2022 Ongoing MOTY List: Darby vs. Hardy

19. Darby Allin vs. Matt Hardy AEW Rampage 9/14 (Aired 9/16)

ER: A lot gets written about how broken down and immobile and even irrelevant the Hardy Boyz currently are, but I can't think of ever not having love for two completely chaotic fucked up backyarders who publicly thrive and fail and endure in constantly entertaining ways. We would be so lucky if pro wrestling had more disorder. I don't want to watch a ring full of gamers, I want to watch guys who have a real chance of wrestling great and suddenly dying in an accident tantamount to Billy Joe Travis in a tanning bed. The Hardy Boyz occupy this amazing pro wrestler spot far above Billy Joe Travis doing blow, more akin to the wealthy but physically broken and addiction-prone Jackass boys. I love those boys in Jackass enough that I unexpectedly cried during a theater viewing of Jackass Forever, watching these old bump freaks no longer able to take the same amount of crazy bumps, supplementing their legacy of falls by battering the absolute hell out of their dicks. They were smart enough to know to pivot away from the legdrop finisher until their hip and back were fucked beyond repair, but also too stupid to not fuck up their hip and back beyond repair anyway. And I love them for it. 

I love the Hardy Boyz in the same way. I almost always love every broken wrestler that way. 1990s Andre is one of my favorite wrestlers of all time, an era of a man that fills me with passion every time I watch one of the 90s Andre matches I keep saved for rainy days. The Hardy Boyz are slower and broken and now Matt is getting publicly divorced and I saw someone compare their mobility to Rankin-Bass Christmas special characters. Brutal. But put modern broken Matt Hardy - who gets to his feet like Super Porky in his 50s - in a match with the greatest fusion of Jackass and Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 and it's everything I want in pro wrestling. 

Darby gets his spine worked over and does that think where he realistically horrifically injures his spine several different times. Hardy moves like a retired power forward but has a way of ending strings of broken movement with explosive impact. He takes a bump back of head first into the ring steps and seems to make it his mission to wreck Darby's spinal cartilage. Darby misses a coffin drop onto the apron and Hardy runs him into the ringpost with a powerbomb and the damage Hardy wreaks is righteous. Hardy playing his greatest hits louder and heavier plays so well to me. His splash mountain bomb, his side effect, pulling Darby out of the corner with a sitout powerbomb, it all hits heavy and negates any loss of speed. He really looks like he's destroying Darby and there's few wrestlers in history I have loved getting destroyed the way I love Darby. Matt Hardy's missed moonsault is a great piece of bravado, a too high risk by someone who can't be taking those kind of risks that he knows has never lead to a finish. Darby Allin is someone who knows how to utilize a successful backslide, and Matt Hardy is a tough guy who looks highly susceptible to backslides and leveraged pins. His Last Supper is a convincing pinfall hold against any wrestler, but against Matt Hardy I fully bought that it stretched his aged hamstrings tight enough that a kickout never crossed my, or his, mind. 

2022 MOTY MASTER LIST

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2022 Ongoing MOTY List: AEW 8 Man Tornado

16. The Hardys/Sting/Darby Allin vs. Private Party/The Butcher and the Blade AEW Dynamite 3/23

ER: Man this rocked. Jeff Hardy debuted the previous week in a big way against Private Party, and I love how he kept the chaos going. At the same time, this continued the improbably, 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 loved the brotherhood in his voice when Sting flew too too 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 entire match is that we couldn't possibly see everything happening. 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 attempt), Blade bumps all over for him, Darby falls down stairs and gets ragdolled by Butcher, and the action flowed really well from ring to ringside to crowd to backstage. 

Jeff did a crazy swanton off a concourse window ledge, never denying his 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. A majorly underrated part of the spot was Sting holding Butcher and the Blade onto the tables during Jeff's climb and then bailing out at the last possible moment. That kind of attention to detail is the perfect encapsulation of Sting's veteran knowledge and how the smallest things can make a match great. 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 moving into position. 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. 

2022 MOTY MASTER LIST

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2022 Ongoing MOTY List: Broken Hardys vs. Private Party

16. The Hardys vs. Private Party AEW Dynamite 3/16

ER: I thought this was a blast, a great TV comeback for the Hardys and the kind of high end role-working from Private Party that shows how they've really grown. Private Party knew the right balance of "Younger Version of Hardys" and "Lite Heel Showcasing Legends" and they hit it dead on, and the Hardys worked up to their legendary status. The Hardys are the biggest US wrestling tag team of the last two decades, and I am always a sucker for a wrestling match featuring aging veterans tapping into their spent youth. I thought Matt looked great here. His timing was awesome, and his offense lands heavier than ever. He still might have the best punch in pro wrestling, but every move he did landed hard. His Side Effect looks like a dangerous 90s joshi finisher, his Twist of Fate really yanked Kassidy's neck, and his downward strike elbows to the neck looked Misawa-level. Jeff moves like 48 year old Rusher Kimura now, and doesn't seem to be able to bend over and lift anyone to their feet any longer. But, now he just wrestles like old indy freelance Jimmy Snuka, landing full weight on every splash and elbowdrop, absolutely murdering rib cages with his Swanton. Jeff's Swanton has to feel worse than a Vader Bomb at this point, and Private Party hung in for every single heavy landing. 

Quen and Kassidy wrestled this with a smug confidence and it might have been the most I've ever been into them. Flashy babyface teams are okay, but Kassidy nailing a tope con giro and smiling at the camera comes off way better as a brag. Private Party were great at feeding for both Hardys while peppering in their own highlights, and both knew how to time kickouts for stronger effect. It was no guarantee that the Hardys were going to win this. AEW knows how to showcase veteran acts without crushing upcoming acts, and seems to recognize that some acts develop over longer arcs. When Dynamite debuted, Private Party were a featured tag act, and they weren't quite ready for prime time. Careers don't always arc as planned, and this was a great example of two careers at very different points of their arc, colliding nicely. 

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 12/19 - 12/25

AEW Dark Elevation 12/19

MD: Got some sickness in the house (yeah, that sort) right now, and right at XMas too. I had initially thought about doing the whole show as it had a lot of things to like (Shafir hitting people at weird angles; Athena being Athena, the best act in AEW right now; Workhorsemen vs BCC; Emi and Bunny doing their thing) but that's out. There was a Kingston/Ortiz tag, but I don't have a ton to say about it. If I was going to do a Shinno match from this week I'd do the Omega one from Dark that I didn't like one bit, but no one wants to hear me talk about that, so instead, let's go with our honorary Finger Slim...

Ethan Page/Matt Hardy/Isiah Kassidy/Top Flight/Konosuke Takeshita vs. Trustbusters (Sonny Kiss/Slim J/Jeeves Kay)/Wingmen (Peter Avalon/Cesar Bononi/Ryan Nemeth)

MD: The AEW webshows reward and punish those that watch them all. I've seen some griping about the Hardy Party/Ethan Page story popping up here and there and it's a shame as I think Page has done a great job with it. I get people being frustrated by the idea of yet another contract storyline (Khan writes what he knows), but the backstage stuff has been a lot of fun. Page is walking this obtuse line between being malicious and so egotistical (naturally) that he actually gets into the moment at times. He really leans hard into the fabricated enthusiasm that you get the sense that the character is sort of losing himself to the moment at times, but in a way that somehow makes the humiliation worse and not better for Hardy and Private Party. I'm not sure it's entirely coherent, but it's actually pretty compelling.

Here, he burst through the pair as their music hit and did the big hardy gun hang signal only to cut the music when he didn't get a big pop. He had a mic and it was a fun little gimmick but I don't think he leaned into it enough. Past one moment where he freaked out that Takeshita was ending the dive train, he only said anything when it was a plot beat. He should have been commenting on a lot more, like the Trustbusters triple combo sliced bread. That was my big gripe there. It seemed a little too in your face because of it, even if his facial reactions and faux babyface cheering on was actually pretty engaging throughout.

You watch a big twelve man match like this looking for a few things: the rapid fire spots, interesting match-ups of opponents, and interaction between guys who wouldn't normally interact. I don't think we really got that last one. It was nice to see Page pat Darius on the shoulder pre-match as an extension of the above gimmick, but in general the Trustbusters (still working out their act) and the Wingmen kept to themselves and didn't work together much. We did get some fresh match-ups though. Kassidy and Kiss come to mind, and as Darius been on the shelf for so long, even the Wingmen and Top Flight working against one another seemed pretty fresh. So in that regard, this was a hit for me. They especially used Takeshita well here, as a big clean-up hitter. I would have liked Bononi teased a bit more (or even get to lean on Kassidy a bit) before the big showdown with Takeshita though. Honestly, I wouldn't mind seeing one of these on Elevation with various guys on the massive roster once a month.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death: 9/12 - 9/18

AEW Dynamite 9/14/22

Bryan Danielson vs. Chris Jericho

MD: Here was stand in 2022, and it's Chris Jericho's career year. Jericho's maybe the definition of a guy whose strengths and weaknesses are two sides of the same coin. He's a bastion of self-awareness, of reinvention, of latching on to commercial, marketable ideas. But that self-awareness always gave him a certain level of self-assuredness, which meant that he'd double down on a misstep or would get defensive if something he was so sure if didn't play exactly how he wanted with the fans. You can go back to his match with RVD twenty years ago or him thinking leaping into an RKO was a far more innovative finish than it was less than ten years ago. In ring, his eyes were bigger than his stomach. That didn't always mean breaking his leg on a shooting star press, but it often meant things not looking quite like they ought to and causing the entire, elaborately staged illusion to fall apart. 

And yet, he's 51 and having his career year. Some of that has to be his opponents and opportunities. But he's not just working smart but working hard as well and holding up his end. No one's carrying him in 2022. He's meeting them halfway, wrestling varied matches even with varied characters. I was higher than most on the All Out match where he, again, worked as the Lionheart. There, on a kayfabe level, he wasn't enough to outwrestle Danielson and had to resort to cheating. Here, as a composite of all that had come before, he still wasn't enough to outwrestle Danielson. Here it took throwing bombs (a German, an early Lionsault, the top rope 'rana) to stay in it. 

That's the brilliance in 2022 Jericho. He's willing to show ass, to wrestle with vulnerabilities, to get outclassed where it matters, but always feels like a dangerous threat. Basically, after decades of doing this, he's finally skirting up against what made Buddy Rose so good, and it's well that he is, as he's relied upon quite a bit to carry the 'territory' in 2022 as people get injured or suspended around him. They worked a fairly complete match of Jericho barely keeping his head above water as Danielson continued to force him down before the leg injury on the outside. That took things into the final third where he pressed his advantage aggressively and effectively as Danielson tried to fight back with one leg. In the end, though, they leaned into the overarching story: Danielson's simply the better wrestler, and this did what it needed to allow him to get his win back and press forward onto the title match to come.

AEW Rampage 9/16/22

Darby Allin vs. Matt Hardy

MD: Matt Hardy is not having his career year. One could argue that was his year as ECW Ace? I probably would. I'm still almost always glad to see him. He's almost as good as anyone on the roster at laying out a match and channeling a crowd. He can still absolutely work smart. After all of the bumps of his career, at 47 going on 48, it's the working hard that's a problem. Personally, I'd take the former over the latter any day. When you have Darby Allin to help create the motion for you, working smart is all you need. This started on the mat before spilling to the outside where they ran a series of clever bits: Matt blocking the tope, the big, debilitating shot into the stairs, Darby's back getting destroyed as he missed the senton onto the apron, the power bomb position charge into the post to cement the back damage. 

After that, the match was carried by Matt's laser-focus and Darby's selling, where it might take him one or two tries not to hit a move but to even get himself in a position to set it up. Matt pressed his size and strength advantage as if it was the most natural thing in the world, which for most of his career, it would not have been. Darby, as always, threw himself at his opponent, but the damage had already been done. It was Matt, unable to put him away even after a splash mountain bomb, hitting a combination of desperation and a crisis-of-expectation and missing the moonsault that Darby was able to sneak back and score a win. Yes, there was reportedly an edit or two here to make Matt's stuff look smoother, but that's why you tape wrestling. If they edited out Matt stumbling on the way up for the moonsault, that could have even come at the detriment of the match. He was ill-advised to go up and lost the match because of it. A slip might have just added to that notion. Regardless, we can only judge what we see, and a match like this shows what Matt is still capable of. Like I said, I'm still almost always glad to see him.

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The 2002 WWF Royal Rumble Match: A Great Royal Rumble Match

ER: I had not watched this Rumble since it originally aired, and I was surprised at just how many specific things I remembered. I have real goldfish brain these days and yet I somehow remembered more about this Rumble than almost any of the 20+ that have happened since. I watched this one specifically for the 2002 Boss Man content. Boss Man was good enough in 2002 that it's worth checking out a 70 minute match for what is no more than a few minutes of Boss Man action. This was his final PPV match appearance before spending the next few months working compelling matches on Heat. Going out like a legend. But this match had a lot more value than just a few minutes of Boss Man. This is one of my favorite Rumbles, one with nothing but great punches and ass kicking. Goldust/Rikishi was a great starting two for this Rumble. Honestly, Goldust making his WWE return and looking this damn good is something that should be brought up every time you talk about Dustin career highlights. He and Rikishi were pacesetters for this, focusing snug punches, fast near eliminations and hard bumps, and at least 15 guys in this Rumble focus on the same. Boss Man is actually the third guy in this whole thing, and in a Rumble where half the men involved made a case for having the best punches in WWF, Big Boss Man made the best case for #1. 

Based on this Rumble alone, the 10 best punchers of 2002 WWF were:

1. Big Boss Man

2. Matt Hardy

3. Val Venis

4. Goldust

5. Perry Saturn

6. Mr. Perfect

7. Chuck Palumbo

8. Christian

9. Scotty 2 Hotty

10. Steve Austin

Goldust/Rikishi/Boss Man makes for a really great fast paced three way, with all taking big bumps and throwing stiff strikes. Goldust gets crotched up top, Boss Man gets whipped into Goldust's groin, and Boss Man slips Rikishi ass over elbow with a running forearm shiver. During his few minutes in the Rumble Match, Boss Man threw upwards of 16 different precise punches to Rikishi's and Goldust's body and face. 

He made the most of his too brief time, then took a real tough elimination: He was the matches' lone Stink Face victim, and it was a particularly aggressive and lengthy, just buried. What were they doing out there. How were we a baby step away from a wrestler being allowed to put his balls in his opponent's mouth or something. Boss Man staggered into a big bump elimination, Rikishi blasting him with a fully extended superkick and a freight train clothesline over the top. I still can't believe how great Boss Man was in 2002. 

Goldust has some of the best in-ring timing of any wrestler of the last 20 years, but we get blessed with an unintentionally hilarious Rumble moment where Goldust starts a corner 10 count punch sequence on Bradshaw at almost the exact same time the countdown clock begins, so you have 13,000 people colliding on numbers with everyone going in different directions. 

Undertaker clearing the ring, laying waste to everyone - Goldust claiming best elimination with his chokeslam bump elimination - was really well done. Undertaker felt like a real force and everyone in 2002 moved like they were somehow injected with extra testosterone. But the best past of Undertaker eating waste was Matt Hardy and Lita beating the shit out of him, and it only got better when Jeff Hardy came in because then all three of them kicked the shit out of him. I wish we got more of that before Taker made his comeback, but I just love the Hardys. The Last Ride on Matt was huge, and Jeff got to distract Taker enough for Maven to make him look like a bug eyed idiot. But they got a lot of good mileage out of the Undertaker/Maven brawl, with Undertaker beating the shit out of the never-eliminated Maven and then walking down the aisle to punch Scott 2 Hotty in the face before just walking back to continue the beating. Maven bleeds and gets dragged into the concourse area, security guards having to actively shove fans out of the way as they crowd in. 

There's a lot of star power, and the guys who get less of a reaction all do stuff to make the crowd pay attention. Christian, DDP, Scotty, Chuck Palumbo, Godfather, Albert, all worked hard for their 1-10 minutes, everyone of them throwing hands and bumping big. DDP had this great tumbling backwards bumps through the ropes after a Scotty superkick; Christian, Palumbo, and Perry Saturn all have a face punching challenge and we are all winners, with Saturn and Chuck especially teeing off on each other. 

The match can be divided up 65/35 between the build to Austin charming the big crowd by running the ring, and the comedown when Austin has to share the ring with HHH. Even though the entire Rumble has good parts, it is top loaded and I like how everyone filled time before HHH was in there. Austin is a great battle royal worker. That's no secret. I love watching him fill time and I loved the gag of him eliminating everyone too quickly, so needing to punch everyone back into the ring to eliminate them again. Austin runs through several guys and it's a weird call to have Val Venis show up for the first time in 8 months and be the first guy in the match to ice down Austin. Turns out, it was a good call. I liked the Austin/Venis stretch so much that I immediately checked for any singles matches they had, and now I'm definitely going to watch their 1999 Smackdown match. I don't think HHH is bad in this Rumble per se, but he's so fucking serious and it kind of spoils all the fun. He's a scowling frowning buzzkill who glowers and sucks the fun out of exchanges, and spends a lot of time lying down and catching his breath. The first 70% of the match is kids having a blast at a sleepover, and the last 30% is like kids still having fun, but it's on a field trip while a teacher keeps telling them to be quiet. 

I really loved this match as Mr. Perfect's last big moment. Making the final three, swatting his gum into the crowd while Austin and HHH try to eliminate. What a guy. Does anyone else swat their gum like they're Mr. Perfect? I think I'd be too afraid of it getting stuck to my hand or whiffing. It takes high levels of confidence to pull Curt Hennig's gum swat success rate. Do you remember the little buzz after Perfect came back after almost a decade? I was on those message boards. I was talking about how great the Perfect/Tommy Dreamer match was on Heat. I didn't know he wouldn't even work 20 matches after that one. Is the Curt Hennig Puerto Rico any good? What about the XWF that he recorded right before returning to WWF? It probably is, and I'll probably watch that along with the Austin/Venis match. This Rumble has a lot of fallout. The push to the finish of the match was exciting enough. Big Show looked really good in the double strap Bundy singlet. Kane lifting, walking, and tossing Big Show over the ropes to eliminate him was legitimately impressive, Kurt Angle had a lot of enthusiasm, the Austin elimination was fairly shocking, and you're left with a 70 minutes match that did not at all feel 70 minutes long. I think that counts as high praise. 

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Found Footage Friday: TULLY~! BUDRO~! HARDY VS HARDY~! GANG~! PITTMAN~! FANTASTICS~! BUSHWHACKERS~!

New Dimension Wrestling 7/18/98

MD: This was a show at a racetrack with Chris Cruise and John Hitchcock announcing and Bruce Mitchell in the crowd. The announcing was as insider as it could get for 1998 as Hitchcock spent the whole night trying to pop himself and his friends. It was a moment in time, so there were crotch chops in about three matches but they still put on a good show overall. 

Ring Masters vs. Rikki Nelson/Colt Steel

MD: I'll move through this one quickly as there's a lot to cover here and I'm not outright skipping anything but Abby vs Ric Link (bloody but not much to it, no great Abby cutoffs and there's a better brawl on the card) and Iron Sheik vs Jimmy Snuka (coolest part was to see Sheik with his giant belly still able to do the club gimmick). Nelson could get great heat. Steel had some good looking takedowns and knees. They were working a gimmick where they were rivals that were teaming for the belt. Ring Masters came in on motorcycles and both kind of looked like Jimmy Jam. Crowd didn't want to back them but they were de facto faces and willing to bump. Colt and Steel were the sort of guys who could carry an indy when the big stars weren't there and this was pretty good accordingly but no one's reading for this one.

Ricky Morton vs. Manny Fernandez

MD: At one point this was supposed to be Manny vs Willy Clay and Ricky vs Sheik, because Snuka got there late, but they shifted things back when he arrived. That would have been morbidly interesting but this was far better. Manny based well and gave a lot early (he was going over). The heat was mostly a chinlock with cut offs but if you're going to do that to anyone in the world, Ricky Morton's the guy. Finish had shenanigans. Manny could have a pretty good ten minute match in 98 but I would have liked a bit more imagination when he was leaning on Morton.

Willow the Whisp vs. Surge

MD: The young guys match where they did everything under the sun. Cruise said that they'd be still watching these guys in twenty years so we weren't quite at the "Matt will be world champion and Jeff will be in a wheelchair" mindset yet. What's funny is that you can absolutely see who Jeff would be in Willow, just in the way he moved and in the dives and bumps, but Matt wasn't close to being who he would be yet. He instead did every move he knew, a bunch of stuff he wouldn't be doing in a couple of years, while Jeff's stuff (like the whisper in the wind) was more unique and would stay with him forever. This served its purpose, being spot after spot that let the announcers say that they weren't just a nostalgia act but on the cutting edge as well.

ER: This was so awesome. This was basically the exact kind of match all of us were hoping to see in 1998 when we traded tapes. When I traded for my first FMW tape around this same time, I was blown away by Hayabusa doing things no more crazy than what Jeff Hardy was doing here, only one guy was doing it in the middle of a literal Olympic swimming pool and the other guy was doing it in the pit area of a southern race track. I love these kind of brother vs. brother showcase matches, two guys who learned together and honed their impressively different styles, unleashing everything they know. Just a few years later we got a match with two under 18 year old Briscoes doing 2 count kickouts after top rope sitout powerbombs and that circle of life continued. I think this kind of match showed good reason why both Hardys sat so high up on DVDVR rankings, that for the time were based on matches that some people had seen live. Had I been seeing this kind of thing in rectory basements or bar backyards in 1998 I would have thought it was the best wrestling in the world, too. I think it was more than just big moves and moving from one spot to the next, as you can see the build and escalation throughout, the big guns coming out the longer the match went on. 

The Hardys were just a month or two away from actually getting wins on WWF TV, and now it's 25 years later and both are still in great matches (Their tag against Private Party earlier this year was one of my favorite TV tags of the year so far) but there's an undeniable melancholy to them still wrecking their bodies, no matter how much I love these two for doing so. Jeff was on the cusp of stardom, and here he is stumble walking his way down the bleacher seats looking no different than any VHS video you've ever seen of a teenage backyarder making a dramatic appearance around the corner of his friend's side yard while Mudvayne blared through someone's JVC Kaboom Box. Jeff brought yarder tendencies to the mainstream and became one of the biggest wrestling stars of the 21st century, 100% deserved. I also like how he still throws stomach kicks the exact same way as he did back then, and how Matt knew how to throw several great punches just as well in 1998. Matt had the kind of punches that made a bunch of us fall in love with worked punches. He has a tornado punch that catches Jeff under the chin, two perfect - and I mean perfect - fistdrops, and the longer this goes the more he starts unwinding his excellent overhand rights. 

This has some fantastic spots and some pro wrestling culture that only those of us who were up to our eyeballs in green board would ever understand. Matt is just tossing off moves like he's flipping through a CAW list, and damn does he make it work. He's just casually tossing out a high lift hotshot, Michinoku driver, middle rope legdrop, and missing a top rope springboard moonsault while Chris Cruise is talking about what a great wrestling fan Mike Lano is. Let me tell you, as a Bay Area wrestling fan who had Mike Lano's gigantic sweatpants-covered ass bent over in my direction far too many times as he took intrusive photos at an indy show, I miss those days of making fun of that dude and his huge ass. Jeff is a total lunatic, breaking out things that most of us just weren't seeing in 1998. He lands a superfly splash right on Matt's head and it was 100% on fucking purpose. This man didn't slip and land on his brother's head, he intentionally leapt onto his face. They duplicate a Rey Mysterio spot and make it look as good or better than Rey, when Jeff gets alley-ooped onto the top rope, sticks the landing with no hands, and flips back into a corkscrew moonsault. Some goober on commentary actually drops a JUSTIN Thunder Liger when making a comp to Japanese wrestling. I had to skip back multiple times to hear a Justin Thunder Liger reference in the wild. I remember my friend dying when he was showing his now ex-wife some Liger matches 20 odd year ago, and her asking where the other guy was. "The other guy?" "Yeah. If this guy is Juice, where's Thunder Liger?" Jeff does a big Sabu flip over the top off a chair, crashing them both onto grass, and Matt hits a gorgeous Asai moonsault, landing perfectly vertical with Jeff's chest. After Matt wins, he turns to the camera and says "I'm getting way too old for this," and it plays with the same wistfulness and past begets present wisdom as Johnny Knoxville hopping and limping and laughing through crash footage from 20 years ago.

Fantastics vs. Bushwhackers

MD: An inversion of the classic feud, though this was Jackie and Bobby with no Tommy. I don't know if I've ever quite seen this version of Bobby, in a red full body suit with dark hair and a complete stooge. He came down to the ring with a huge Buff Bagwell style hat and cut a promo about how they were northerners from Ohio and so on. Then the Bushwhackers came out and talked about southern pride, so that was an aesthetic choice. It did draw "Yankee Scum" chants. First third of this was them running a spot and the Fultons running out to get heat, including apparently taking Bruce Mitchell's chair. Then they did the longest "pumphandle my own partner's arm" spot I've ever seen. I was curious if the Bushwhackers would throw back at all to previous iterations of this match up but if anything, they went the other way with the Fantastics stooging to the utmost. It was still a lot of fun to see once but I'm not sure I'd ever have to see it again. 

Craig Pittman vs. One Man Gang

MD: If this was a no DQ and they let it go, it could have been pretty great actually. Pittman was a replacement for Tony Atlas who was the only no show on the entire card. Probably a big step up in 98 too. After the entrances and the push-ups there wasn't much to this in the ring, with the best part being Pittman taking Gang down. Once it spilled out though, it became a pretty great brawl, with tables flying and a brief time in an enclosed cage-like area by the racetrack. they were just laying in chair shots one after the next at one point. It kind of made me wish that Pittman had gotten a 98 ECW run.

ER: After seeing the mildly amusing ways that OMG stalls for time in the first two minutes of this match, I was not expecting this to devolve into such a spirited ringside brawl. I know how much of a fan Matt is of stalling bullshit era John Studd, so I would have expected more love for Gang demanding Pittman remove his belt before starting the match, lest it be used as a weapon. Gang himself devolving things into a weapons brawl a couple minutes later is the kind of dumb heel stuff I love. Just the visual of Gang - the largest man in Concord, NC at the time of this match - demanding an even playing field is great. Pittman hit his peak as a pro wrestler in 1997, when he returned to WCW TV working a much more overt heel style. Due to his military background he spent most of his career with that hanging over him as a babyface, but his punishing style fit so much better as a heel. I can only imagine how well he could have integrated that into Inoki's early 2000s New Japan. 

When this spilled to the floor we got some fun bits of magic, including both Pittman and Gang taking bigger than expected bumps on grass, Pittman spilling painfully over the announce table (Chris Cruise getting upset about his spilled drink in the process), Gang bumping painfully over a chain link fence, and both delivering some hard and some not hard chair shots that still looked painful. Gang even hit Pittman with the metal bar of a camping chair, which I don't think I've seen. I particularly liked when the referee tried to get Gang's chair away from him, and Gang held it up for him to take, then just punched him in the stomach. They punch their way to the exit, Pittman torpedo headbutts Gang in the back, and a shirtless fan holds Pittman back from attacking further. 

Buddy Landel vs. Tully Blanchard

MD: This went 30 and I think there was a high spot at the 20 minute mark and another around the 25 minute mark, but it was still pretty great. They spent a huge chunk of this just trading toeholds with each other, one guy taking down the other, jockeying for positioning, working the escape and then turning it around, up and then down, but never really shifting to rope running. Instead, there were little flourishes like leaving the ring or the head games of a clean handshake or jawing with one another. All of the takedowns looked smooth but competitive and it had a title match feel, leaning even further into that mat-based style than usual. I'm honestly surprised that Landel wasn't stooging more because he was more than capable but maybe Blanchard, who was more of a de facto babyface than anything else, didn't want to play into it much. He did one strut at the beginning but that was about it.

When they did pick up the pace, it was just for one spot that would clearly gave Landel the advantage for the last third. Tully taking out his own leg in the corner looked great, and his selling was spot on as he tried to punch his way back on one leg at times, and otherwise survive the figure-four and continued toeholds. It led to a moment where Tully's leg gave out and he dropped Landel on his own head and on Landel's all at once and both guys sold the impact all the way to the roll up out of nowhere finish. It wasn't the match I was expecting, but in a lot of ways it was just as good if not better.

ER: I thought this was excellent. Tully barely worked post-WWF and any time he would show up anywhere he would look like he's barely lost a step. The only weird thing about retirement Tully is that seeing him was such a rarity that his appearance would always turn him babyface, so we had these weird glimpses of a natural heel working babyface-by-default matches once a year in front of 100 fans and occasionally 3,000 fans every 10 years. It's a weird career and I've yet to be anything but impressed by retirement Tully. This match has to be the peak of what I've seen. This goes an actual 30 minutes and I loved it. It's as minimalist as you can get, but the up close camera work really benefits two guys who are great close-up workers, making a match with hardly any "moves" into something special. Also, we should take a second to appreciate how great Buddy Landel's hair looks here. Usually you don't see such healthy well-conditioned bleached hair, which only lends credence to Buddy really being all natural. 

This was a mat-based match and would have fit right in on the Muga card Tully worked a couple years prior. The stooging was kept shockingly sparse. I say "shockingly" because when you go into a 30 minute main event on a card utilizing a 1/2 mile stock-car track as a backdrop, you'd be right to expect a lot of bullshit. The bullshit was quick and always built the match a bit more, usually it was something as simple as a long hold finally broken up in the ropes, and Buddy rolling to the grass to throw a chair down in a little micro-tantrum. There wasn't a ton of crowd work although both guys were in tune with the crowd. No, the bulk of this was leg work and it was tight, focused and entertaining leg work with interesting interludes. It was a match filled with great small moments, like Buddy Landel's punches or Tully running right at Buddy's leg with a straight kick. Both sold the work well and never skipped steps. Tully was a bastard about how he attacked the leg - kicking it in the ropes, even swinging at it with a clothesline from his knees - that when Buddy turned the tables he dialed it up even more. 

I loved Buddy working a toehold and egging Tully on, getting Tully to throw punches from his back while Buddy kept asking for it right in the chin and pulling his head back. Tully's missed running knee into the buckles looked really nasty, and his staggered selling and unreliable base was really compelling, still swinging at Landel but a step slower. Landel had some classic asshole stuff when he he knew Tully was wounded, even doing a hilarious bit where he held an Indian deathlock while smoking an invisible cigarette. For a match that had basically a couple physics-based Tully armdrags as the major highspots, Tully's knee buckling on a suplex and turning into a spike brainbuster was a helluva a thing to happen. The spot was so crazy that whoever edited this tape showed the brainbuster in slow motion three straight times right after it happened. And yet, Tully and Buddy sold it so perfectly that these dudes might have just meant to do that crazy damn spot. I can sometimes be a high voter on heavyweight minimalist wrestling, but I watch a match like this and can't help but think of all those Ric Flair/Terry Taylor matches that so many people loved on the 80s Watts set, and I know that those matches felt like a weak version of Blanchard/Landel. 

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AEW Five Fingers of Death: Week of 5/30 - 6/5

AEW Dynamite 6/1

CM Punk/FTR vs. Max Caster/Gunn Club

MD: Obviously, it's hard to watch this one back and not be on the lookout for how Punk is hurt. They really build to him coming in the first time and he's there for the hot tag at the end, so there's not a ton of it but it was a little striking how often he went up to the top in that short time he was in there, a double axehandle to start, the body block back off the ropes, the elbow drop on Caster, the springboard attempt that goes wrong on his way in. The Gunns, Austin especially, with his manic energy, have a lot of potential, but they're not there yet. I've come around on Austin's chop block to take out the legs. The first times I saw it, it felt inadvertent, a move of opportunity that shouldn't come up every match, but now he seems to look for it more, as part of his overarching strategy. He's great at reacting when he knows something is coming, when it's a planned spots, but you never know when the crowd is going to start an ass boys chant and he's not always so great at organically working that in. Punk, on the other hand, old pro that he is, can switch a facial expression or little appeal to the crowd mid-sequence depending on how they're reacting. Most of the match was the heat on Dax, and it was good, with a great cut off to lead into the commercial as Dax knocked two of his opponents out of the ring only to have them rush around to take out Punk and Cash off the apron. The fact he put them in position to do so made it even better. Having Billy to sneak in a punch and Bowens to use the crutch only helped matters. Any issues with the match down the stretch were due to Punk's foot, and the internal feeling in your gut that we'll be missing out on what this pairing might have been the start of.

Matt Hardy/Christian Cage/Darby Allin/Jurassic Express vs. Hikuleo/Young Bucks/ReDragon

MD: This was the homecoming match for the Bucks and was going to showcase them while also theoretically giving a little attention to Hikuleo in advance of Forbidden Door, given that Cole is apparently banged up. It wasn't going to be for me but I thought the structure was generally effective for what they were trying to do. Here, there the sort of shine where everyone got to get their stuff in before the dives were all to set up the transition, by clearing the ring so that you were left with Christian and the Bucks. The most interesting moment in there was Christian interacting with Matt Hardy for a moment. Anyway, it meant that Christian worked as face-in-peril during the commercial which is always where they stick the heat, and even though it was a fairly pro-Bucks crowd, by the end of it, there was a chant for him because he's one of the best traditional babyfaces in the company. I know people are itching for the Express to lose the titles and Christian to turn on Jungle Boy but I've always much preferred Christian as a face and there's about another thirty match-ups I'd like to see him have in the company before such a turn. After the hot tag to Luchasaurus it all broke down like you'd expect, an extended, chaotic finishing stretch leading to the Bucks ascendant. Hikuleo got to show a few things here defensively, jamming the chokeslam attempt, catching a dive, no selling Hardy's slams into the corner, but he didn't do much of anything on offense which seemed like a bit of a missed opportunity. This wasn't anything I was particularly looking forward to but it gave the crowd things that they wanted and had enough good things that it did me no lasting harm.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death Part 2: AEW Revolution 3/6/22

AEW Revolution 3/6

Eddie Kingston vs. Chris Jericho - EPIC

MD: I wondered how Jericho was going to handle this one. There were limitations due to the card. In a world without MJF vs Punk they could have done a bloody brawl or something more cinematic. In a world without Danielson vs Mox, they could have had an absolute slugfest. What we got instead was the most in shape Jericho has been in years and him pushing himself to the limit physically to work a Kingston match. That meant the perfect mix of hard strikes, big selling, and nasty bombs.

Eddie was going to be Eddie. He's a constant, always on, always filling the gap, always thinking, always acting, always hitting as hard as he can and leaning into everyone else's shots to make them twice as resonant. Jericho, however, was absolutely present, selling the emotion of the match, responding to the fans' chants, getting into it with Aubrey to get more heat after a near-fall. He started out from a deficit, getting caught with the half and half immediately. The hole was only going to get deeper when the striking shot because he couldn't match Eddie's chops (in fact, no amount of leaning in that Eddie did could fully justify how much he was selling for Jericho on them).

What he did instead was acutely target Eddie's orbital bone with pinpoint shots. That paid out throughout the match. When he wanted to hit the top rope frankensteiner, he'd shoot a palm strike up first. When he wanted to cut off Eddie in the corner, it would be with a jab to the eye. Of course, Eddie was Eddie and would shoot a poke right back at Jericho. Likewise, Jericho was Jericho and instead of leaning wholly into his strengths, he had to try to outsuplex Eddie with a number of Germans and one amazing Foley-like bump from Kingston off the apron to the floor. It all built to Eddie surviving the Walls, Jericho surviving the backfist, then almost winning by hitting a first codebreaker onto the orbital bone. Eddie bumped for a second codebreaker as hard anyone ever took it, but Jericho's ego and spite won out. He went for a Judas Effect to crush Eddie's face instead of going for the pin and Eddie was able to capitalize with two backfists and the world's most over the top stretch plum. Eddie's match is a hell of a thing, something that wears all of its influences on its sleeve but while making everything matter and everything hit emotionally, and Jericho jumped headlong into it better than anyone could have expected.

PAS:  Eddie just delivers every time in big matches. This was Kingston Road Eddie, which isn't always my favorite style of his, but it was a great version of it. As always Eddie elevates the match over a regular All Japan pastiche by his amazing selling, loved all of the stuff around the eye, and how vicious Jericho was. Potato shot Jericho isn't the way he normally works, but it is my favorite version of him, and he was matching Eddie with every blow, some of those suplexes were really sick, and good on old man Jericho for taking those head drops, and it made total sense for his old crickly neck to be the thing that did him in with the Stretch Plum.

CM Punk vs. MJF

MD: I've watched this one twice now and I appreciate the work and the effort certainly. I appreciate the thought put into it. Nothing is in there without a reason. Everything builds from something else, whether something from four decades ago, two decades ago, or two months ago. The announcers did a fairly heroic job in connecting the dots and laying everything out for the audience, on the understanding that the fans in the crowd would be the most hardcore possible and would know enough to begin with to follow along for most of it. And overall, I did think it worked.

There were things I outright loved. I loved the build early on to the chain being used as a punch-enhancing weapon. I'm a proponent of the gimmick immediately being present and having an indirect impact on what happens in a match but also being built up for an early payoff. That's true with a cage or barbed wire or a chain. Here it impacted movement and was used indirectly and the punch was teased a few times, but when it paid off, it was on MJF's hand and led to Punk gushing. That followed, by the way, MJF using the chain to block Punk's bulldog out of the corner, so it was the ultimate indirect use of the chain leading to the first meaningful direct use of it, which, in turn, led to the blood. By the way, the corner bulldog would come up again twice later, first Punk hitting it with the chain wrapped to avoid the indirect counter and then MJF trying it onto the thumbtacks, which was him, once again, showing his hubris and needing to vanquish Punk with his own move.

Once Punk's gusher started, we got what I thought was the most important moment of the match and the entire feud, when Max took the mic and reiterated that Punk abandoned and betrayed him. Even after the victory in Chicago, even after the ambush last week, even after bloodying him with the chain, Punk was in MJF's head, he had no catharsis, and he lashed out at the fans for not going along with him and seeing him as the hero of his own story. This is pro wrestling and one feud has to move on to the next and Wardlow was waiting in the wings, but that was the moment that signified that no matter how else everything played out in the match itself, the feud could end and Punk could win it. In many ways, it proved he already had.

Still, the match had to get there, and I think it moved along fairly well, through the crushing of the hand, through the submission attempts, through the wrapped knee opening MJF up, through Punk dragging Max around the ring (though that felt a little too collaborative to me), through Punk shattering his knee on the stairs, right up until the tombstone on the apron. That's when things veered off a bit. It was one too many clever spots in a match that could be allowed to be clever, but only up to the point where that ingenuity didn't get in the way of the visceral violence. To me, the tombstone and the thumbtacks that followed ended up as one too many spots from the head when they should have been laying it into each other down the stretch instead. Maybe it's okay because Max had already lost himself the war. Maybe it's okay because he'd already bled (though not nearly enough). Maybe it's okay because Wardlow had learned his worth and was about to show it to the world, but maybe okay isn't what the match was going for and maybe that final patch of being okay snatched away just a touch of greatness. Just a touch though, since there was still a lot of greatness to be found.

Bryan Danielson vs. Jon Moxley

PAS: Wrote this up for The Ringer  . Easily one my favorite matches of the year.

MD: Phil's covered this already and at length, but I'll lead with this: with Punk and MJF, I saw the strings. I appreciated the work and effort put into them. I liked most (but not all of them), but there was never a moment in the match that they weren't clear for everyone to see. It's 2022. That's ok. But.

There were definitely strings in Mox vs Danielson. There were parallels. Mox went for the big clothesline twice before hitting it. Danielson focused on the ribs for a time. They had parallels towards the end with the submissions and the specific flip over counters. They had Danielson and Moxley both use the hammer and anvil elbows and the repeated kicks to the face. There was thought put into this, but there were also absolutely zero gaps to be found.

There were strings because there had to be strings because not all of it could have just been intuitive, but you have to exhume them after the fact, a dry listed out post-mortem at the brains behind the heart. Because this match was all heart and all emotion and all intensity. Every second of it had both guys completely on, completely in the moment, driving forward. If Kingston vs Jericho were a series of moves and moments that all fit the character and all made sense and all hit hard, this was a twenty minute primal scream, airtight blood, and violence, and technique. Danielson, over the last few weeks in interviews, likened this level of intensity to being as close to god as he could possibly be.

Mox wrote an entire book that espouses his philosophy on wrestling and life and you can watch it play out on screen in his matches. With Mox, it was the early egging on, hands behind his back, the headbutts, the burst of energy when he finally hit the clothesline. With Danielson, it was that moment after Mox kicked out of the flying knee, when he just shook his head again and again and again, horrified that he didn't win but elated that there was more to come. Horror and elation sums this one up pretty well as a viewer too.

Darby Allin/Sammy Guevara/Sting vs. Andrade/Isiah Kassidy/Matt Hardy

PAS: Perfect palate cleansing match in between the Moxley vs. Danielson and title match. Just 13 minutes of car crash spots, including two of the crazier garbage spots I can remember (and shockingly neither included Darby, the rare match where he is out nutsed). The stage dive Spanish fly through two tables was so psycho that it really should have been saved for a different match where it could stand out, the level of difficulty on that spot was wild, one one wrong inch could have gone very wrong. Of course Sting diving off of a balcony through two tables was totally wild, the stacked tables meant he didn't have to fall as a far, but that is an insane thing for a 60 year old guy to do, what a treat this Sting run has been, he has just been perfect.

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AEW All Out 9/5/21 Pt. 1

Private Party/Jack Evans/Angelico/Matt Hardy vs. Jungle Boy/Orange Cassidy/Luchasaurus/Wheeler Yuta/Chuck Taylor

PAS: This was a match full of guys I am a low voter on (I like Jungle Boy, Hardy and Jack Evans a fair amount, the rest aren't for me), but this kind of fast moving 10 man is a good way to hid limited guys and keep things moving at a nice pace. The Private Party have some fun SAT's double teams, and didn't have to do things they couldn't do. The top rope blockbuster by Jungle Boy was a great spot, and they did some amusing Chikara stuff like the chicken fight and submission chain, and left slow motion spots and invisible grenades in the trash where they belong. I don't know why Chuck Taylor did two dives to the floor and Jack Evans did none and Luchasarus needs to dump the spin kick when Tommy End is in your fed, but otherwise this got Cassidy and Jungle Boy on the show and it is smart to get really over acts like them to open a show. 

Eddie Kingston vs. Miro - EPIC

PAS: The first real Eddie Kingston classic we have seen in AEW. This was King's Road Eddie, he maybe the only US wrestler to actually understand what made those All Japan matches so special, and it wasn't the moves it was the meaning. Eddie and Miro really beat the hell out of each other with Miro landing great looking kicks and straight rights and Eddie absolutely beating the hell out of Miro's chest and neck with blood blistering chops. I loved the little selling Eddie did throughout the match, eyes getting glassy after eating big shots, never fully able to get movement in his back after getting powerslammed on the floor, shaking out his fingers when Miro bit them, masterful stuff from one of the greatest sellers in wrestling history. All of the stuff with the turnbuckle pad was great business. Remsberg being a beat too slow on the Kingston pinfall, him stopping Kingston from slamming Miro into the turnbuckle only to be out of position and miss the low blow. This is how you protect an over babyface like Eddie, he was the better man, but lost out due to fate. This is another level performance by Miro and another feather in Eddie's all time resume. 

ER: Incredible, passionate performance for Eddie Kingston, a guy with a career's worth of great passionate matches. He's the guy I currently want to see against every other wrestler, the guy I think is most likely to have someone's best match (at least until Hero gets back). And if there's a Miro match I've ever enjoyed more, it's been many years since it happened, as these two really tapped into something. This is the coolest version of Miro we've gotten, and I love Eddie in big title matches so I was buzzed about it. Eddie got to have a great selling match, working a ton of match long bits in between quick bursts of damaging Miro. Eddie brings that ability to have a chance in any moment of the match, the same way Fujiwara was always in it. Kingston could lose every single match he's in for two years straight and people will still believe he has a chance the next match. It's a strong connection and it elevates his biggest singles matches. 

I fully bought into how big each guy was missing, both running hard into turnbuckles and guardrails, and I also bought into how both would immediately come firing back. Kingston firing off the guardrail with a yakuza kick or how Miro would scream into Eddie. Eddie's chops really did look blistering, and the way all of his offense had these triumphant builds due to the way Miro had avoided them really added to his aura. Seeing Kingston finally land his tope or his backfist really meant something, and the two suplexes he hit looked like a title change. I really liked all the nonsense with the turnbuckle, loved the way it played out. Miro's winning combo was like something Kingston himself would set up: A mule kick low, big high kick, and a big exclamation point running kick to turn out the lights. Great presentation, great title match. 

Jon Moxley vs. Satoshi Kojima

PAS: This was a solid hard hitting New Japan style match which I think was hurt a bit by following Kingston and Miro doing a better version of a similar thing. They really put Kojima over on commentary and it is cool he got to have a big US moment like this. Stuff landed with thuds and I thought Kojima got several big near falls (without ever hitting his Koji lariat), the DDT on the apron looked appropriately nasty and the bloody elbow from Moxley added a bit of spice to the match. But this had a lot of the elbow strike, make a face, elbow strike stuff which I don't like in current Japanese wrestling. Suzuki coming out post match felt like a big moment and I like how AEW takes advantage of an open door policy to have surprises like this.

2021 MOTY MASTER LIST

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 3/3/21

What Worked

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

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

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

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

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

What Didn't Work

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

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

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

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

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

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

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 2/3/21

What Worked

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

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

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

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

What Didn't Work

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

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

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

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 12/16/20

What Worked

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

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

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

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

What Didn't Work

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

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

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

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

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

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

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 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.

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On Brand Segunda Caida: 1995 WWF

Hunter Hearst Helmsley vs. Matt Hardy WWF Raw 7/10/95

ER: What a squash! A great 3 minute, one-sided, demoralizing beatdown. And yet despite it being one-sided, Hardy never felt quite out of it. Part of that is because 20 year old Matt Hardy is the exact same size as HHH was at 25, so this match reads more like a violently stiff Lenny Lane vs. Kidman match. We get a long cool firm headlock sequence with some nice takeovers, and some big armdrags. But things really painfully leap up to the next level when HHH just waylays Hardy in the corner, laying in some cruel strikes. It starts with a big right hand, and then another, and then HHH throws two whipping chops that graze off Hardy's collarbones and into the underside of his chin, and as HHH throws these two lightning fast knife edges right with his left arm, he follows up with an impossible to block right full arm shot to the stomach. The whipping shot to the stomach lands so hard, just an echoing slap. HHH was working as a real bully and he came off like same era Dave Taylor at times. I don't think I've ever thought to compare HHH with Dave Taylor, so you know this is a tremendous compliment. Hardy takes the Pedigree nearly as violently as Cham Pain took his famous killshot, but I don't think I've ever seen Hardy's take championed. This was a gnarly diagonal landing, the guy who didn't check the pool was empty before diving in. What a great mauling.


Owen Hart/Yokozuna vs. Razor Ramon/Savio Vega WWF Raw 8/7/95

ER: This was a rematch from the week prior, when the show actually went off the air with a classic "We're out of time!" I had no idea they were doing those in 1995! That first match had a pretty cheap moment, where Razor pinned Owen clean after the Razor's Edge, then Hebner - who counted the 3 - decided that Owen wasn't actually the legal man. I'm not sure why you'd actually make the ref go all the way through with the pinfall. Hebner is a really terrible actor, totally the wrong guy to trust in that kind of situation. He counted the 3 and then immediately was just like "no, no, no, you didn't win the match, dummy!" It really needed a referee who could facially take responsibility for the major boner that had been entirely his fault. A second official coming in to alert Hebner to the problem would have been silly, as the second official was almost always an inconsistent crutch to use, but it at least would have made more sense than Hebner counting the 3 and the immediately telling Razor that Razor should have paid better attention. VERY poorly handled.

So they start off the next Raw with an immediate rematch, and the rematch absolutely smoked. This was the absolute best Owen Hart performance I've seen since I started casually skimming my way through 1995 WWF. Owen is a guy who deservedly gets a lot of love, but consider me underwhelmed as I dive back into mid 90s WWF. Literally the day before I watched this match, I was talking to friends about how I was really starting to think Owen was one of the more overrated workers of the era, and how I don't think I could find a place for him on a Top 20 1995 WWF list. I'm still not certain he has a spot in the Top 20 (there were some GREAT performers on the roster that year and he has a tendency to get outshined within his own matches regularly), but with another performance or two like this it would be pretty impossible to keep him off. His timing is so integral to this match, and this match is a killer highlight of the kind of in-ring charisma he and Razor could have together on the right night. Owen and Razor kept working faster the longer the match went, both taking big bumps to the floor (Owen taking a super fast one that almost flings him face first into the guardrail, Razor getting launched so far over the top rope that several kids in the front row actually leapt backwards thinking Razor was going to fly right into them, just insane), and really laying in shots like I haven't seen him do all year. He hits his spinning heel kick so perfectly that it stops Razor cold, to the point that I thought it could have been the finish. It wasn't like he kicked Razor's teeth out either, the timing was just expert (with a wonderful sell from Razor), and you've never seen him crush somebody like he does while Razor is draped over the middle rope. I've seen Owen bounce off a draped opponent countless times, and here he just flies full weight into Razor.

Yoko was really fun from the apron, grabbing at Razor's hair on rope running spots while laughing gleefully. He took some big spills and got lit up by babyfaces when he was in. Savio's hot tag was fire, throwing stiff chops and punches at Yoko in the corner, just immediately making up that 300 lb. (!!) size difference, then pasting Yoko with his own awesome spinning heel kick. I honestly think the two best spinning heel kicks of 1995, from either Owen or Savio, came during this match. It wasn't just the execution, but their placement within the match. Razor was such a strong babyface, and I love matches like these were he plays FIP and works to all sides of the crowd. He really comes off like a proto-Austin or even Cena, as his fired up big babyface punches are thrown into matches the exact same way those two would, and he has that extra crowd connection those two had. There's an alternate timeline where Razor is the top star of the fed going into the late 90s, and performances like this show that it absolutely would have worked.

Sadly, we also get a bad finish on this one, as Razor and Owen suddenly go to the floor to brawl, one of those very obvious "We need to clear the ring so the finish can happen!" moments. It's not a terrible finish if the execution had been better, but Yoko flattened Savio with a Samoan drop and legdrop, right in front of Razor, but Razor had disposed of Owen too early and then had to occupy himself to make sure he was too late to save Savio. So Razor - only 5 feet away from being able to yank Yoko's leg - runs around the ring and comes in much farther away. Poor planning and positioning, really bad. BUT, this match was a real treasure trove, featuring performances that would rank at or near the top of all of these guys' 1995 output.

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 6/24/20

What Worked

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


What Didn't Work

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

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 5/27/20

I didn't watch one cool second of the PPV, and I'm late to the broadcast tonight because it was my mom's birthday. How old is my mom? 69. How many 69 jokes did I make while visiting my parents? Not a single one.

What Worked

-Dead Stock Stadium Stampede Champions shirts is a funny joke concept, liked Jericho's delivery throughout the bit.

-I also laughed when Schiavone said "Yeah well a lot of us are fans of Wilbur Snyder" because JR brings up Wilbur Snyder the same way my grandpa would tell me the same story every few minutes toward the end of his run.

-Matt Hardy moves like he can't really bend his knees, but I can't deny that he is busting butt in AEW. He looks a little slimmed down, he cracked Kassidy with his big punch, he's quicker, and I loved his moonsault that landed perfectly across Private Party and Janela. I would like it if Matt kept up this Barry Darsow gimmick of cycling through his different eras. We need some plaid tights.

-Lee Johnson is the Job King of AEW, and I now want to see him get more ring time than the majority of AEW guys I see. This guy did not have to take a German suplex on the top of his shoulders, and yet he did. This man is wrecking his spine on buckle bombs and then decided he would also take a powerbomb on his neck. Respect this man.

-Britt "Roll Model" Baker is wonderful. I wasn't sure if something was actually wrong or if she was just playing her role in last week's tag really well, but this is making me an even bigger fan of hers. Although she started her rules for being a role model at #3. Feels like I missed a couple of important ones.

-If they have to put Kip Sabian, Jimmy Havoc, Scorpio Sky, and Frankie Kazarian on TV this much, at least they all end up in the same match. Wait, WHY do they have to put these guys on TV this much?

-Good battle royal with several noteworthy performances. Dr. Luther is a signing that people made fun of, but I've always liked him. Here he threw some nice right hands to send Marko across the ring, then threw him hard and bumped bumped huge for a chokeslam to the apron. Sonny Kiss had some nice stuff opposite MJF and also bumped big to the floor. Really this match was filled with guys taking big elimination bumps. Daniels generously bumped a Stunt rana to the floor, Cabana got tossed, several people did decent "hanging by a thread" dangles, Luchasaurus really went after MJF's throat on a chokeslam, and I liked Luchasaurus' punches and high kick during his showdown with Wardlow (the sequence itself was dumb, with both immediately going through a slow delay stand and trade, but the shots looked good). This was a good battle royal.

-Dug the Inner Circle segment as AEW bringing in a bunch of fighters is a completely awesome thing. Turn this shit into Zero-1 and bring in modern equivalents to Sean McCully. Vitor Belfort needs to come back and just kick the shit out of Kip Sabian and Jimmy Havoc in a handicap match. Give me a bunch of MMA guys with under 5 pro fights and let them shoot punch the Best Friends in the face. Dr. Luther is nuts, let's see Tyson speed bag his big head. This should be awesome.


What Didn't Work

-Hikaru Shida is a master at making her opponents awkwardly get into position for her offense. She cannot go two moves without her opponent needing to scoot several feet into the correct spot. Look at all that stuff on the top part of this show! Everything made it to the top! Look at how tenderhearted I am, praising nearly an entire episode of Dynamite! But Hikaru Shida is very much not good.

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 5/20/20

What Worked

-Ten makes his Dynamite debut and his offense looked better than Moxley's. I liked his spinebuster, I liked his shot to the back of Moxley's head while Moxley was weirdly touching Aubrey Edwards' face, and the post match arm breaking angle looked good.

-I wouldn't have had money on MJF being the best squash match worker in the company, but here we are. AEW is filled with big guys who worked slow paced squashes while making dumb faces at the camera, or top stars who work way too competitive with bad structure. Here, Blackface MJF (MJG?) knows how to leave Marko openings by being cocky, and his established goofy selling works really well when used to mock Stunt's ineffectiveness (like when he sold a sunset flip by hammily waving his arms and bugging his eyes - the way he typically sells a sunset flip - only to reveal he was in no danger of going down). The shoulderbreaker looked great, him catching Marko in the ring skirt and missing a hard axe handle to the apron looked great, and he took a fantastic bump into the ring steps. I look forward to MJF matches now, which was not a thing I used to do.

-Arn has a sweater vest with Cody's bad logo on it!! Not a surprise that a talking segment with Arn and Jake is going to work. They aren't quite as quick as they used to be, but there are still going to be some great pull quotes when you let these two talk for a few minutes. I particularly liked Jake - boiler stretching buttons - accusing Arn of "looking a little thick".

-Wow, I really loved Fenix/Cassidy. This was one of the greatest Fenix performances of the past year, and I did not expect him to work so great as Cassidy's foil. He played into early match comedy (that was limited nicely to just the first minute or so), and him kicking and headbutting turnbuckles felt like a well done vintage Super Porky opponent spot. The rest of the match he worked really vicious, loved his big springboard legdrop, loved him doing little things like kicking Cassidy in the temple whenever he was on the mat too long, his nasty baseball slide dropkick, and thought his timing was super tight. Perhaps most importantly, he made Cassidy's offense look really dangerous, and the way he took a tornado DDT and a diving DDT was worth the cost of admission, and that was before he got dropped hard with a air raid crash. He really knows how to spike himself and make it look like a guy getting spiked. The Kip Sabian stuff at the end was dumb, but the match itself was incredibly fun.

-Hardy/Guevara was good, even though I think it went a little too long. I especially liked the first part of the match with Sammy eating a beating on the outside. Sammy is really good at flying into objects. He can make a spot like getting pulled into the ringpost a couple times look really nasty, and he flies into guardrails more enthusiastically than anyone else in AEW. Matt Hardy has been moving quicker since debuting in AEW, not sure if his body healed up from not being used often over the past year or he's just really going full effort in AEW, but the energy is good. Sammy's comeback segments were fun, loved his payback by smashing Hardy's face into the ringpost. Things did feel a bit too back and forth and I would have preferred a match without so much "stuff", but they worked like a main event and it came off mostly well.

-The endzone brawl was a cool visual and nice change of scenery, and it may have been the most interesting work from Hangman Page in a couple months. I love guys running in from long distances, and him doing a 100 yard dash to run the length of the football field - but not in a funny joke payoff spot - is something I can get behind. They've gone for laughs so many times in their big brawls that the whole thing worked because things that could have been silly - Page being on the other side of the stadium for some reason and needing to run at full speed to save his friends - was played straight. Page throwing hard right hands when he finally arrived didn't hurt.


What Didn't Work

-Not sure the last time I saw three straight dives end with three straight bodies flying directly into the ground, but somehow six men managed to whiff on catching Fenix, Cabana, and Cassidy, all in under a minute. After Fenix tope con hilo'd to the floor, I took stock of Jimmy Havoc, Kip Sabian, and you just know having all the worst guys on your roster out there was going to result in them all botching the one job they had.

-Had high hopes for this one, as I think a tag format is a much smarter way to use the women, rather than the messy 4 ways they always throw out there. And I think this was not far from being on the top side of the page, but fell a little short. I thought the long Nyla control segment was really good, with her straight leveling Statlander with a big pounce to start her control. Stomping her head, kicking her to the floor in the neck, dropping a nice legdrop, nice slow heel control. It also played to Britt Baker's strong apron work, as Britt is really good at making shirt collar tugging faces and not rushing to tag in. The match dipped when Shida and Statlander made their comebacks. Stuff looked sloppy, Shida stuff comes up light, but it's not bad. Shida makes up for weak offense with energy and charisma, and it does close up some of the gap. I liked when Baker finally had to tag in, thought her stumbling control and stooging with Statlander was good. Match had some miscommunication, but I could see this tag being run back next week and being actively good. And I couldn't see that happening if this was just a 4 way.

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