work

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

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


2020 MOTY MASTER LIST

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 6/17/20

What Worked

-Give some decent time to Dustin, and the match is almost always going up here. I might be the lone QT fan out there, but I can't help it if QT is one of the better guys on the roster. Omega and Page looked off for large portions of this, and it was only the tag match structure that Dustin can do in his sleep that saved it. Omega kneed Dustin right in the face because he can't leapfrog a man like a normal human, he has to do a fruity gymnastics routine that messes up the timing for everyone. Dustin uses the flub and actually makes it mean something, continuing to sell taking a knee to the temple as he's taking Omega's rana and then popping up with one of his own. Or, the man got brained with an unexpected knee and he was knocking cobwebs loose. Page threw two of the weakest pescados I have ever seen, holding onto the rope until the last minute so that most of his body misses the mark and it lands with no oomph. He threw weak clotheslines too, which QT made look like great clotheslines. Page's sliding lariat did look good, so not a full loss. Marshall has such blatantly better strikes (and a great dropkick) that of course Jim Ross is going to cover that up by calling Page one of the best strikers in AEW. You knew the Dustin hot tag was going to be good, and really the whole match was worth it just for Dustin's snap powerslam, but I also liked how Marshall threw himself into Omega's snap dragon. Fun tag that relied on a proven formula and a great babyface team.

-I really loved how the set up the Anna Jay/Abadon match, giving Anna Jay the "Coming Up Next" graphic and the promo video out of the commercial break, and then flipping things into an Abadon showcase. I don't know Abadon, and horror movie gimmicks like this don't do a ton for me, not when we've seen Su Yung doing this very thing for several years now. But it's cool that random Colorado indy workers are on their radar and the twist of someone entirely unexpected being the actual star of the segment was a cool bit of presentation.

-Billy Gunn/MJF was a fun use of time and a good use of Gunn. I like how it was built around working over an old man's leg, Wardlow slamming it a bunch into the ringpost, MJF dropping knees on it and snapping it over with a quick Indian deathlock, coming down hard on it while the knee was draped over the ropes, and I like how Gunn's selling of the knee played into the finish. MJF really added a ton to this just by making sure his misses looked as devastating as all of the work Gunn was taking. MJF came down really hard on his tailbone after Gunn moved his leg off the ropes, and throwing himself hard chin first into the bottom buckle. That bottom buckle bump was something that Lanny Poffo used to do and I always loved it, and it looked neck snapping here.

-Liked Cody in his match, especially when Starks tossed him into the ropes and he made it look like he hit a brick wall. Dug his topes, dug his vertical suplex, didn't dig his opponent.

-Big top of the page love for Britt Baker's Kaitlin Olson level puke gagging in the dumpster, with a perfectly positioned banana peel on her head.

-Really liked Jericho and Guevara in the main event, really like their complementary feel. Sammy hit a real nice dropkick and followed it up with an awesome slow rise kip up, and moments later Jericho hit an awesome heavy dropkick (looked like a Bret Hart or Lawler dropkick). Jericho had a bunch of great strikes, with the peak being his killer short knees to the gut.


What Didn't Work

-Didn't see anything from Ricky Starks that I haven't seen from any of these other guys with the same build, haircut, and movement. He's probably maybe better than Austin Theory? His dance steps weren't as refined and he stutter stepped a couple times, had really performative bumps, and the only offense of his I enjoyed was when Cody would make something simple look good. You're bringing Malenko/Guerrero roll ups to my TV in 2020? Hard pass.

-Another week, another Sabian/Havoc match. Kip Sabian has more AEW matches in 2020 than anyone else. Who is behind that decision? Who thinks that anybody wants to see that? Who are the people who want to see that? I've somehow written up 23 Dynamites this year, and Sabian has been on 40% of them! He's just that one weird canned food item that everyone has in their cupboards and nobody remembers how it got there. We are supposed to move that can to the back of the cupboard and do a couple moves with it, not make a meal with plenty of leftovers out of it.

-JR thinks Hangman Page has arguably the best strikes in AEW, and that Chuck Taylor is "lanky". Has he seen Taylor's COVID bod or was he watching tape from a decade ago?

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 6/3/20

What Worked

-Taz is a good choice as Cage's manager, as there's a constant cool visual reminder that they might have disjoined at some point. They're the only two guys left with structured and groomed Year 2000 sideburns (Jungle Boy gets a pass, his sideburns are grandfathered in), and Cage's HGH belly rivals Taz's pasta belly. It's too unlikely that they found each other, far more likely that one disjoined from the other.

-I really liked Jericho/Cabana as a 6 minute 2nd hour of Nitro match. Cabana hits a nice Asai moonsault (and then does an even crazier thing by slapping hi fives with several people and then immediately touching his mouth), and I loved his big bump over the ringpost after getting shoved by Hager. The layout was smart and kept things brisk, obvious that Jericho is so much better than Omega at pacing a match like this. Cabana got a couple decent nearfalls even though the finish wasn't in doubt, and the finish was perfect: Jericho crumpling Cabana with the Judas Effect as Cabana is bunny hopping off the middle buckle. And I'm not sure why, but I laughed hard at the specific way Jericho called Mike Tyson a piece of shit after the match. Man's delivery is still strong.

-Britt Baker with the segment of the week again, every second of it was so good. Locking the wheelchair in place to work the ropes, dragging that 2 lb. weight, the slo mo looks at the camera while being pushed across the field, all of it so great. Did I really sleep on Baker, or has she gotten really great in the past couple months?

-I liked Cody/Jungle Boy but something bigger was missing. I can't put my finger on it, so I'll just say that I much prefer Cody's style of working opponents into a match to any of the other AEW figureheads. Cody doesn't just step out of the way and allow someone to have a run in the middle, he makes space for convincing comebacks that works to an opponents' style. I liked how Jungle Boy's strikes got harder as the match went on, and how he went after Cody's cut. I was impressed with their fighting on the top rope, a moment that is hard to pull off without looking like two guys trying to cooperate to maintain balance, but I think Jungle Boy's best strike of the match was when he smacked Cody in the ribs up top, and I loved how Cody popped him right after. The table spot looked good, although I wish it was used as more than just a match reset. It didn't really play into the match and it's weird to use the most violent spot of the match as essentially a rest period. Still, strong match and I'll be totally fine with Proud Defending Champ Cody bleeding on TV in 10 minute matches every week.


What Didn't Work

-I'm happy that AEW sees black people as equal, at least enough to put a written statement at the beginning of Dynamite and making the brave decision to ban Linda Hogan from live events but how many cool black wrestlers could be on TV instead of these brutal weekly Kip Sabian matches. If AEW announced they were giving Kip Sabian's contract to literally any black wrestler anywhere, I would believe them. Making that statement at the top of your show and then cutting right to Kip Sabian and Jimmy Havoc in the first match fells like talking about how you support black artists while buying Nickelback tickets. I mean Omega/Page vs. Sabian/Havoc is literally the whitest possible match they could have booked. And yet, for all the deserved grief I give Sabian and Havoc, Omega was clearly the worst guy in this specific match. He hung both guys out to dry with improbably long wait times. Poor Sabian was sitting on the turnbuckles, plopped there like someone sitting backwards on a toilet, just waiting ages to take a backcracker. Omega's selling was laughably bad, with the biggest laugh coming when he took a Sabian springboard dropkick and did this amazing Little Tramp walk into the ropes while waiting for his cue to waddled backwards into a poison rana. And that rana magically allowed him to hit suplexes seconds later! Omega managed to look like more of a clown than Sabian and Havoc, and that's an impressive dedication to putting over your opponents.

-So Fyter Fest is an indisputably bad name, right?

-Nyla Rose took a nice big bump over the top and off the apron, and had a couple of really nice kickouts (well timed in accordance with the move she had taken), but I couldn't quite figure out if the layout of this was really dumb, or lazy, or just bad. It was a worse version of the mid 90s babyface Randy Savage formula where Swole took the entire match and then Rose just hit a rydeen bomb and called it a night. Swole gets hung up sometimes on timing and her strikes always look better when they aren't part of a combo (loved her backhand slaps here), but she came off weaker to me with how quickly she was dispatched, no matter that she got half a dozen nearfalls before that. Also, I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt and assume JR's use of the word "manhandling" during Nyla's matches is just because he only knows so many words.

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 4/29/20

What Worked

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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


What Didn't Work

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

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 4/22/20

What Worked

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

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


What Didn't Work

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 3/25/20

What Worked

-Even though some spots got a little too "oh right this is Jimmy Havok", this was probably the most I'm going to enjoy a Jimmy Havok singles match. Havok shakes Cody's hand and Schiavone speculated he was playing mind games. I thought Schiavone was making a joke about Coronavirus but no he was just implying "I don't think that handshake was sincere". But Havok had a nice right hand after the handshake, and that's something I don't typically get to write about Havok. Cody took a couple of nice upside down bumps in the corner, hit a decent dive and a big ramp run lariat into the ring, Havok spiked himself nicely on a couple of CrossRhodes, there was a bad Havok armbar (well I tried going a sentence without dumping on him, but he made the top side of the review and that's something).

-Darby worked a match, obviously Darby is gonna be on the top side. Sabian and Penelope were fun foils for him, with Kip flying back on the John Woo dropkick and bring there to get flung by Darby on one of his sky high armdrags. Penelope tied Darby up nicely from the floor and it lead to a great whipping springboard kick across Darby's face. I loved the misdirection that played into Darby hitting his excellent tope, a nice bit of timing capped off with a perfect dive. I don't think I've seen him use the ankle pick to trap someone in the Last Supper pin, and I dug it.

-Brodie Lee holds his silverware like a convict.

-I'm a fan of whoever did the caricatures of the roster at ringside, but they needed to be driving tiny convertibles and holding tennis rackets.


What Didn't Work

-I thought the wrestlers in the audience was a nice touch last week. It was fun to hear guys talking trash and rooting on the matches. There was a chop in the Inner Circle tag last week where a chop didn't hit flush, and I heard someone go "Nope!" That's fun. Empty arena is just tough to get into.

-Jake Hager's theme music seems like it was written for someone else, and I'm sure we wouldn't have to go back more than a month on his Twitter feed to find him retweeting someone talking about how hip-hop isn't "real music". That and his weird patchy brown face tan made it look like he was wearing a prosthetic nose.

-If you're going to make Brodie Lee into the abusive father who red face screams "IS IT TOO MUCH TO ASK FOR ONE NICE EVENING!?" after his kids sneeze or accidentally drop a fork, you gotta have him go out and absolutely murder QT Marshall. What is QT doing even getting in one bit of offense? Lee can't go out there and do slingshot sentons that mostly miss. He needs to go back and watch some unprofessional Bradshaw syndicated squash matches.

-There was plenty I liked about the Guevara/Omega match, but the tone felt a little all over the map, and a lot of it felt like a real sluggish Omega performance. It also felt unnecessarily long, but that could be because so many big AEW matches are go go go that this one just felt like they were going slow just to go long. Omega seemed especially sluggish after the first commercial break, running at half speed and just dropping to the mat without his trademark derpy spring. Sammy did a running thread through the match attacking Omega's hand, and I liked the ways Guevara went after the hand. Some of Guevara's best shots where when he was going for an armbar and trying to get Omega to unclasp his hands, just punching at Omega's hand. He never went over the top with it and almost always used it to get out of a jam. He even resorted to biting that hand down the stretch. But Omega never really seemed to notice nor care, which fit nicely with his limp body language over the rest of the match. The final third of the match picked up nicely, we got a great Guevara dive, and several V Trigger knees from Omega. The first couple looked so-so, but the one he did to set up the OWA looked finisher worthy itself. Guevara came off way better than Omega in this whole thing, and I thought Omega's selling for Guevara's offense was flat at best, nonexistent at worst. This should have been better, and would have benefitted from being 15 minutes instead of 23.

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 11/20/19

What Worked

-I like the idea of throwing a Buck into a singles match. I don't think I've ever seen either in a singles match before (and scanning quickly doesn't look like something that's happened in at least 3 years), so it's a fun idea. The match had several moments that didn't make a lot of sense, and the pacing meant that they were up trading superkicks seconds after Fenix absolutely flattened Nick's chest with a full force top rope swanton. But they clearly went all out, Fenix tried rope tricks that he appeared to be making up on the spot, Nick took a couple of major spills, we got a good nearfall, it was fun. I think they could have done the same moves and laid it out WAY more effectively, but that sentence feels like something I will just be writing about at least one AEW match a week.

-Britt Baker got busted open early with something, and that is how you make a Britt Baker match slightly more interesting.

-Battle Royal was good, had plenty of the elements that make for a good battle royal. There were guys I wish were in it far longer (Sonny Kiss really should be more of a featured player, though I laughed when I think I caught Orange Cassidy lowering his sunglasses in the corner while Kiss shook his ass), Chuck Taylor hit an actual awesome knee out of the corner, Orange Cassidy got amusingly launched by Billy Gunn, somebody hit a wicked tope (I think it was Kip Sabian, but the promotion is batting 1.000 so far on missing at least one big dive per episode), Kiss took a big elimination bump, and they kept the pace up. A fine battle royal.

-Jack Swagger looks like a guy wearing four different rows of Invisalign, but damn if AEW doesn't know exactly how to use Swagger. He looks like an imposing goof, they use him like an imposing goof.

-Jericho promo before SCU came out was my least favorite Jericho AEW promo so far, but once he had Scorpio Sky to play off of I think it picked up real nicely, liked a few of their exchanges and liked how Jericho did his promo as if he was both Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd.

-Two weeks in a row and they've properly thrown in a nice squash match, which shows they're at least learning the importance of show pacing. Deflated Bobby Roode got most of his mic work during the break, made a fossil fuel joke, and then got wrecked by Luchasaurus as he should have been.

-We get an honest to god cut off the ring tag match and that is a great thing. I do think that Quen would have been better as the hot tag guy, because he's just better than Kassidy at running together offense, but that's a minor gripe because I also liked how they handled Kassidy's hot tag. LAX were real dickheads while cutting off the ring, with Ortiz especially being mean. I dig all the nonsense like locking Quen in a Boston crab and Santana vaulting in just to lightly mule kick Quen in the face. The back work paid off nicely and I absolutely love paying off limb work within a signature spot: Kassidy goes to roll over Quen's back on the apron to hit the silly string, only Quen's back can't hold the weight and he falls off the apron. Those spots seem so obvious if you stop to think for a moment about what part of the body had been worked over, and yet some guys seem so averse to doing them. I love "obvious" payoffs like that, and thought this tag came off so much better than if they had gone out and just done a big go go go big spots match.

-Dustin is already my favorite wrestler in AEW, and if he decides to become a guy working a cast gimmick and add a bunch of cast related strikes? Well then brother I can't think of anyone who would be a threat to unseat his #1 status.

-Moxley/Allin was pretty easily the best Dynamite match so far. We'll be writing that one up in its own MOTY post.

What Didn't Work

-I am so sick of flipping piledrivers that don't mean anything. I probably could have stopped that sentence after "piledrivers".

-Has Britt Baker been featured every single week? I'm not sure. Has Britt Baker been exposed every time she has appeared on TV? Yes, definitely yes. Her match with Shida was filled with both of them kicking out of their own pinfalls, lifting their legs up to make it easier for their opponent to hook legs, and at least a couple moves that landed as if whomever was taking the move had no idea what the move was actually going to be.

-Jimmy Havoc continues to be the supreme dweeb, even if him stapling Billy Gunn's stomach was funny, he immediately ruined it by calling everyone tossers as they cut to commercial, his voice breaking like a 13 year old, using slang that should be natural to him yet sounded like he'd never said tosser before.

-Talked with Phil about what cowboy wrestlers lamer than Hangman Page, and the best we could do was Killer Tim Brooks or ultra gassed Scott Casey. But neither of those are definites, and I would rather see both of them than Page.

-AEW Dynamite has one camera-missed dive per week, and they also seemingly want to corner the market on refs stopping 3 counts for things that nobody actually saw happen.

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