AEW Five Fingers of Death 5/13 - 5/19

Ring of Honor 5/16/24

Athena vs. Nicole (Matthews)

MD: It's been way too long since we've had an Athena match of any length or with any weight behind it. And this was definitely a fun one. Someone asked me the other day to give them my thoughts about Negro Casas as he wasn't entirely clicking with them, which is understandable if you only catch certain parts of his most lauded 90s work. Casas is actually fairly hard to explain, because he's such an exceptional talent. While he excels in a number of conventional ways, what really makes him special are things that other wrestlers generally don't share. He checks a number of the normal boxes, but quite a few boxes that no one else checks. It's like trying to explain Terry Funk. And it's like trying to explain Athena.

The common ground between all three of them, however, is that you never, ever want to look away. No matter what's happening in the ring, no matter what their opponent is doing, no matter how the crowd is taking it, you want to see them react to literally everything that happens from the moment they come through the curtain until the moment they leave again.

And what made Matthews such a great opponent for Athena is that she gave her so much to work with. There was their history which should have put Athena on edge. There was the crowd being very into a local legend which certainly did put Athena on edge. But more than that, Matthews is just so good at doing all of the little things. She hits the big things smoothly, but not so smoothly that it doesn't feel organic and engaging; there's a bit of grit on her whips and grabs and grinds. It's those little things though, an extra shift of leverage with an unexpected body part on a pin attempt, torque on a hold coming from an interesting angle, that put it all over the top. It's style and substance both, something extra that feels additive and not extraneous, something that is visually interesting and unique but that fills in a narrative gap as well, making suspension of disbelief easier and not harder.

In this case specifically, more than just engaging the crowd and filling in between all the lines, this meaningful effort (that somehow still seemed effortless) gave Athena even more to react to. She reveled in Matthews' pain while trapped in the corner. She scrambled all the more, horror and determination flashing across her face, when she found herself in a hold or in one of those ever so slightly enhanced pin attempts. Athena is going to come into any match more alive than almost any other wrestler today, but when you put her up against someone who gives her just so much material to work with, such a vibrant and rich tapestry to color upon, she soars. So yeah, in the end, this was a sub-ten minute proving ground match. There was a hierarchical difference. It was there to set up the post match with Aminata making the save and basking over the belt. But in watching it, you didn't want to look away for a second.

AEW Dynamite 5/15/24 

Bryan Danielson/Jon Moxley vs. Jeff Cobb/Kyle Fletcher

MD: I don't have a ton of big thoughts on this one. I liked it more than the Top Flight match (and I wanted to like the Top Flight match!). It served its purposes, letting Danielson be a star in Washington, both with the music-laden entrance to save Moxley and then by being the one to get the hot tag while Mox worked FiP; having Moxley look dominant both in the shine and down the stretch; keeping the stories churning towards the PPV, starting the show off hot, etc.

Moxley brawling to music always looks right, as if he's somehow choreographed to it, no matter what he does, like a fight scene a movie with a Hans Zimmer score. Here we had the novelty of him brawling to Danielson's theme instead of his own and it worked for all of the high points in the song. Like I said, I enjoyed him asserting himself early back in the ring even if I think that superplex on Fletcher was maybe not the best idea. It was a move that was starting to get protected more in 2021-2022 and there's value to at least making the attempt. Let's not do one in the first couple of minutes of a match

Speaking of protection, Fletcher is the least protected champ I can imagine, but it's gone so far that it's come around to being ok. He's clearly a top guy in a minor league promotion able to stand up to the competition there but unable to face the guys in a major league promotion. You appreciate the attempt but know he's going to get swept under, like a junior heavyweight fighting up in a higher weight class. It was chafing while that was being established but now that it is established it's fine. You can look at Mark Briscoe's Continental Classic record along the same line. Having Cobb in there was a nice change in the mix, both with his strength moves and in him knowing what he had with a homestate Danielson playing to him and the crowd. I'm not sure if the effect would be lessened if we saw him every week but it was nice here as a one-off and teaming the two TV champions was a nice touch and makes me regret we never got more with Samoa Joe/ZSJ last year. Overall I don't think people will remember this much past the brawling over Danielson's theme to start but it was a fun way to spend twenty minutes. 

AEW Collision 5/19/24

Bryan Danielson/FTR vs. Lance Archer/The Righteous

MD: Not much to say about this one. I thought Collision was very effective overall in building things towards both Dynamite and the PPV. Having Trent and Roddy out there for their opponents' matches, letting Toni do her thing, having Wayne use Swerve's move to build to their match, using the bounty as a way to push AitA, and especially having the three FTW eliminator matches back to back with some rampway interaction. It was a very effective cog-in-the-machine show, just good pro wrestling TV. I liked Taylor vs Ospreay especially. I think Ospreay is actually most special when he's being grounded in traditional pro wrestling storytelling. Having Roddy out there, having Ogogo get the cheapshot in, having to overcome the size differential, being able to channel what makes him so spectacular not in an ever-cascading escalation competition but instead in the tried and true narratives of pro wrestling means that he enhances a match instead of distracts from him.

So I liked Collision. As for this, they did a good job with the time they had (closer to 10-15 than 25, as a lot of the big Collision tags go). The goal seemed to be to delay and deny the fans Danielson (save for some extra-curriculars on the outside going into the commercial break and Dutch catching Dax to star the FIP). When he hit the hot tag, he looked like the star he is against a massive opponent in Dutch and then as they went into the stretch, they were able to finally do some team spots with Danielson and Cash, all of which were fun, to build up AitA. The finish was a little cutesy but this was more celebratory than anything else, and the weight of it would come through in the post-match, including the absolutely brutal Blackout on the chair to Cash. Bring on Satnam. 

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death 4/1 - 4/7 Part 2

ROH Supercard of Honor 4/5/24

Eddie Kingston vs Mark Briscoe

MD: What happens when a man bolstered by a dream comes across another man with a dream bigger than his own? Eddie Kingston has done everything right, has done his best, has done anyone's best, despite all of the odds and the weight of the world shifted against him. He met his heroes and fought their scion, the last remnant of an age of kings. He overcame the personification of every argument against him, a Swiss nightmare that had haunted him for a decade. He slipped, stuttered, stammered, but regain his footing and climbed, one impossible victory after the next, to create an American Triple Crown, defeating his brother in blood to do so. And then he defended it against his the representation of everything he was not to gain respect and to drink from an empty well. 

And yet.

Here, across the ring from him, was another brother, one in blood and spirit, a man who had lost a brother of his own but and only saw his faith redoubled in the process. This was a man who had come up short in his challenges, who had lost his opportunities. And eleven years to the day of his brother's triumph, he had obtained yet one more, the opportunity of a lifetime, maybe the opportunity of two lifetimes. 

And Eddie, for all that he had learned, for all that he had gained, for all that he had become, resented it. It wasn't fair. He had fought so hard, had pushed so far, had proven his own worth against absolute paragons, and yet there was a man more worthy in the ring, a man whose story was more valid. 

Eddie fought like a man possessed. Briscoe had an early advantage by taking big risks, but risks have consequences. In this case, it was a chair left in the ring. It had taken him to great heights and by means of a chokeslam, it brought him low as well. Blood followed and Eddie pressed his advantage. Briscoe's comebacks were big, huge, meaningful, dramatic. These were not hope spots, they were plunges of faith. But Eddie's cutoffs were monstrous. 

On some primal, bestial level, Eddie understood. For Briscoe's story to worthy of subsuming his own, it would have to be tested. It was tested in blood and pain and violence. For the triumph to be worthy of the moment, it would have to be earned. If Briscoe was to fall short, then that was proof that his story was not as meaningful as Eddie's. This was nature. This was life and death. This was pro wrestling.

So Eddie kept firing on, through Briscoe's hulk up, through Briscoe surviving the Uraken, through an exploder to the floor and Mark barely beating the count. But Briscoe kept coming, kept charging forward, refused to stay down. On this night, his story was simply better, something real, something genuine, something that came from the heart, something that no factory could ever produce. That was the only sort of story that could subsume Eddie's own. 

What could Eddie do when fate was no longer on his side? If he couldn't be the hero glorified in victory, then at least he could be the dragon that made the victory worthwhile. And he was. And it was. And even in defeat, his legend will only grow for it. 

AEW Dynamite 4/3/24

Bryan Danielson vs Lance Archer

MD: This is beneath the Kingston vs Briscoe match which is the draw this week and everyone's exhausted from Mania weekend anyway so I can sneak all sorts of stuff in here without repercussion. I rewatched both Ospreay vs Hobbs and Danielson vs Archer because there's no real way to cover the latter without factoring in the former. The two matches are a paired set with the meeting on the ramp bridging the two. Both Dynasty opponents were facing giants. Hobbs and Archer are very different giants with different skillsets, but giants nonetheless.

I am going to make an analogy. It is just an analogy. It is not any sort of direct judgment. It's just a way to try to get at something I was feeling and that I have felt for a long time. It's because sometimes entirely unrelated gets invented and becomes prevalent and it allows you for a good point of comparison to help understand or describe something else. That's all. So you know when you read an article that is either partially or completely written by AI? You see the hallmarks whether it's specific language or structure, whether it's too much background information or a sort of soulless generalization. By now, after the year we just had, we can recognize it almost immediately. It takes you out of whatever you're reading, casts doubt on the entire publication, makes you want to just skip down to whatever new piece of information the article purported to offer. 

That's the feeling I get sometimes out of a lot of this stuff. It's not necessarily the same (because this is an analogy) but I recognize it and it takes me out of the moment. I'd argue that there are maybe three big changes to wrestling over the last forty years. One is about what the audience wanted, going from caring most about the destination to caring most about the journey. They went from wanting to see the babyface vanquish the heel (admittedly with their cheers potentially powering the babyface) to wanting to see a great match and get the rep to say they were there live to see it. Wrestling went from mostly called in the ring to thoroughly planned. As a side effect of the first two, most TV wrestling now is a series of spots, one after the other, with very little connective tissue as opposed to a lot of connective tissue and steady progression leading to spots. It went from a 70/30 shift one way to a 30/70 shift the other (if not 20/80 or more). Pro wrestling isn't match, but maybe, just maybe, it is balance.

Ospreay vs Hobbs was a carefully connected series of spots. The transitions were understated and usually implicit, based on Hobbs missing a move or Ospreay taking advantage of a little bit of space. Occasionally you'd get Hobbs playing to the crowd or arguing with the ref. Mostly though, it was spot after spot, artfully orchestrated and executed sequence after sequence. Archer vs Danielson was much closer to 60/40. Archer ambushed him from the start, leaned on him. Danielson would try to fire back, would get kicks in, would create some motion. Archer would shut him down. The hope spots were just that. Some of Archer's big offense was clearly set up and thought through. But it all flowed with a general sense of organic meanness and violence and perseverance driving it, up front and center, pushing things forward, not an afterthought to fit into the margins but the central impetus of the match. It all built towards a real comeback, until Danielson finally chipped away at Archer through skill and persistence until he brought him down to a size where knees could fly into faces. 

Wrestling is being pushed more and more into rewarding one outcome over the other, but then you stop and see that the one of the only people getting actual heat through his ringwork is Christian, that the fans get behind Dustin in a way slightly different from how they get behind anyone else, that there's so much more to analyze and examine in Danielson's matches even without ever seeing the strings that are hanging and visible all over the place with so many others. Progress is possible, perhaps even necessary, but there's a way to walk a line so that immersion isn't lost. Maybe, in 2024, that's only true if you're one of the greatest of all time, however.

Read more!

AEW (And CMLL) Five Fingers of Death 3/25 - 3/31

AEW Collision 3/30/24

Bryan Danielson/Claudio Castagnoli/Katsuyori Shibata vs. Dutch/Vincent/Lance Archer

MD: Not quite an all-star trios match but certainly a unique one with Shibata in the mix. We're just at the start of him as a weekly player as opposed to an attraction and on some level, I feel like he'll add as much as Okada and Ospreay, maybe even more, because he is a contrast to a lot of the roster. Every match up with him feels like a fresh match up. Even with Archer, Cagematch says he's only faced Archer two times before this and they paired up really well to start. Likewise the early Dutch vs. Claudio bits where Dutch provided Claudio a massive canvas to work his strength spots on. 

The meat of the match, however, was Danielson working FIP against the unified trio. It was easily explained away by Danielson's jetlag and the Righteous and Archer's superior chemistry (even Danielson and Castagnoli have only teamed up ten times or so in the two years of the BCC existing). Plus, he got to absolutely dominate all three (including him getting up on the apron to take Archer out with a knee with lightning fast speed, really) right before he got dragged down by a Vincent cheapshot out of nowhere. It was a great face-in-peril performance, one that will probably get overlooked in time, but stood out hugely to me on a random Saturday night at the end of March. Danielson knew he had Claudio's strength and Shibata's suddenness and technique on the apron so it made sense for him to be in the role. He had to look strong despite the totally valid excuses because each week he's being judged against what Ospreay is up to. That said, he had to ensure that Archer, Vincent, and Dutch could keep dragging him down for their sake, the sake of the match, to justify this being a main event. And while Archer's instantly credible whenever he enters the room, the Righteous are, through no real fault of their own, deeply below their opponents in the hierarchy.  

That meant that while Danielson would be able to flip back over Dutch or get kicks in on Vincent in the corner, he'd make sure to give his opponents their due: Vincent with his ferocity, Dutch with his size, and Archer with the monstrous combination of both. Given that the crowd was hot all night and it built the pressure just right for Claudio to get the hot tag and come in like a freight train, and then, after everything broke down and we got the swing and various finishers, for Shibata to close things out almost simply by being himself. Overall, a difficult performance managed masterfully by Danielson, and we will continue to appreciate how lucky we are to get to see it week in and week out while we still can.

CMLL Homenaje a Dos Leyendas 3/29/24

Bryan Danielson/Claudio Castagnoli/Jon Moxley/Matt Sydal vs. Blue Panther/Mistico/Ultimo Guerrero/Volador Jr.

MD: Speaking of being fortunate, well, there's this, isn't there? Something that would have been impossible to imagine ten years ago or five years ago and that would have seemed very unlikely just one year ago even. For a lot of us, it's up there with the Sting retirement match as something that's just unbelievably special, so much so that it's hard to even put down words for. Arena Mexico is special. When you get a crowd that's really committed to what they're seeing, it's like nothing else in the world in 2024, or 2014, or 2004, or even maybe 1994 (Outside of Puerto Rico, I imagine). While there is ritual and expectation and that wonderful pro wrestling reality that exists with the particular style of CMLL's lucha, there's still a level of suspension of disbelief and immersion that almost undoes the chemical change that has affected (afflicted?) pro wrestling over the last few decades and has completely changed the incentives of wrestlers. 

That's the environment that the BCC and their erstwhile "captain" Matt Sydal (with his Peace, Love, and Pro Wrestling tron to counter the Violencia sin Limite BCC shirts) walked into. And while it didn't give me 100% of what I wanted, it gave me a lot of it. I wish that there was a longer feeling out process with initial pairings. I get why on a time-crunched PPV that was unlikely and it's total valid to skip that part in a trios or atomicos match in order to get straight to the heat. That's a totally valid way to build a match like this and maybe extra heat was what the doctor called for here given the stylistic issues and, frankly, inexperience of most of the BCC in maintaining the rhythm and flow of a lucha beatdown. I just wanted to see initial pairings, that's all. As for those shortcomings, Claudio was dropped in as natural as could be given his background, the ultimate base in so many ways, and I just can't imagine a world where Jon Moxley, if given two months of weekly Friday and Monday shows, wouldn't be an amazing traffic director; for his first try, he wasn't exactly Satanico in there keeping things moving though.

That meant you ended up with some weird, weird stuff where the more familiar you were with the trappings, the more it'd take you out of the moment. I'm talking about Blue Panther getting a full, momentum shift (mandate-of-heaven) comeback with the big Mistico leap into the ring, only for the BCC to take back over on Ultimo Guerrero (the best of all time in getting beaten up in a corner and still raising the roof to show the fans that he's the toughest star you've seen) to set up that lovely bit of ritual, his power bomb off the top and the real final third of exchanges and break-ups. As a match in a vacuum, it absolutely worked. It just threw me given that watching lucha in Arena Mexico is always a quarter about expectations being met and worshiping at the altar. 

There were a lot of great individual moments though: Panther celebrating Danielson at the start (and celebrating Danielson's celebration of himself, of course), Danielson embracing the yes chants, all the energy that led to things breaking down with that initial beatdown, Sydal being a spin kicking attack dog for the BCC, the giant swing on Volador, Claudio destroying Ultimo Guerrero after he raised the roof, and then the exchanges at the end, with Guerrero and Moxley scrapping and Mistico subverting the Yes chants like only he could, and Claudio basing for everyone, including allowing Panther to be absolutely fearless, down to just charging through the knee when Danielson hit him with it. So yes, overall, very special and they're even giving me what I didn't get here next week by running Danielson vs Panther back. Yes, I have a few nitpicks but absolutely no complaints for something we're all but blessed to have in the end.

AEW Rampage 3/29/24

Dustin Rhodes vs. The Butcher

MD: There are a lot of bad faith arguments about storytelling with AEW. I thought about engaging but we don't really engage with bad faith arguments around here. We focus on the text itself more often than not. Let's do that. Dustin's deferred his retirement which he was thinking might be this year. He feels good. He's ready to go. Butcher and he have history, so a feel good promo was interrupted on Wednesday. That history includes a Bunkhouse Tag back in 2020. They have familiarity. Usually a match on Rampage is either setting something up (including heating someone up), paying something off, or an attraction for a live crowd. Menard was in the main event here to do the last bit (and to set up a chain reaction ending with the Bucks standing triumphant if not tall), but there's probably something to Dustin, being an old WWF guy, popping a Quebec crowd. 

This was straightforward and leaned on that familiarity. That meant that they were able to make things that were less than smooth, like an early backslide attempt, feel like organic struggle and not miscommunication. It meant Butcher was ready for the first dropdown punch. It meant that he was able to capitalize and yank the arm over the top to take over. He had very straightforward, credible offense, mainly headbutts to the arm, but I'm never going to complain about headbutts to the arm. He was able to use it to cut Dustin off and take back over. Dustin, despite his size, was always so good at making himself smaller when he sold, and he did so here, pulling inwards with the arm to get the point across. He was able to tap into his bombs (like the code red) as hope spots, but Butcher was right there to take back over, playing to the crowd as he pressed his advantage. Down the stretch, Butcher had one last tricked out arm assault, a pulling fireman's carry right into a crossface which was something that would have played just as well in 1960s France, but Dustin was able to pay off the kneeling punch, hit his short power slam that the commentators weren't sure he could hit, the Cross Rhodes that he needed two tries on, and then the final reckoning for the win. We won't know for a couple of weeks if this was to heat Dustin up for something or just was an attraction for the crowd, but every chance to see Dustin work from underneath and get a crowd behind him is worthwhile and this crowd was lucky to experience it at least one more time.

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death 11/6 - 11/12

AEW Dynamite 11/8/23

Darby Allin/Sting vs Outrunners

MD: This was a tight piece of business, obviously, a way to keep the Sting farewell tour feeling special, in front of a crowd that was chanting for him in the early going, and a nice way to throw a bone to the Outrunners who ape his early aesthetic, maybe by way of the Beverly Brothers. That meant they could lean on Darby coming off of injury and let the Outrunners play the numbers game early, sneak in the clever tag out of a suplex position that we saw Darby and Orange Cassidy use when they were teaming in the already-missed house show run, and give Sting his iconic moment of shrugging off the double back elbow. Small nitpick: maybe have him win with the Death Drop considering that a Scorpion Deathlock played into the finish of the previous match, but at the end of the day, let Sting be Sting too, you know? A fun match that lets everyone in the crowd who hadn't been watching wrestling in 89 say that they got to see Sting live.

Ring of Honor 11/9/23

Eddie Kingston vs Angelico

MD: Of all of Eddie's great quality, maybe the greatest is that every match he's in, no matter how little build or notice it gets, instantly becomes a grudge match. It's because the chip on his shoulder is so big that any contest, be it an enhancement match or a dream match, tumbles right into it. Just to stand across the ring from him unlocks all sorts of grievances. Heel, face, storyline or no, he takes it personal and he makes it personal. You look at him the wrong way and it's an insult. And there's no right way to look at him if you're his opponent. That gives us, as viewers, reason to care about each and every match. 

It can be a little exhausting too. It's a good thing, don't get me wrong, but you don't let go and relax when watching Eddie wrestle. He carries a weight and you carry it with him. That feels good. It has substance to it. When he walks a mile, you walk that mile with him, and you're better off for it, but it's hard. And sometimes, it leaves some possibilities on the table. An Eddie Kingston match is going to be a fight. This isn't Bryan Danielson who is endlessly adaptable and reactive. Eddie's a black hole and you can't escape his gravitational pull. Traditionally, if you're wrestling Eddie, it can only be about one thing, that chip, that insult, that grievance.

The belt kind of changes that though. Yes, sure, Eddie is going to see it in personal terms; you want to take away what he cares about, what he clawed and scraped for, what he fights for every day, something he cares about more than you ever could. But it's also business too. And more than that, it's wrestling, the grandeur of wrestling along with the blood, something that you might not think a guy like Eddie would understand. But he does, because he understands what it means to be an ace, to carry a weight upon his back that's not just the burden of life, to carry a company, the hopes and dreams of everyone in the back, the reputation of everything that came before. 

That means we get to see a little bit of a different side to Eddie in these matches. Yes, he took it personal when Angelico made the challenge, but that didn't define this match; it just provided some extra color to it. Eddie's used to charging forward with a certain sort of abandon. He's used to being a man with nothing to lose. Now he has something to protect. That meant he came at this different. Angelico's always dangerous so he started the match by switching from one hand to the next, and avoiding a lock up, cautious. But he's Eddie so he got goaded in and threw a shot that let Angelico start to twist and tear at his hand. But he's Eddie so he pushed through it and kept throwing those chops, relentless. 

In return, Angelico realized that he wasn't going to get a quick tap on Eddie, no matter how skillfully he tied him up. He started throwing low kicks, started throwing his body at Eddie with dives. Angelico could chip away at his arm or his leg, but he couldn't make a chip larger than that one already on Eddie's shoulder though. All it ever takes is one backfist to change the complexion of the match and that's what it did here. Still, they gave Angelico a kickout and then finished things with the Northern Lights Driver, a nice hierarchy decision that helps keep over one of Eddie's four viable finishers after the story with Claudio where he needed to escalate to the power bomb. The variety of opponents and the more ace-tinted approach to these matches has been a nice change of pace, especially knowing that Eddie can take things deep into a land of grudges whenever the situation calls for it.

AEW Collision 11/11/23

Adam Copeland/Sting/Darby Allin vs Vincent/Dutch/Lance Archer

MD: Very complete, very satisfying match given that it had two commercial breaks, a little less time than some other Collision main events, and a lot of personalities to highlight on the face side. We've seen some matches lately where they hold back Sting and you sort of would expect them to do that with Copeland too here but they cycled through all of the faces early on (teasing Darby being in trouble and having him smack Archer away and dart to the corner) and gave the crowd a taste of everyone before they leaned into the first commercial break not with the usual transition into heat but with chaos and everything breaking down. That gave us the great shot of Sting elatedly dragging Vincent around the ringside area. It wasn't until the end of the break that they had Dutch jump him to lead into the first face-in-peril. It's important to have a little bit of variety now and again.

I always see the commercial breaks as an opportunity. Someday when AEW's on a streaming service and people are going back through these the same way that we watch 1992 WCW or 95 All Japan or 84 Mid South or old Houston footage, we'll hopefully have the international feed to watch and not have to worry about picture and picture and it'll be a net positive overall. It stops the proclivity for pure action for the sake of action and forces interaction with the crowd and a doubling down with the story at hand. 

This was our second look at Copeland and while he was fine against Luchasaurus, he wrestled like someone with something to prove here, hitting a dive, asserting himself with clotheslines, hitting a double team with Sting which harkened back to his late 90s creativity with Christian, eating Dutch's Bossman Slam with wild momentum. He's such an interesting case in some ways, someone who great up as much of a fan of wrestling as could be, but that has spent the entirety of his time within a carefully controlled system. He's someone that excelled in gimmick matches, that had offense which maybe wouldn't have held up in a less produced environment. He can't compete with the conditioning of  a lot of the AEW talent, but relying on smoke and mirrors instead of sheer athleticism might make him stand out, especially if he leans into his height a bit more than he has in his career. A lot of his major WWE feuds were against his size or larger than him. I'm curious how he resets this last act; he's suggested an interest in facing a lot of the ex-WWE guys that he missed in the 2010s, the Samoa Joes and Andrades and Malakai Blacks of the world, and to port his WWE act over against new a generation he missed could be of some interest, but the real value would be if he took what made him special over the years and tried to figure out how to refine it in a world without corporate limits and monolithic preferences. That doesn't necessarily mean aping Sting's proclivity for crazy dives. It doesn't just mean blood and pile drivers and a freedom of speech either. I don't entirely know what it means. Were I Copeland, I'd be spending every second of this borrowed time that was an impossibility ten years ago trying to figure out the myriad possibilities before me though. For the first time in two and a half decades, he can be anything and do anything; for someone who loves pro wrestling, what could that possibly look like? 

Here, in this bizarre WAR six-man with Jake Roberts on the outside and very unlikely partners on the inside, it looked like a pretty good start actually.

Read more!

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.

Read more!

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

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death Week of 3/21-3/27

AEW Dynamite 3/23

CM Punk vs. Dax Harwood

MD: This was a bit of a tricky match, just for where it was positioned. This was Punk's first time back in a few weeks. He had been feuding with the Pinnacle over all including a big beatdown and the Moxley tag against the Revival so there was logical lingering heat here. Revival is in the midst of a babyface turn (presumably capitalizing on attention from the podcasts with Renee but who knows what the actual plan was). I'd say Dax wrestled this more as a de facto heel than a fully committed one, being in the position to cut Punk off and occasionally using a hairpull to escape a killer hold, aggressive but only so overtly underhanded. Even when Cash came out, it was to slap the mat and keep the fans in it. As usual with Punk matches, I loved the selling and the attention to detail, and more over, how much things were milked for value. Look at the spots in the corner that ended with the big superplex. They went around three or four times before getting there, building up the tension and the importance and then paying it off with a huge impact. Another match on the card might have done three or four moves in that period instead of building and building. Likewise, the bump to the floor off of the inside-out suplex. This was more of a Bret Hart tribute match than a Davey Richards one and both guys were laid out for a while after that, which is where Cash came out to keep the crowd in it and further that babyface turn. If wrestlers who the fans care about decide to place more value on a bump like that or on moments like that, it's something that can transfer across matches on the card and give every AEW wrestler more meaningful tools to play upon. If you can do more with less, that means that the times that you actually do more, it matters even more. Theoretically at least. It's a way of taking back a superplex or a bump to the floor for everyone and it's hugely appreciated. I hope it's capitalized on because it'll make everything in AEW better. 

ER: Phil did some of his best work writing up this match for The Ringer, and I think he's the only one approaching the best takeaway from this match. I saw a lot of talk online about the Bret influence on the match, and I didn't prioritize the match due to my own lack of interest in seeing more tribute spots to a wrestler that I love, who still has a long list of matches that I've never seen. I love Punk, but seeing people talk about spots lifted from Bret matches just makes me want to go watch several Bret matches instead. This match was not about lifting sequences from old Bret matches, it was more about the Bret influence on modern wrestling, and how you can still show your influences on your sleeve without being derivative. All of the comparisons to Bret Hart classics do matches like this a disservice. These two connect in different ways, and have different strengths, but I guess it's always more interesting compare good wrestlers to another good wrestler, than to note broadly that "these two are influenced by good wrestling matches". This was a simply constructed match that hinted at moves early and paid them off later, and some moves hit early that lead to different results later. 

There are a couple of really big moments that happened at smart parts of the match, with a big superplex as the centerpiece. I really liked every around that moment, with Punk going up top and showboating a bit with some extended Macho Man arms and then immediately realized how he fucked up when Dax swept his legs. The superplex was really good, Dax pushing hard off the top rope with his legs, and I also like how they handled the vertical suplex reversal not long after, ending with both tumbling over the top and ricocheting off the apron. All of the Sharpshooter work was great, although I wish they had done a bit more with Dax getting kicked off and hitting his head on the bottom turnbuckle. Coming not long after a superplex, another shot to the back of the head could have taken things in a more interesting direction. That said, I do like how Dax sold the kick off and how he staggered into a very close nearfall right after. When he finally gets the Sharpshooter locked on, Harwood can proudly state that in a world where almost every person who attempts it has the worst Sharpshooter ever, his is much closer to Bret or Choshu than the rest. I would have bought that Sharpshooter as the finish, but I loved the quickness and the slyness of Punk's Anaconda Vise. There was a cold methodical killer aspect to it, but also a touch of desperation. If not desperation, than still the work of a man who knew that NOW was the time to end things if possible. 

Darby Allin/Sting/Hardy Brothers vs. The Butcher and The Blade/Private Party 

MD: Too much action for the camera to follow here. Once they split into two zones, it got a little bit easier but we missed things on both counts: how Blade got opened up, a lot of the one-on-one between Kassidy and Matt. Everyone got moments either in hitting things or taking things. Darby and Sting had those opening dives. Butcher got to pinball Darby around and send him down the stairs. In general, a match like this protects Matt and he gave Kassidy some comeuppance before getting ambushed by Quen and ultimately eating the double side effect. Jeff being more concerned about hitting his crazy swanton in a 3 on 2 scenario than saving his brother follows him dancing to his music instead of making the save the other day pretty well. The finish could have gone a little better but it was easy to cover as Sting fighting for the reverse headlock and the timing still worked out. You can tell that there's nothing Kassidy would rather do in wrestling than feed for Sting. Really, this is the sort of thing that they could have run twenty years ago as a dark match main event every week for months after TV show to send the fans home happy.

ER: Man this rocked. This was the AEW debut of Jeff Hardy and I love how he debuted in this chaos. This also continues the amazing run of Sting, somehow putting in his greatest work of the century in his early 60s. Tony Schiavone has been so good on commentary during Sting matches, and I love the brotherhood in his voice when Sting flies super far with an early match plancha onto everyone. Tony is totally beside himself, talking about how he told Sting to not do crazy things like that anymore, but laughing to himself at the same time. The action splits up and goes all over the arena, and really the only bad thing about the match is we couldn't possibly see everything. Every pairing looked like it was worth seeing, at least based off what we were able to see. Everybody played into their role and did it well. Jeff had this crazy clothesline over the barricade (silly me thinking that would be the most reckless thing Jeff would do in his debut), Blade bumps all over for him, Darby falls down stairs and gets ragdolled by Butcher, and I love how the action flowed. 

Jeff Hardy did a crazy swanton off a concourse window ledge, and I love that he still has a yarder's heart. Teenage backyarders have that skateboarder mentality of looking for things to do a move off of, and here's a broken Jeff still looking for ledges that would be cool to stunt dive from. I also loved Sting holding Butcher and the Blade onto the tables during Jeff's climb and then bailing out at the last possible moment. Matt Hardy looked awesome during the finishing stretch, like he and Private Party had been feuding for years. Private Party have come a long way in the past couple years, and they're getting so much better at feeding for offense and positioning. I thought the finish was spectacular, as at this point I fully believe that Sting is as crazy as Terry Funk ever was and would be foolishly willing to take a frankensteiner into a cutter. Sting hopping off the middle buckle and blocking the cutter, dropping into a dragon sleeper and fighting up to his feet for the Scorpion Death Drop was such an awesome moment, timed expertly with a Twist of Fate. This is the most hyped I've ever been for Sting, a man still gaining new fans into his AARP membership days. 

Blackpool Combat Club (Brian Danielson/Jon Moxley) vs. Varsity Blonds

MD: This worked as contrast to Danielson's matches over the last month or two at least. It made me better appreciate what Yuta brought last week. Danielson and Moxley are going to make you more violent, more aggressive, work for it harder no matter who you are, but there was a lower floor to start from here. Griff had his moments, including some driving forearms at the end. There's a lot of upside there potentially, but I don't know if we'll see it with Mox and Dragon as there's a lot of lower hanging fruit elsewhere in the company. Pillman, on the other hand, probably needs a different presentation or a different role to see if something might click. That doesn't mean things weren't smooth at times, like how he leapt right into Mox's double-arm DDT, but smooth wasn't necessarily what I was looking for here. On the other hand, every week Ambrose and Danielson start to add more unified offense and bits of timing to their repertoire. Here it was the set up for Danielson's knee off the top and the way they synced up their finishers. It's hard not to be excited for whatever's next.

AEW Rampage 3/25 (taped 3/23)

Dustin Rhodes vs. Lance Archer

MD: Archer is a guy who I like a lot in 3-minute Dark and Elevation squashes but that I'm iffier about in the actual payoff matches against name talent. This played to his strengths though. Dustin went after Lambert early and got a shot to his ear for his trouble and Archer zoned in on the damage. This was low on spots (which isn't to say that Archer didn't hit some of his big offense down the stretch or that Dustin didn't take a crazy flip bump to nowhere off the apron, but it was more about shots to the ear and grinding Dustin down, with Dustin working the crowd hard on his comebacks. Even the powerslam got jammed by Archer. When he's in the right environment, Archer's instincts are quite good. I like how he works the crowd. I like how he teases them. He's constantly present when he gets a chance to be. He didn't get to scare any kids this time around, which is one of the best parts of his act but you work with the crowd you're given. This was very much the right match for him and Dustin, ear bleeding all over the place, fit into it perfectly. When a guy's ear is bleeding enough that it gets all over your chest, that's something to lean into, and they absolutely did here to the betterment of the match.

PAS: The ear bleed here was cool, but I didn't think this worked particularly well. I kept wanting it to be better so that I could justify writing about Dustin on The Ringer. Archer always feels like a guy pulling his shots, and this is the second violent Dustin match I thought underwhelmed. For some reason they just seemed on different pages. Nick Comoroto hasn't been around nearly as long or had the heights that Archer has had in wrestling, but I though he matched up way better with Dustin in a similar type match. Finish was clearly setting up a third match so maybe they can deliver something special there. 

Read more!

Eddie Kingston's Wrist So Bright, Look Like Sunny Delight

Eddie Kingston/Darby Allin/Jon Moxley vs. Anthony Greene/Bear Country AEW Dynamite 9/29/21 - FUN

ER: This played out like one of those early 2000s WWF Metal matches where they'd get a couple of hot east coast indy guys you'd recognize from an issue of PWI and let them tease a couple of their signature moves on their way to getting dropped on their heads. Punk is unsure if it is Bear County or Country but is a man so has no problem asking, and casually coolly covers up his lack of prep by saying these are big boys and Country is a lot more acreage. Our superstars handle this great, allowing some resistance to a good squashing, but squashing nonetheless. I love how Kingston came in to break up Bear Country's big tandem splash with a pointed dropkick to the knee, and both Boulder and Bronson took gnarly suplex bumps on the back of their heads before winding up on the floor to get wiped out by a nice Coffin Drop, and I dug when Greene suddenly stalled Kingston and Moxley and got ahead of himself, then had his twisting crossbody stonewalled by both of them. This whole thing was good vibes. 

Eddie Kingston vs. Lance Archer AEW Dynamite 10/23/21 - GREAT

ER: This match was really shaping up to be the best Lance Archer match we've seen, until an accident cut things short but inadvertently added some extra intrigue. Archer utilizes his specific problematic offense really well, following through on his big lariats and boots, and Kingston leans into it and makes the bumps feel like devastating after effects of getting too close to Lance Archer. Kingston jumps Archer and beats his ass on the entrance ramp and they immediately go into a couple fun stunt spots, with a random white haired Village of the Damned kid all grown up getting dragged over the guardrail by Archer and then chokeslammed into Eddie. Kingston lights up Archer in quick bursts, whenever he can make his way in between all of the Archer big man moments. There's a great spot where Archer goes to hit his inverted crucifix bomb out of the corner, and we get a prolonged, interesting Kingston reversal out of it. Kingston is so great at taking offense, because he lands with a real thud. There are guys like Ricochet and AJ Styles who are great at taking offense, but because they use their gymnast athleticism to make moves look like superhero offense. 

But I like how Kingston takes offense with an almost lack of grace (and you need to understand how much actual body control you have to possess to land with that kind of graceless thud), and here he wriggles down out of Archer's crucifix, slowly works him into a dragon sleeper, aims to keep dragging him back down into a stretch plum, and ends by breaking the hold with hard punches to the temples. The second Archer's free, he blasts Kingston with a lariat to the back of the head. Eddie's chops really slice off Archer's chest, but those seem better than taking Archer's stomp out of the corner, which punches Kingston into the mat like an assembly line drill punch. The finish is scary but covered up enough to make it look like a really strong worked injury, as Archer misses a moonsault and bounces off the top of his head. It all happens so fast that even watching the replay doesn't *really* make it any clearer, that line between planned missed spot and career ending neck injury blurred by happenstance. I don't actually know how the finish to this match would have gone, and I don't know if Eddie Kingston was supposed to advance in the World Title tournament before the injury happened. But if he wasn't, it's kind of a really well written way to get Kingston into the 2nd round of a tournament while giving him a win over the rampaging Archer. Obviously, I hope Archer will be alright (and all signs point to that now), but the match they were giving us was going really well. Let's get that full match on the books when Archer heals. 

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE EDDIE KINGSTON

Read more!

Eddie Kingston Don't Do Math, Eight Million in Ice

Eddie Kingston/Penta El 0M vs. The Young Bucks AEW Dynamite 7/7/21 - GREAT 

ER: I didn't like this as much as their straight tag the week before. That was a really well built classic tag with some hot moments. This was a full bullshit stunt show, with WAY bigger spots but not really any kind of satisfying build. This was a stunt show, and they hit some big stunts. It was clear there would be a ton of BS from the start, when they work Michael Nakazawa into an early superkick spot and Brandon Cutler is running around with cold spray, so there was always this weird mix of stooge comedy and violence. It's odd to have guys taking really dangerous bumps while seconds later having Cutler make dangerous bumps look silly by making funny faces through them, but the frenetic energy also added to the presentation. This was closer to a big ECW tag where tertiary people run in throughout just to take bad bumps, and the bad bumps here were bad. There are nasty small things, like Nick landing with a thwack into a chair on a drop toehold, up to bigger things like Kingston getting powerbombed onto a flat table, and then up to Matt Jackson taking a flipping piledriver off the apron through a table. I like smart dumb stuff like Nick hitting a 450 on the referee when the Bucks were falling behind, real fun dumb guy logic that buoyed this whole thing. Kingston brings thumbtacks and he takes the nastiest stuff, like getting a big handful of tacks thrown into his face, or tacks shoved into his mouth before a double superkick. The whole thing was a runaway train and part of a great show finishing fireworks display. 

Eddie Kingston/Jon Moxley vs. Minoru Suzuki/Lance Archer AEW Rampage 9/22 (Aired 9/24/21) - FUN

ER: A Lights Out, Anything Goes match where 75% of the combatants just hit each other with uninspired weapon shots. Eddie Kingston was the only one who was bringing any kind of passion to this fight, jumping and tearing his shirt, rushing headlong into a fight with Suzuki. Seeing the personalities of Suzuki and Kingston opposite each other is a large part of this match's thrill, so obviously I'm going to love seeing Suzuki kick Kingston through a table, but it wasn't enough. A lot of the match had such a huge disconnect, with Archer being unsurprisingly the biggest problem. Much of this Anything Goes fighting felt more like guys throwing really bad strikes while waiting for someone else to get into position for something that wasn't going to look that good. It's a series of false starts without any of their ideas building to a satisfying payoff. 

Moxley gets chokeslammed to the floor into a bunch of guys who came out to catch that chokeslam to the floor; Archer wraps his belt around Moxley's neck but when we come back from break Moxley's hands were tied and the belt was no longer around his neck. Suzuki spent a lot of time grabbing half ass submissions before letting them go, like a lightly applied single leg crab that Moxley wouldn't have even been able to defend, but it goes nowhere. Kingston's fire is the only thing that keeps this watchable, bursting back into the ring with his arm hanging limp at his side (I love when King charges into a fight brazenly wearing his injuries) and breaks a hold with an eye poke. We get a great moment where Homicide returns but then immediately fumbles around with a chair (I swear Homicide always has the absolute worst luck with inanimate objects in big moments), and Archer manages to make the finish look like, ahem, trash. When Kingston has Archer inside a trash can lid and Archer doesn't start selling kendo stick shots until the 4th one in, you know you're just dealing with a guy who has no idea how to work a match like this. Some fun moments, but a major letdown.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE EDDIE KINGSTON

Read more!

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. 

Read more!

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. 

Read more!

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. 

Read more!

AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 12/9/20

What Worked

-I wasn't really feeling the Bucks/Hybrid2 match, but the more ridiculous shit got kicked out of, the more I got into it. If you're gonna get crazy with it, get crazy with it. If you're going to indulge, indulge. This blew several minutes past where I assumed it was going to end, and that somehow wound up working in favor of the match. I don't love Nick Jackson's superkick as a finisher, but I love it as a cut off spot, and there were some great cut off kicks here. My favorite spot of the match was Evans missing the Angelico-assisted 450, and basically landing face first into a superkick. When the timing is that tight, it's such a great looking spot. The whole match felt like it was Jack Evans kicking out of one Bucks finisher after the other, then getting up two seconds later to hit another crazy flip, and that's the kind of BS I can get into. If you're going to have a bunch of kickouts, just go for it and through everything else out the window. That's what they did, that's why it worked. 

-The match itself was a little messy, but how could I not get behind FTR beating the hell out of Brian Pillman Jr.? Dax especially seemed to really be going after him, and it looked awesome. I loved Cash baiting Griff Garrison around the ring and back into being stopped by the ref, allowing them to hit a great Demolition Decapitation on Pillman. Dax's chops and elbows really sang off Pillman's body, and I like the way the tag was worked as a real hierarchy tag. Varsity Blondes have won a few matches on Dark, get their shot on Dynamite, get mostly run over by FTR. Having that kind of slow progress is a really satisfying way to present wrestling for me, feels similar to working Kings Road guys up the card. Pillman got to land a really great punch on Dax on the floor, and I love how Dax sold it like his orbital bone just got hit with a wrench. 

-Dustin took a big bump off the apron and hit a nice bulldog finish on Ten, though any time Dustin is on TV I think he should get at least 4 minutes. Dustin is a smart enough worker to have a special 4 minute match, anything shorter than that feels like a waste of bullets. They also managed to make a couple jokes about his Seven gimmick while avoiding a "we know what THAT means" wink, with Tony hitting the right tone with his "well he doesn't want to go by THAT number".

-Abadon looked like a real savage murdering Tesha Price with elbows in the corner and an awesome stranglehold STO. I don't know what she'll look like in a full match, but her squash work has been compelling. 

What Didn't Work

-I still don't know what to expect from Sting in AEW, and I'm not really excited for whatever it might be. I've never been a big Sting guy (nothing personal, just didn't have cable growing up so child me had no idea who Sting even was), and I can't imagine becoming a Sting guy now that he is in his 60s. 

-I kind of want someone new to throw a glass of water into Shaq's face every couple weeks, never actually leading to any kind of match, only used as a way to get a bunch of different comical dripping Shaq reaction faces. That, or I want a Shaq/Brandi street fight. 

-It feels like a crime to put an Eddie Kingston match down below, but that trios match had too much awkward miscommunication. Fenix looked bad, and honestly he hasn't looked very good ever since that awful match against his brother where he got dropped on his head. The camera caught him missing an early kick on Blade by nearly two feet, and his performance didn't get better. Butcher and Blade (mainly Butcher) were not going to be the ones to help him get back on the page, and Fenix/Butcher got hung up on a time stand still loop, trapped in a Rainmaker set up for way too long, neither sure who was supposed to turn around. At one point it looked like Kingston was trying to set up a blind tag to Butcher and Blade, but both of them just stood on the apron while Kingston yelled at them repeatedly to get in the ring, before he just went back to beating on Fenix himself. The only good from this match came from Kingston himself, since Butcher and Blade didn't seem to understand that they were supposed to be cutting off the ring. Kingston's beatdown on Fenix looked good, and I dug the way he took a beating from Lance Archer, while also doing stuff like holding onto Archer's leg from the mat, to keep him close. He took a clunky headscissors from Fenix, and sadly couldn't do much to catch a Fenix tope con hilo as Fenix landed short. The match finishing powerbomb/neckbreaker on Fenix looked intentionally gentle, possibly because his short tope con hilo landed him harder on the back of his neck than this finish would have. Maybe it would be a good idea for Fenix to not wrestle for awhile? 

-I am in the MJF in ring > MJF mic (but I mean that as a compliment, not the I suppose obvious take that it is), but this MJF/Orange Cassidy match was not good. There was a lot of work based around Cassidy's hand, which gets instantly forgotten once it's time for Cassidy's comeback, but - this will surprise you - comes back for one spot and one spot only and this hand that injured hand that was not even acknowledged for several minutes was now suddenly sold more than it had been sold in any other part of the match. Cassidy was good at taking MJF's offense, and MJF was especially good at feeding Cassidy's comeback, really leaning into everything and planting himself on all things that required it. Sadly, the best part of the match was probably the locker room babyfaces emptying out to cheer Orange on, but it all happened during the commercial break. That kind of noise would have been cool to hear. 

Read more!

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. 

Read more!

AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 8/27/20

What Worked

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

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

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

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

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


What Didn't Work

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

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

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

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

Read more!

AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 7/8/20

What Worked

-The big tag scramble delivered exactly what I wanted from it, with some fun unexpected double team chemistry from Young Bucks and FTR. Lucha Bros. are a team I was really tired of (well, I got really tired of Pentagon not showing up to work, but Fenix always had the chance to impress) but they've been really strong in AEW, and they had some inventive runs in a match filled with inventive runs. Dax Harwood (I still can't get over how fake their real names sound compared to their fake WWE names) was a real sticky piece of glue here, and a match like this desperately needs glue. The sequence where he got his ass kicked around by Lucha Bros. was masterful, and included a fantastic spit take in the middle. Butcher was really the only one who looked a page behind here, but a quick 8 man doesn't really seem like the right environment for him to shine. Everyone else was on it doggone it, and there was some slick business. Fenix hit a freaking flip piledriver to the floor into the rest of the match participants and it's wild to me how naturally they set up that spot - a spot that sounds so overblown that I wouldn't have guessed it would even approach working - and make it look more natural than Marq Quen made an enziguiri look. Loved the modern twist on the old Arn spot where Blade ducked his way out of a YB superkick right into a Dax DDT, and we got a sick powerplex with a big splash AND a swanton. This was fun as hell.

-Didn't like the match at all, but Christopher Daniels hit this super cool tope on Brodie Lee that looked like he was going to keep floating farther out. Lee caught him up high and it gave this illusion that Daniels was flying out into deep water, and they both crashed the barricade a few feet into the crowd.

-Main event was great, has to be my favorite Orange Cassidy singles match I've seen. Jericho was really good at flying around for Cassidy's high speed offense, and OC came off aggressively wild. He hit bigger than he typically hits, and his misses were just as big. The opening hands in pocket stuff was all really quick and looked impressive, and I dug how after 20 seconds of that he took them out and hit a real crash and burn tope, then punched Jericho around ringside with long right hands. We got more good barricade work from both guys (the night was full of guys flying impressively into barricades), and I liked how the momentum shifted throughout. Cassidy was good at falling hard for Jericho's offense, and Jericho worked fast and landed hard. Cassidy had this huge miss off a flying forearm and skidded across the mat and out of the ring like a skipped stone. Building a match out of big misses is pretty cool when the guys are missing big, and OC takes a big bump from the apron to the barricade, Jericho misses the springboard shoulderblock to the floor allowing OC to wipe out the Elite with a moonsault. All the misses felt like they built logically to a bigger moment. Now I didn't love the fighting from the knees and the kickouts got a little overkill, but I also can't deny that some of these kickouts were hot. I truly thought Cassidy was going to pin Jericho when he hit that satellite DDT, and that's when I knew they had me hooked. Plus Aubrey Edwards slid expertly through a lot of orange juice to enthusiastically count the pin. This was one of the stronger main events in Dynamite history.


What Didn't Work

-The more Marq Quen appears on TV and the less Kip Sabian appears, it might have revealed that Quen is worse than Sabian. Quen really dragged that tag match down, just a guy who constantly looks out of place and constantly requires a lot of moving parts just to get close enough to hit anything. There was an embarrassing early sequence that made nobody involved look good, where Quen was standing in the middle of the ring like a goof while Omega and Page crossed the ring around him, hitting him every time they passed and ending with him doing a handstand out of Omega's rocker dropper. Every second of it looked horrible, and little did I know that it was the first of several spots where Quen would stand in one place while Page and Omega bounced off him. Quen is working this match like the worst possible 1/6 scale Mabel. Page really busted ass to make this match happen, and the sequences with he and Kassidy were the parts that worked. Kassidy really lands with his dropkicks (his baseball slide to send Page crashing into the crowd looked great) and Page really flung himself into things to make them work. But Omega has been wildly inconsistent in AEW and Quen looked out of position for most of this match. Watch your back, Kip!

-Janela really tried to die on a couple bumps but Lance Archer looked like garbage in that match. First, it was silly to have them go 50/50 for so long. Janela wasn't throwing strikes that looked like they should stop Archer, and Archer isn't very good at selling strikes, so that was a terrible match. But Archer is also really bad about doing things to occupy himself while waiting to take a move, or getting into position way early to take a move. There's wrestling, and there's dancing, and Archer was doing a whole bunch of bad dancing. When Janela hit him in the gut from the apron, Archer just stood there bent at the waist, arms resting on the middle rope, waiting for Janela to leap over him. then the second Janela did, Archer immediately turns around and waits in position, middle of the ring, for Janela to go for a headscissors. Archer literally turned around and just held his arms out waiting to take a headscissors. Dancers know how to anticipate movement much better, and wrestlers are supposed to give some kind of idea that they don't know what move they are taking before the guy performing the move even attempts it. Janela crashed hard over the barricades on a spot where Archer basically lost his grip and didn't throw him, and I was happy when Janela splatted him with a heavy ass senton off the top.

-Not sure how I feel about Taz bringing back the FTW title, but it's also cool that Taz still has his belt from 23 years ago. Does the new guy wearing an old belt ever get a guy over? No weirdo is ever going to pretend that the Million Dollar Belt was the thing that made Austin. Also, because of Taz, I thought FTW meant Fuck the World up until maybe 7 or 8 years ago. Every time I would see something at a baseball game like "SF Giants FTW!!!" I just thought they were putting out the image of the Giants just waving double middle fingers to everyone.

-Pretty bad already to run a big multiman tag match after the really great multiman match from 20 minutes earlier, but a really bad idea when it seemed like half the guys were working this at 2/3 speed. They couldn't have done what the earlier match did, but some of the guys worked here like they thought nobody would be watching (I don't follow AEW quarter hours, maybe Dark Order is a real channel changer). Plus, putting half the match during a commercial break wasn't going to help them get more eyeballs. Daniels had a nice showing, Grayson seemed off in spots, Romero kept taking ugly bumps that made Grayson seem even more off, Brodie Lee felt like one of six guys in the match, Kazarian looked ridiculous working 50/50 with Lee...it just wasn't very good.

Read more!