2022 Ongoing MOTY List: Villano IV vs. Pentagon Jr. MASK MATCH!

1. Villano IV vs. Pentagon Jr. AAA TripleMania XXX 10/15

ER: There's nothing else in wrestling like a big lucha show with a mask match main event. AAA has run some major mask matches over the last several years. I really loved LA Park vs. La Parka, and the Psycho Clown/Dr. Wagner match from a few years ago turned Psycho into maybe the biggest star in Mexico, while also revealing Dr. Wagner Jr. to be the most handsome man in Mexico. CMLL ran my favorite modern mask match, Villano V vs. Blue Panther, the perfect combination of two legends defending two of the most legendary masks in Mexico, fighting to keep two of the most legendary identities in lucha history. Villano IV had an awesome 2022, a 57 year old man who worked the entire year as if he knew this was his final year, and this match was the culmination of that. AAA running a year long Ruleta de la Muerte tournament all around Mexico was an awesome idea, leading to big matches at all of the Triplemanias. Villano IV had big matches against LA Park, Psycho Clown, and this final against Pentagon Jr. 

Pentagon is a guy who became a big star when all of the taped Lucha Underground matches started airing in 2015, an immediate standout on a show that blew everyone away with their first season. No wrestling show over the past 15 years has felt more fresh than that debut LU season, and Pentagon was a major part of that. Once the messiness of the LU contracts was sorted out, he and Fenix were the guys who really capitalized on their LU presence, and began showing up on indy cards all over the country. As his star grew, Pentagon quickly became a guy who stopped growing as a wrestler, because it's a whole helluva lot easier to get by on catchphrases and the Cero Miedo gesture. When huge crowds cheer for you just as loudly when you do your catchphrase as they do when you fall head first through a table, the choice is insanely easy. Pentagon quickly became a guy I went from loving, to one that I rarely go out of my way to watch, but there was no way I was missing him in a mask match main event against one of my favorite luchadors.

Any time a Villano has been in a mask match this decade - and it's actually shocking how many big Villano mask matches we've gotten in the past decade - my brain always compares it to Panther/V5. That's really become the benchmark mask match for me, maybe the benchmark lucha match, maybe the benchmark match period. I love it. Villano IV and V are such in-ring clones of each other (they are no longer visual clones, as V looks like a B-movie mafia villain or a Bam Margera uncle now) that I always wondered what Villano IV would have done if he had his own mask match against Panther. And now that he's 57 and has wrestled for 42 of those years - 75% of his life! - we're finally getting all of the big Villano IV mask matches. This started with Pentagon flying into a backdrop on the entrance ramp and ended with both men dripping blood while their ripped masks barely covered their faces. This was a fight, with none of that old man lucha grace. Pentagon is in awesome shape right now, lean and mean and excited to punch and be punched by an old man in the throat. Villano really puts the boots to the young punk (late 30s is young in lucha years), with some sick trash can shots and a bunch of punctuated left and right hooks. Villano takes time to savor the punches, even holding Pentagon up by the mask to punch him. When Pentagon tries to powerbomb him, Villano just punches him in the neck. 

Pentagon threw himself into a lot of bumps, and when he started throwing his body into Villano he went big. Villano threw such disrespectful punches to start this thing that you knew the old man was gonna get those paid back. Pentagon wiped out IV and V with a tope con giro, and I loved how we got a ton of Villano family reactions as Pentagon laid in a beating on the floor. Pentagon threw Villano across the floor like Pedro Martinez throwing Don Zimmer, a real fight on the floor. Wrestling has a lot of strike exchanges  that I hate now, but I loved these exchanges. The timing was off just enough and they really connected on these shots. These weren't mirror exchanges, this was Pentagon hitting a superkick under Villano's chin and Villano responding with the hardest chop he can throw, with all of it devolving into punches. Pentagon threw some really damaging looking leg kicks, like he was really trying to tire Villano out. When he threw a leg kick to set up a punch that set up a superkick, he executed it all so well that it looked like the best version of Pentagon. 

The big push to the finish has big stuff, like guys going through tables and a 57 year old man getting his guts stomped out by an all time great double stomp. But they balanced the big stuff with missed submission swerve finishes, and great timing on all of the nearfalls. I loved how loud the crowd got when Villano locked in the octopus hold, and the octopus hold cradle felt like the most dangerous finisher in the moment. I always get choked up when they show people crying in the crowd during unmaskings, a moment that hits me harder than any kind of sad fan playoff loss crowd shot. The Villano legacy really felt honored, even though moments before this little old bald man was getting his arm broken three different times. The post-match emotion was as good as the match itself. The emotions felt real, the hand shakes to every member of the family and all of the crew felt sincere, the ride around on shoulders felt earned and lovingly received. Villano said he would be retiring soon, and that he wanted Pentagon to be his last match. I cannot wait for that match. 

2022 MOTY MASTER LIST

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

AEW Dynamite 12/15

Bryan Danielson vs. Adam Page 

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

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

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

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

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

AEW Rampage 12/17 (Taped 12/15)

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

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

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2021 Ongoing MOTY List: Kingston/Penta vs. Young Bucks

37. Eddie Kingston/Penta El Zero Miedo vs. The Young Bucks AEW Dynamite 6/30 

ER: This is the exact kind of match anyone who goes to Dynamite wants to see, a match AEW has been delivering pretty consistently since they began. Kingston and Penta weren't really a team I foresaw happening, but they've gotten pretty glued together. The Young Bucks have new facial hair and and dingle ball headbands and look like a couple chooglers who just added a sitar player to their band. Kingston and Penta have some real cool double teams, some good ways to combine their offense. Early on Penta stomps on Matt Jackson's taint from the top and Excalibur says he is "punishing the perineum". There's a couple beats of silence before Schiavone roars in with "Did you say punishing the perineum?" 

The Bucks work this as a cocky team who aren't thinking they will lose, which is a tough attitude to take opposite a guy like Kingston who will fight hard even when he knows he is going to lose. But, the Bucks do a double team fistdrop and that is a kind of cockiness I will always support. There are several great moments of Kingston going up against both Bucks where he decides to not treat their offense seriously, taking both of their little kicks as he stands with his back to them, eating more superkicks than he should late in the match, because Kingston doesn't always fight the smartest fight, and there are no better emotional fighters in wrestling. Kingston gets a nice superplex and makes a hot tag, and there's an awesome nearfall when Penta hits a corkscrew code red for a VERY late kickout from Matt. The crowd thought they saw the win and Jackson was hilarious with prayer hands and upturned eyes thanking the lord above for guiding the referee's hand a bit too slowly to the mat. The back stretch is loaded with bullshit but I thought it was all highly entertaining, a bunch of ECW run-in misdirection, Kingston showing he would have been the all time best Tommy Dreamer, Penta taking out a bunch of people with a tope con giro, a great Nick Jackson ball shot to King, and a sick 1-2 finish of a Penta stuff piledriver and King backfist. Helluva way to start an episode of TV. 

PAS: This was a bunch of fun, maximilist Young Bucks tags aren't my thing, but Eddie Kingston is great at working match styles I don't like and bringing me into them. I loved all of his hulking up, the semi-no sell of the superkick, only to get smashed with two more was great. He is a hell of a face in peril, and my favorite part of the match was Eddie working under and making the big tag. Penta isn't really one of my guys either, but he was fun in the hot tag role. Finish run of nonsense worked well (although I don't miss the Good Brothers at all) and led to a big moment of the Kingston and Penta team overcoming the odds and getting a big win. Really fun TV match. 

2021 MOTY MASTER LIST

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE EDDIE KINGSTON

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AEW All Out 9/5/21 Pt. 2

Dr. Britt Baker DMD vs. Kris Statlander

PAS: Baker has to be one of the most improved wrestlers I can remember. I would watch AIW shows where she looked like the worst wrestler on the roster, and she looked way over her skis in the early part of AEW. Now she has turned into someone who is as over as anyone in wrestling and who can be a part of a really compelling match. There were parts of this with some warts on it, but they hit the big moments cleanly and Statlander had some nifty power spots. Her missed moonsault off the apron was a big bump and I liked how they just had Baker clean her out, rather than do a bunch of 2.9 counts. 

ER: I was excited for this one, and while it had a couple of sketchy moments I thought they moved past them so easily that it made the messiness work. Baker is a star and she really has blossomed over the past year plus. She was so strong at getting into position for Statlander's fun offense, and both have such good body chemistry that some of their exchanges kind of just willed themselves to work. Baker is great at ragdolling on Statlander's slams, and Statlander is also great at falling, good at smacking into things. Baker keeps working more stiff the deeper the match gets, and she was really wailing on Statlander's right jaw and orbital bone after breaking a submission with hard kicks. Statlander's missed moonsault to the floor was sick, but she also tried to scorpion herself on a spike DDT. Baker's curb stomps kept landing more viciously, and I loved the use of the Pittsburgh Sunrise (hit stunningly better than I've ever seen Cole hit his) to set up another stomp and then the Lockjaw. They fought to have a good match and that fight came through. 

Lucha Brothers vs. Young Bucks

PAS: This was the most "not for Phil" match on the card, and while it definitely lost me at points, it did have some stuff to recommend. Hell of a Fenix performance as he was flying all over the cage, kick flipping off it, doing a big dive, taking big bumps, reminded me of a Elimination Chamber Rey Jr. performance. I actually liked the stuff with the tack shoe a bunch as it caused them to slow down and actually build towards a comeback instead of just doing a million spots. I mean you had two different spots where teams violently collided with missed superkicks, the announcers mentioned how that could have caused a broken ankle and both times the wrestlers just went right back into flipping and spinning. Take a moment and let something sink in. Still it did feel like a real moment when the Lucha Brothers won, and it worked for the crowd even if it did not really work for me.

Casino Battle Royal

PAS: It's a Battle Royal so you know what you are going to get, and I don't think the AEW Women's division is deep enough to support a Battle Royal's worth of wrestlers. The Ruby Soho debut was pretty perfect. She felt like as big a deal as Danielson, Cole, and Suzuki, and the stuff with Thunder Rosa was some of the cooler AEW women's wrestling I've seen. 

Chris Jericho vs. MJF

PAS: I think the layout of this was pretty good, but it was hurt by relatively subpar execution. Lots of punches and elbows which looked kind of crappy, lots of OTT mannerisms by MJF, etc. The big strokes were good, the powerbomb on the apron by Jericho setting up MJF's bad back, the powerbomb off the top rope which MJF hit jarring his back, the well executed Dusty finish leading into a cool nearfall section by MJF (using the Fujiwara arm bar and getting reversed into the Walls). It does feel a little like both guys are relics of an earlier era of AEW, and I am not sure where either guy fits in the current scene.  

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Kingston is Hell in Harlem and Poppin' in Queens

 Eddie Kingston vs. Necro Butcher CZW 10/14/06 - EPIC

PAS: This was Eddie's first defense of the CZW title and he was full heel with Robbie Mireno and Larry Legend running interference. Necro opens the match bumping Kingston all over ring side. Kingston takes a big time beating on the floor, getting chairs chucked reckless at him, landing awkwardly on folding chairs and guardrails, you rarely see Necro out bumped, but in this match he took a backset. Eddie is able to take back over by punching Necro right in his bare feet which is a tremendous transition, and he unloads a pretty big beating of his own. There is a great section where Kingston backs Necro into the corner with a Tenryu chop/jab combo and Necro fires out with a multiple potato punch head and body combo. They had maybe my favorite bar fight spot ever. Kingston is slumped on some stairs, Necro grabbing a chair to sit down, clocking Eddie in the face, and Eddie just throwing a missed concussed air punch, only to get smashed again.  Finish has Kingston getting powerbombed on set up wooden stairs, but having the pin broken up by Mireno pulling out the ref. While Necro is savaging Mireno, Kingston hits a backdrop driver on the stairs, with Necro's neck bending at a sick angle, and a clothesline for the win. This had a little bit of a pacing issue when Eddie was setting up the steps for the end, but a hellacious fight like this is always going to be special. 

Eddie Kingston/Homicide vs. The Briscoe Brothers PWR 8/4/12 - GREAT

PAS: The show was in Delaware, and really worked like a returning hero, please the crowd tag. Briscoe's bump around Cide and Kingston early, they move into a shortish face in peril section, a crowd brawl, table spot and a near fall finish. This is a very 2000s formula tag, but there were a couple of fun tweaks. You can count on Kingston to add some spice, and I liked his convulsion selling after getting smushed on an unbreakable plastic table. I thought the structure of the match wasted Cide and Kingston, they didn't really get to demonstrate what makes them special, but a hot tag with an over hometown team is always going to work for me. 

Eddie Kingston/PAC/Pentagon El Zero Miedo vs. Brandon Cutler/Young Bucks AEW Dynamite 6/11/21 - FUN

ER: I kept liking and then disliking this match, but it ended on a high note and that always makes me like a match more. If there's going to be stuff I dislike, the worst spot for that stuff to happen is the home stretch. This had a good home stretch, and good moments, but also some guys I don't like doing things I don't like. I'm about as over Penta El Zero Miedo as I am any wrestler this side of Seth Rollins. He is now one of those guys that makes me wrinkle my nose when I find out he is in a match, especially if it's with guys I like. The important difference between Penta and Seth Rollins, however, is that Penta was one of my absolute favorite guys in wrestling to watch, during season 1 Lucha Underground. I never got that excited for Rollins, but Penta had me hooked for a year. But now I've disliked him for far longer than I ever liked him. If we were doing DVDVR 500s, Pentagon Jr. would be a guy in the Top 25 that one year, then down to the 270s the next, then down to the 490s one place below Shane McMahon. His offense is obnoxiously selfish, always requiring every person in the ring to stop what they're doing just to stand and feed his overcomplicated offense, that always requires way too many moving parts all moving at his expense. Guys kill themselves to take sluggishly executed Penta moves and maybe it just has to loop back around to being cool again in my head. 

Brandon Cutler also felt really out of place in this match. Kingston and PAC were bringing asskicker energy to things, the Young Bucks and their actually great gear (with matching silken tasseled hairline secret keepers) were working a good smug match controlling PAC, clearly building to a big Kingston and Penta hot tag...and Cutler was there working the match like he was Screech substituting for Slater against Valley. It wasn't an unentertaining presence, but he was bringing this indy wrestling Jim Cornette forced to be in a match vibes, and it all felt a little too distracting from some of the actual cool stuff that could have happened. I liked the finish with him missing a big springboard elbow and standing up into a Kingston backfist, but we could have used a couple less moments of him hamming his way through two other guy' moment. Kingston's involvement was the highlight and just kept getting better than longer he was in. He had a couple of great cut off spots to interrupt someone's highspot, and the build to him and PAC hitting stereo dives was fantastic. PAC is an unexpectedly fun Kingston ally, a guy I wouldn't have ever thought of as a Kingston tag guy, but I liked their rhythm here a lot and wouldn't mind seeing more of them together. Kingston pummeling someone into a PAC flying move is a cool way to set things up, and we can see they know how to build to a good finish. 

PAS: I actually liked Cutler in this match, that kind of Downtown Bruno forced into a match added a different flavor to something which would otherwise be another workrate trios. I thought it added to the cool stuff rather then distracting from it. It also gives Eddie a foil to work off of, and one of the great Eddie's is Eddie beating on a young guy, he doesn't Shane Storm him, but it is in that world. The high spots were fun, and I liked the hot tag. Good TV match for sure.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE EDDIE KINGSTON 

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 11/11/20

What Worked

-I'm not sure what it would take for a bloody bunkhouse brawl featuring Dustin Rhodes to not make the upper half of this write up, so obviously the bunkhouse brawl is here. Throw in the fact that the average age of the combatants was 42 then even MORE obviously the brawl is up here. Everyone comes out wearing white clothing (with Dustin and QT looking like the two men who most understand street fight fashion culture in cowboy boots, kneepads over old jeans, and white shirts with the sleeves cut off) and B&B wearing white jeans. Seeing all that white you knew guys were gonna juice, and juice was what we got. I don't think this was anywhere near as good as the parking lot brawl from a couple months ago, but this was bloodier and had plenty of dumb bumps of its own, so of course it ruled. 

QT Marshall is definitely the best friendship signing in AEW, a guy who was roundly laughed at for being on the roster due to nepotism, yet has delivered in every single spot he's been put in. He's the first one busted open here, he was really great at coming in at just the right time with saves, and hit a picture perfect elbowdrop off the top of a very very tall ladder onto the even bloodier Blade. Dustin wrestled like Dustin, which is what you're gonna want in a match like this. He and Butcher beat the hell out of each other, with Dustin hitting a sick twisting vertical suplex on a set up chair, hitting a big bulldog off the staging into a crash box that luckily was right next to the stage, and later Dustin takes a disgusting powerbomb kidneys first through a couple chairs. Butcher and Blade did what Dustin bunkhouse opponents needed to do. Blade hit a great, erm, blade job and really utilized the bleached blond short haircut, both took nasty bumps, their double teams looked good and I thought they set them up in smart ways. Even Bunny took a nice bump off the apron through a table (which the cameras mostly missed) and that nicely made up for her taking forever to try to handcuff Dustin to the ropes earlier in the match,. Oh, and Excalibur got a great laugh out of me by calling The Butcher "Bunkhouse Butch". 

PAS: I thought this was a lot of fun, the kind of entertaining fight which they really should run every six weeks or so with different combinations of guys. I think it would have worked a bit better if the finish had been the elbow off the ladder, that was the apex of the match and ending on a bunch of B- diamond cutters wasn't nearly as effecting. I enjoyed the Butcher as a reckless sloppy guy possibly hurting people, I wish his clotheslines were better, but this was easily the most I have enjoyed him. Blade nearly bleeding to death was a nice moment too. For Dustin Bunkhouse opponents, they aren't Windham or Buck, they really aren't even the Blacktop Bully, but were perfectly fine. I wonder if this is the only match in Dustin Rhodes career where someone has bled and he remained dry? Really odd, I kept waiting for him to open up and was just flabbergasted by his reddless forehead. 

-Maybe I'm just feeling generous because they gave me a bloody Dustin match, but I'll throw the Shawn Spears/Scorpio Sky match up here. Both do tons of little things that I hate (Scorpio Sky has this extremely annoying habit of kicking out of his pinfalls before his opponent does), but there was some cool stuff here. I loved Sky's inside out armdrag to send Spears to the floor, and his follow up pescado. Sky also bumped around for Spears, got thrown hard into the barricade, and other back work that didn't matter once it was Sky's turn to go on offense. The announcers said Spears is 15-2 in AEW this year, and it would be hypocritical of me to complain about them pushing some old nobody (an old nobody who is a month younger than I am) after praising all the old guys practicing bloodletting earlier. So yeah, fuck it, keep giving wins and pushes to dudes in their late 30s with my hairline. AEW knows how to make their fans feel seen. 

-I'd be willing to sit through a third lousy Fenix/Pentagon match just for the opportunity to hear Eddie Kingston on the mic before, during, and after the match. 

What Didn't Work

-Ah yes, my least favorite bullshit. I hate these Brian Cage matches where he outweighs a guy by 60 pounds and proceeds to have a 50/50 juniors sprint with them. I am impressed that Cage can do some of these things at his size, just as I am impressed with some of the things Keith Lee can do. But it just comes off stupid when he's working even with Sydal. Cage is just leveling Sydal with lariats in this match, so why would he decide to do a running headscissors? He knocked Sydal onto his ear or neck four different times with power moves, what would the best case scenario have been had he hit a huracanrana? Just fucking hit the guy you gassed up goof! The moves in this were hot, the logic was not. Go watch the AEW Dark Sydal/Kingston match and see a heavyweight who knows how to work an actual interesting match with Matt Sydal. 

-Outside of Darby running into Cage with his thumbtack jacket, that Cody/Jade Cargill/Brandi/Tazz segment was a muddled mess. Is Cargill someone who has just been in AEW Dark, with the other couple dozen black wrestlers on the AEW roster? 

-How is someone like Tay Conti not just watching every single Ronda match and merely doing that? She's still inexperienced and hasn't really been doing this that long, but she has the absolutely perfect blueprint to learn from, literally the best rookie of the past 20 years (or more?) is a judoka almost exactly her size. Every time Conti integrates judo into her matches it looks awesome. A lot of the non judo, timing based stuff? That looks significantly less awesome. A lot of AEW women's matches have these awkward moments where someone has to walk into position or makes a few tentative movements, and this was no different. I'm glad to see Red Velvet get a longer showing, but didn't think she did much with it. She hit a nice leg lariat and leaned into a couple hard Conti kicks, but this didn't add up to much. 

-There has to be an actual good Fenix/Pentagon singles match out there, right? And yes I know Meltzer gave 4 stars to the one from a few weeks ago that saw Pentagon treat his brother like Bernie Lomax after Fenix almost broke his neck. Penta looked extremely sluggish here, but that's kind of his thing. The layout was lazy as hell and it was filled with Penta slowly walking around catching his breath. It's mostly a long dull Penta control segment where he's clearly just filling time going through the motions, including a hilarious moment where he started ripping at Fenix's mask out of nowhere, before moments later winding up just holding a chinlock for awhile. Maybe he was doing an amusing "that's right this match is getting ugly, ah you people don't deserve it I'll just hold this chinlock" heel routine, but I think he just needed rest. Of course Fenix eventually comes back by just...not taking offense any longer, hits a great tornillo, gracefully gets into position for overly complicated Pentagon offense (my favorite being that stupid flipping DDT where Pentagon didn't even twist Fenix properly into, so Fenix just had to turn around in the hold without Pentagon moving an inch. Fenix may as well have placed Pentagon's arm around his neck first), gets dropped on his head few times with package piledrivers and a flipping piledriver, and man I wish Eddie Kingston was affiliated with someone who is not Pentagon. 

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 10/21/20

 What Worked

-Wardlow/Jungle Boy was a decent enough muscle head vs. flyer match, maybe a 0.3 on the 2002 Brock scale. Wardlow is missing something with his offense that I can't quite put my finger on. He's a bit too polished, so doesn't have the joyful carelessness of a jacked up Power Plant guy, and he's missing aggression. Walking around and breathing heavily after hitting F5 variations doesn't quite do it for me. So this match hinged on Jungle Boy's comeback sequence, and that I liked. His forearms hit at least as hard as Wardlow (which really says more about Wardlow than JB), but the dropkick to the back looked good and the tope to the back looked even better. That tope is probably what got this up top. 

-With more practice, Kenny Omega's dancers could be almost as good as the fine Minnesotan dancers of Let's Bowl. 

-I could not be happier that AEW seems to have realized how fantastic Eddie Kington's weekly TV presence is and let him just scream into several microphones. The guy is great and you can tell anyone seeing or hearing him for the first time thinks he comes off like a major star. I am so excited at just the sheer potential of what they can do and how far they can do it with him. If you didn't watch Fenix/Pentagon and only listened to Kingston on commentary, you'd think it was an actual great match. 

-I watched a lot of bad dance routines masquerading as wrestling in the first 80 minutes of this episode, so I appreciated that Jericho and MJF at least did a bad dance routine masquerading as a bad dance routine. They obviously didn't have the chops of Bing Crosby/Donald O'Connor, but they knew the proper way to look into the camera while delivering a song's punchline and that goes a long way. The porterhouse ordering open felt far too similar to the Key & Peele Soul Food sketch for me to give it much credit, but I actually loved the bookended payoff of Jericho saying "we're going to have to send these back" after bluffing themselves into ordering rarer and rarer steaks. 

-Britt Baker's match lost the thread a little bit at times (a kick that was supposed to be caught wasn't, Britt's sling blade does not look great), but was more competitive than I was expecting and didn't overextend itself. KiLynn King bumped big for Britt's offense and got her face punched nicely into the mat on a curb stomp. A lot of AEW squash matches give their opponent way too much, or do something similar to Omega/Kiss where it's over in two moves. The finish of this was never in doubt but I liked the few openings that King got, and liked what she did with them. 

What Didn't Work

-Kenny Omega is an indisputable dweeb. Can't decide if commissioning someone to say "Broke the Meltzer 5 star scale" is worse than those Kurt Angle promos where he would talk about putting on a match of the year. 

-Thank god Eddie Kingston was on commentary during Fenix/Pentagon, because he was the only thing that could have made that pile worthwhile. You'd think Pentagon would be a little more inspired working opposite his flashier, more entertaining brother, but you would be wrong! I'm not certain I saw a single Pentagon kick that didn't show light, and the entire match was a full reset after every single move and kickout. The opening "I know my opponent" dance party looked lazy, like two people looking ahead to dance step 3 before they had completed step 2, so you had things like those garbage pinball attempts where the person pinning is already rolling themselves off before the person being pinned has even moved. Midway through Fenix appeared to brain himself doing a reverse rana off the top, just crunching straight down on his neck and head. It looked really really bad so things naturally got more disjointed after as it appeared they were stalling for time. Pentagon did a derpy rolling DDT that either shouldn't have been attempted or should have only been attempted if his brother could move, and so instead just looked like three separate blown spots. The home stretch was trash, just Fenix doing a big move for a nearfall, then rest, then both standing up, then Pentagon doing a big move for a nearfall. Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, no consequences, no transitions, no interest whatsoever. Fenix hit a great tornillo, Kingston saved what he could. 

-I was not buying the "gritty fight feel" of Cabana/Page. This whole thing just felt all over the map. Both guys had moments of standing up from a strike with gritted teeth, you know, real cowboy shit, and a few seconds later Page would be hitting a standing shooting star or Cabana would be hitting a headscissors. They wanted to have a juniors match, then they'd want to have a war, then they'd want to do some nearfall kickouts, it all felt like pieces were pulled from different matches. The beginning had some "fast exchanges" that weren't fast, leading commentary to cover by calling Cabana "deceptionably" fast, which is not a word just as Cabana is not deceptively fast. I liked Page catching Cabana's stupid slow crawl through the legs spot and turning it into a pin, and Page's back bump to the apron was nuts (and completely wasted and unnecessary in a match like this, but I did like Cabana's follow up splash off the apron). Page's match finishing lariat looked like a finish, but man the flip portion of it is never going to be not dumb. 

-Tag scramble had some moments but was overall a big ol' mess. I am not sure if Marq Quen is a constant victim of bad catching or if he's just a man who is very good at diving one foot to the side of his opponent. I'm not sure if he's been doing super high tope con hilos onto concrete intentionally, or if I've been reading the move wrong and it's actually a flipping clothesline and I've just incorrectly been focusing on the future arthritis gifting flat back bumps on the floor. His shooting star press that always falls a foot and a half short falls a foot and a half short a bit later, so that might contain the answer. Things got really uncomfortable when Isiah Kassidy hits a guillotine legdrop that almost disconnects Alex Reynolds' head from his body. You can see his jaw snap over and his body goes stiff. Blade figures this out when he picks up his arm and realizes he's dragging a dead body. He drags Reynolds corpse into the corner and - a real pro - uses Reynolds' hand to tag in. But it looked like  nobody else in the ring knew Reynolds was out cold. He was motionless towards the corner with his legs crossed, people crashing into him on landings. Reynolds is a total nutbar, so the second he barely comes to he immediately goes into a sequence with Nick Jackson, which was really insane because the guy looked like he had no idea where he was. It was weird watching him move by pure in ring muscle memory and still manage to be a part of a three person sequence. You can't grade his execution but he hit his marks and that impressed the hell out of me. It was clear that he wouldn't have even been able to tie his shoes in his condition, and here he was taking a high knee in the corner and a bulldog. Silver and Reynolds were the saving grace here, and Butcher/Blade had some nice moments (I do like that suplex into knees), but the match got uncomfortable when nobody in ring or on commentary was acknowledging Reynolds was a dead body. Bad night for that to happen, after Fenix's near broken neck. 

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 9/9/20

What Worked

-Eddie Kingston used a microphone, obviously it winds up here. I giggled every time he yelled at the Lucha Bros. to separate.

-I like Joey Janela when he is a Jericho punching bag.

-ALL ELITE HEELS IS REAL!!!!! I saw something about it on Twitter weeks ago and thought someone made a hilarious meme.

-Dustin match goes up here, but it was close. Brodie Lee looked really bad here, looking like someone who had no idea where he needed to be and couldn't think of interesting ways to get there. Dustin made this as salvageable as it was, so basically Dustin turning in a typical Dustin performance gets this up here. If I wasn't lazy I would write the Dustin part here and the Lee part down below, but let's call it at 55% good. Lee stumbled his way through things and looked lame enough through parts of this that it made me think there's a chance he is pulling double duty as Luchasaurus. Lee had a bunch of moments where he was just waiting to take moves, with no artistry whatsoever. He telegraphs all of Dustin's offense by just standing perfectly still and waiting for it, just horrible at occupying himself. When he took Dustin's drop down uppercut he literally just bent at the waist with his head up, watching Dustin the entire time while standing still. What a fucking idiot. He was at his best when he was Godzilla, throwing tables and barricades into Dustin while Dustin scrambled to safety, Dustin throwing punches while working to avoid him. But Lee has been bit by that really contagious Dijakovic bug, that makes him chain together a bunch of offense that looks like total rehearsed shit. He make Dustin's bulldog look like shit, and the finish was especially risible. The finishing lariat looked good, but making Dustin bounce back and forth between the ropes and his boot might have sounded like a good idea on paper, but it was hilarious in execution. Dustin keeps this here - barely - and Brodie Lee's stock has fallen every single week he's been in AEW.


What Didn't Work

-You know who stinks in AEW? Luchasaurus. That's a guy who stinks up a match. I really thought he had made strides in Lucha Underground, but he is pro wrestling poison in AEW. He always throws off the timing of a match, as everyone slows down to work in his spots and he does bad slow versions of cruiserweight spots. It wouldn't be SO bad if any of his spots looked good, but the thing is, none of his spots look good. Fenix looked great doing Fenix things, loved his rope work and his big dive into Luchasaurus down the finishing stretch (that Luchasaurus caught by falling over), but the finish of this was as putrid as anything Luchasaurus did. This was one of the more idiotically laid out finishes I've seen in AEW. Lucha Bros. hit a package piledriver on Jungle Boy, the Fenix hits the dive, gets back in the ring, but Jungle Boy is apparently Actually Fine from taking a tandem package piledriver just seconds before, and tricks Pentagon into giving Fenix a flipping piledriver. Incredibly, impossibly stupid.

-I guess I should be glad that they didn't work a physical angle with Hardy, but once I saw Reby there with their child I thought "Oh man Matt Hardy is gonna get fucked up". And I'm a monster because I am left disappointed by a man who clearly got a very bad concussion did not get nuked on TV a few days later.

-Jack Evans has just been on the roster, not being on TV? And he's not even wrestling tonight, just appearing at ringside? There are plenty of chuds on TV every week that should be replaced with Evans. Cassidy/Angelico (oh yeah, they still have Angelico too. I have not watched any episodes of Dark) was ehhhh. I liked Angelico's Jerry bump, but th Navarro sub looked like it was the first time he was trying it, and all of Cassidy's offense landed feather light. Then we end the segment with some Best Friends and this is firmly in the bottom half of the page.

-Not only do we get a segment showcasing Kip Sabian's comedy chops (and an unexpected Puf appearance), but Rusev/Miro is here and lemme tell you people, he's got something things to say about SOME PEOPLE UP NORTH. We know who HE'S talking about!! Get outta here. Bring someone in and do something other than that, ANYTHING other than that. Also, Miro is absolute wedding poison. Nobody should want him anywhere near an official role in their wedding. You'd think he wouldn't even want to be involved. THOSE PEOPLE UP NORTH had me do some stupid
wedding cuck angle. I'm going DOWN SOUTH to also then do a wedding angle.

-Boy, Hager/Sonny Kiss is an ugly style clash. Kiss has been great in trios matches, awkward in tags and singles, and Hager is not going to help him look good. I liked Janela's big bumps to the floor, liked Jericho getting run into a chair, but there was a lot of clunk in this tag.

-I did not anticipate FTR being this toothless in AEW. I'd rather see them Old School Tag Wrasslin on Main Event rather than these weekly talk segments and disappointing matches.

-You know what the women's division was missing? Someone with another awkward style that requires matches to come to a halt just so bad looking spots can be done. Well, they checked that box with Tay Conti! Capoeira almost always translates poorly to pro wrestling (I have been a fan of some Arturo Ruas matches, others I found his capoeira getting completely in the way). He submissions looked slow, her kicks looked bad. She hit one nice knee on the floor. And she's going to be a babyface? She feels like a natural heel to me, but hey, they seem to know what they're doing with this division.

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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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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 7/15/20

What Worked

-While I was disappointed in the match itself, I thought Cody did a fantastic job against Kiss. There was a LOT of stuff that wouldn't have worked nearly as well without Cody setting it up and finding plausible ways to get where he needed to get. The set up on the axe kick in the corner was masterful, the way he hung up in the ropes until Kiss hit that axe kick to the stomach. Cody set up the Matrix headscissors really well, caught the rana, naturally took any combo Kiss did, had awesome timing to catch the handspring slap in a full nelson, and never looked like a goof taking overly complicated things. The vertebreaker was perfectly executed, the superplex looked good, the slam on the stage looked good, etc. Cody turned in a great performance in an okay match.

-Angel Ortiz hilariously flopping in orange juice for 20 seconds felt like something Chris Candido would have done, and I laughed at Jericho unexpectedly calling Cassidy a "piece of shit". I was a big fan of their match last week, not sure what they could do in a rematch that would top it, but they have my interest for sure.

-Didn't love the trios match, but Jungle Boy had a strong standout performance. I thought his headscissors and flying looked better than normal, and I thought it was cool that the Young Bucks basically took a backseat and let him run wild the whole match.

-The Nightmare Sisters tag was kept short and Kenzie Paige bumped nicely for them.


What Didn't Work

-I was really excited on paper for Cody/Kiss, but it had plenty of rough patches. Kiss seemed off in several spots, didn't get up for a suplex (that Cody wisely bailed on), didn't get his leg up high enough on a few kicks, bumped way early on the disaster kick, and really just came off like a guy who would be much better in tags. There was plenty of stuff he did well in the match (I love his axe kicks and stomps), but the match also went too long, didn't really need several close kickouts with Kiss, and really should have ended after the awesome vertebreaker.

-Can't think of many on paper matches I wanted to see more than FTR/Lucha Bros, but it just didn't deliver. The face/heel dynamics were all wack, there was a lot of sloppiness at the beginning and end, and a lot of dumb little choices that made no sense within the match. The dumbest thing was Dax going for a superplex on Pentagon, with Fenix literally *touching them* in their corner, and Fenix opting to just tag in instead of, you know, STOPPING THE SUPERPLEX. He was just as close to Harwood as he was to his brother, but he chose to just tag, instead of decking Harwood and then tagging in. Plus, the whole tag spot was completely forgotten the moment the superplex hit anyway, as Fenix flew in and caught knees, then just rolled to the floor. FTR were the de facto faces, building to a hot tag that was well executed by Harwood, but couldn't even get a decent reaction from the people who are literally there to just react. Fenix had some great looking spots, loved that dropkick off the apron and a couple of his spinkicks, but they were clearly working babyface while also setting up FTR to be the babyfaces, and it made things feel messy and lead to quiet reactions. There was a lone, sad, This Is Awesome chant that didn't pick up steam, and that's always a bummer. Cash hit a great powerslam to set up a near tag, the DDT tope is a crazy spot that mostly worked, but the structure of the match didn't hold up to the match they kept weirdly switching into and out of.

-Kenny wearing that XXXL t-shirt on the apron like a fat kid at the community pool was a harbinger of doom for that trios match. It dipped in and out of being good or being not good, and I liked how Jurassic Express basically took 80% of the match, but there were too many things that fell short (no Marko joke intended). Marko and Jungle Boy had nice follow through snap on their ranas and headscissors, but I am getting genuinely tired of Luchasaurus. He works like Lance Archer working like Jungle Boy, with a slow and shoehorned stand and trade and thigh slap spot jammed into every single match. Most of his offense (especially his kicks) looks bad and Stunt/Boy's timing always gets bogged down by it. The snap dragons for everyone spot was cool, and I love the different ways Marko folded on both of his, and the alley oop rana by Marko from the floor to the ring looked great (well, the rana itself, the timing of getting him up to the rana stuttered a bit). But Marko needs to hit everything real flush for it to make any kind of sense, you can't just whiff entirely on a 450 and then go for the pin anyway. At least when Kidman would botch the shooting star it would end with him kneedropping a guy in the balls. 

-Well Cage/Moxley certainly stunk. Moxley worked the match like he was shot full of tranquilizers, and Cage came off like another large AEW guy who works shitty combo sequences instead of JUST BEING BIG. Moxley looked so bored taking every piece of Cage offense, that even stuff that should have looked punishing just came off bleh. Moxley took two hard bumps on a guardrail and a suplex through a chair, but he sold all of Cage's offense as if he was annoyed that he got called into work. Cage always has impressive spots, but he strings them together so quickly that he forces Moxley to undersell a lot of it, which just makes Cage look like a goof. It's the Kurt Angle curae of laying out a match so that your signature offense never actually looks like it is damaging your opponent. Nothing in this match had any kind of consequences, no kind of move was treated as if it had any effect on either of them. It was a smart strategy for Moxley to work an armbar, since Cage always looks one movement away from a triceps tear, but this match stunk. Cage worked hard, if misguided, but Moxley was not interested and it made both look bad. 

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 7/8/20

What Worked

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

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

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


What Didn't Work

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

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

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

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

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 3/18/20

What Worked

-Rey Fenix definitely worked, that's for sure. That opening tag was a one man show and Fenix didn't seem affected in the least by the lack of crowd, and was working as fast and hard as ever. All of his kicks and his knife edge chops sang in that empty arena, and I loved how he was using eyepokes or other cheap shots to set up actual hard kicks. Fenix was in twice as much of this match as Pentagon, which is a good balance for their tags, and they really made this work. Fenix is a guy who bumps so explosively that he actually makes Chuck Taylor shoulderblocks look good. I even liked Orange Cassidy's pocket hands coffin drop off the stage, but perhaps they should leave the coffin drop as Darby's things. You don't need a second guy doing stupid trust falls off of high landings.

-Brodie Lee is good at talking and this felt like the first time I heard Brodie Lee talk in maybe 5 years. I think I dig this Dark Order nonsense more than most, though.

-Lance Archer feature was the coolest possible package for a wrestler I don't care about. Archer just leaving a pile of yarders laying in the woods while Jake the Snake sits in a busted wicker chair with his weird hair, watching Archer chop and kick guys like it was his fetish. That's a good idea for a feature.

-Sammy Guevara continues to rule, as I'm not sure how many other guys could have made me laugh just by singing Jericho's theme song.

-Really liked Ortiz's performance in the main event, really felt like he was the guy bumping for everything, falling off the apron, taking Cody's dive, doing all the pratfalls needed in a match like this. It felt like he was in the Sammy Guevara role since Guevara was at ringside. Page and Cody looked like they were working this about 3/4 speed, and he made all of their attacks look they had actual snap. I also liked Hager as the team wrecking ball, and I really got into it as Inner Circle was cutting off Cody. The energy was good, and I can imagine it isn't the easiest thing to keep energy up without a crowd.


What Didn't Work

-The over serious delivery of the Elite sure sounds a lot sillier without an arena of fans fawning all over them no matter what they say. If they're going out there to show off their stage drama chops at least give me their take on a performance of Our Town.

-JR pointed out before the tag match that Trent had the tightest bandana ever, as he'd never seen it budged. And that just made me obsessively watch how often that goofball adjusts that stupid bandana immediately following any bit of offense he took. Watching him get KO'd by a double superkick, but then lie there on the mat carefully adjusting his hair and bandana, is now something I'm going to be watching for every time. JR just outed his game.

-Has there been an AEW women's match without a major blown spot yet? As in, a spot blown so badly that commentary just has to go "Nope, she didn't get that, not a bit". I can't think of one. But I did like enough moments in the women's match, and they kept the pace moving. Statlander hits the best elbow strike of the match on the interfering Kip Sabian. I'm not actually sure what Ford's elbow strikes are supposed to be, as it looks more like she's wiping something off her opponent's chest, left shoulder to right shoulder. Statlander took Ford's reverse rana really well, and I liked the spot early in the match where she had Shida suplex her into Riho. Riho's offense doesn't look great, but she throws her whole body into dropkicks and body attacks, so those at least look as good as possible. Throwing this many moving parts into a women's division match is inviting problems, but I liked a lot of what they did here. I also think that constantly lumping them into 4 ways or tags isn't really allowing any of them to stand out.

-I was really getting into the Butcher and Blade vs. Jurassic Express tag, when it was just Butcher and Blade cutting off Jungle Boy in their corner. That was the bulk of the match, but it felt like they really lost things the second Luchasaurus finally got tagged in. The guy is a giant compared to Stunt (not there tonight) and Jungle Boy, but he comes in the ring and starts doing bad big man version of Jungle Boy offense: A bad flat foot moonsault off the apron that awkwardly crashes into Butcher, a bunch of thigh slap kicks that all hit weird landing points, a clunky headscissors on Blade, just bad juniors wrestling done by a very large man. Of course, when he wrestles like a very large man, that is also ugly, as it leads to a dry fart of a standing exchange with Butcher. Jungle Boy almost accidentally takes what could have been an insane bump to the floor, although I couldn't tell you how the spot was supposed to go. And moments later the match ends with one of those finishes where commentary goes "Oh that was it! I guess that was the finish!"

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 2/19/20

What Worked

PAS: I think overall the tag battle royal worked although there was almost as much I didn't like as I liked. Jack Evans may be the most underused wrestler around. At least Drew Gulak got the Cruiserweight run and Ohno gets to have matches on NXT UK that no one but me and Eric watch. I can't believe we got a super long Chuck Taylor run and Evans was the first guy out. The lack of heavyweights was really exposed too, the Lucharesu vs. Butcher showdown was the worst big guy face off in battle royal history, weak strikes and whatever the hell that clothesline thing was. I am not a Bucks guy, but I dug the finish run, and our boy Sammy gets the spot of the match (even though he wasn't in the match) absolutely dying flying right into a superkick.

PAS: Got to love Raven buying a ticket and trying to carney his way into a payday. Hustlers hustle.

PAS: I liked Nyla Rose's promo a bunch, had a very Mark Henry feel. "I cut her strings"

PAS: I thought Cobb and Moxley was a bit too New Japanish for me to truly love it, but Cobb is a great addition and will always throw out some amazing stuff, and Mox is a pretty big guy to get chucked the way Cobb will chuck you. I liked the escape finish by Moxley and the post match brawl was great, and I absolutely love how over Darby Allin is now. They turned Darby into Sting which is pretty great.

ER: Man that tag title match was maybe the best version so far of "AEW: The Match". After watching that exhausting and not very satisfying NXT TakeOver this past weekend, I was pretty burned. And these guys - many of whom I don't really like - went out there and felt like they actually purposely started things out slow, until things kept ramping up, famous video game finishers got kicked out of, and they felt like they earned their chants and really had the crowd eating out of their palms. NXT was tiring, 2.5 hours of Mauro screaming at me while the matches sprinted like the derby scene in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? I would have loved to hear Gig Young call this match. I wasn't expecting restraint to start and it really got me onboard early. It was somehow the same thing as NXT, but different and done better. Not everything worked. Pentagon has a habit of leaning out of some things, and some Page offense is still silly and insulting to cowboy gimmicks, but those two also contributed. Page hit a really great moonsault to the floor to cap off a crazy sequence, and Pentagon really can die on things and has a great sense of timing. This really stepped up when Omega and Pentagon had their apron sequence, throwing big chops and playing to the fans, Pentagon hitting a great enziguiri to the face, Omega hitting a V-cutter to cut off Pentagon's catch phrase comedy (I will always cheer someone who does that), and ending with Fenix speedwalking the ropes and booting Omega right in the teeth. Fenix was on something else here, already usually one of the more breathtaking flyers, and here on a good night. His missile dropkicks hit like missiles, that ropewalk kick was spectacular, and he breaks out a tornillo so effortlessly that it makes no sense. We get a couple of too big kickouts, but we didn't get any silly pop up no sells or anything, just unlikely kickouts that still lead to the finish. It was definitely an AEW match, which has been a style that I have spent many weeks now not always enjoying, but I thought this was a standout within the style. Their connection to the crowd really felt like they were taking the match on all of the exact turns the crowd wanted them to take. Yowza Yowza Yowza.

ER: Main event cage match was really well done too. Cody is becoming pretty undeniable in the ring at this point. He's a real main event bleeder, and that's going to stand out in a big way since that's not a thing happening on America's main wrestling stage. Cody really made that cage match feel big. Wardlow has been built up to a degree by AEW having him not wrestle for his entire time there, so debuting as more than muscle in a main event cage came off big. Cody ragdolled well and made all of the big moments feel big. I thought the Arn cage door moment would come off cheesy with MJF making faces in the background, but Arn's timing is still strong and his swing into MJF's face was perfect. They really filmed the cage to make it look 20 feet tall, Made the festivities come off crazier, and Cody's match ending moonsault off the top looked wild shot from below. This capped off probably the strongest hour of AEW TV yet. Awesome showing.


What Didn't Work

PAS: I have no idea why Shanna is always in these really long TV matches that should be squashes. I was amused at Britt Baker fucking with Tony Schiavone and Ross being disgusted with Statlander's Alien bullshit. Statlander is tall and athletic I guess, but I very much don't see it.

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 1/1/20

What Worked


1. Darby Allin vs. Cody Rhodes

ER: First match on our 2020 MOTY List, and for all I know the first actual match of 2020. You want to start off your year with fireworks, you need to put a powder keg like Darby out in front. This also felt like a big Cody performance, and had a long moment towards the end when he hit a big cutter on Darby, had Darby down, and took the time to toss his loose weight belt and posture for the crowd. I could see something like this unnecessarily halting a match's momentum, but it worked for me here and added to Cody's confident performance. Darby crashed all over the place, crumpling weird on Cody's throws (like that big reverse suplex), and fighting back in ultra competitive ways. Darby hits this insanely great tope right into Cody's tender shoulder. I mean he really crashed hard sideways right in the exact spot that Cody had been rubbing. Darby would come back to that shoulder and Cody was good at showing the effects. I thought Cody came off like a real big deal here, and he really fearlessly took some of Darby's craziest ideas in stride. The lunacy of one man to do the coffin drop to the apron combined with the lunacy of the other man to lie waiting to have his ribs crushed, is something special. The Arn play was some classic wrestling back scratching, just a great use of a legend. I loved Arn just showing Cody the play book, the man who did all the tape watching. It's hard not to do that and come off a little corny, but the execution of this was flawless.

PAS: Darby is a great guy to start the year with, he comes off like such a star on TV, in a way that indie acts often don't. We get one big Darby bump to the floor, and a couple of teased huge bumps, when Cody shoves him off the ropes and he lands on the stage, and when the Coffin Drop on the ring apron doesn't crash and burn and he actually hits it. The arm work was all pretty cool, his crazy cannonball tope to the shoulder was great looking, and I loved Darby's scramble to grab a Fujiwara. Good Cody performance too, his selling was good, and the Ultimo Guerrero reverse suplex is a big piece of offense. I liked the finish too, with Arn not interfering, but calling in the play from the sidelines. I don't think this will stay at number #1 too long, but it is a nice opener for the year.


-Damn Sammy Guevara is really great. He's the first guy to figure out how to do something effective during a commercial break when all you have to work with is a 1/8 screen picture window. That thing can be a real killer of matches, watching a small part of your screen while muting a commercial for metastatic breast cancer medication that is taking up 3/4 of your screen. Sammy cuts a promo on cue cards and finally cracks the code on how to advance your character during a commercial. This guy is good.

-Dustin's new ring gear alone would have gotten this to the top part of the page, but the Sammy match was great. Outside of the bummer of a commercial break (down below), this was a great use of both characters and another great Dustin performance. This guy has been on a tear that I think we've all been dreading running out for 10 years now. When he really came back to status as a top 10 worker in 2009, it felt like something destined to being a memorable 6 month run. And he turned that comeback into being the best TV worker of the past decade. Guevara's twerp heel act is really entertaining to me, a great guy to have Dustin chop and slap around the ring. Dustin really lays a great beating to him, breaks out a wonderful cannonball to the floor, breaks out two different snap powerslams including one on the floor, is crazy enough to be a ring veteran doing a Canadian Destroyer on the RING APRON in the same week where veterans are complaining about how the kids are killing the business, and he continues to move as quickly against these juniors he works. Sammy is a great opportunist punk, and I like him smarmily using his flying offense and balancing it with tight strikes. His mounted punches were hitting Dustin hard enough that it felt like he was making damn sure nobody would be the one to notice him whiffing on punches vs. Dustin. The finish was screwy but I liked it. Jack Swagger sneaking up on Dustin from behind only to knee him in the balls feels like Swagger is properly incorporating Proud Boy street offense into his in ring repertoire. I can't envision a scenario where Dustin on my TV will end up down below.

-I'm beyond tired of Pentagon's act at this point and always do a forward skip once he starts his cero miedo hand signals routine. It always saves me time. And I really didn't like that Nick Jackson/Fenix Riverdance kick exchange mirror sequence. But the match picked up nicely after that with nice Bucks double teams, big twisting moonsault to the floor from Pac that crumpled Omega, a dumb fun suplex exchange between Pac and Omega that ended with a fantastic sitout powerbomb from Omega, and that pinfall ended with Pentagon making a positive contribution and kicking Omega in the mouth. This had plenty of moments including a wild spinning kick off the top by Fenix that ends with Fenix eating Omega's knee. This was fun, capped to a reasonable length.


What Didn't Work


-ER: That opening video really felt like a "See? Nothing wrong here. Not worried. We're just four friends agreeing on everything and saying 'Elite' a lot."

-I am not excited to hear Taz calling matches, but maybe he's gotten better since his last TNA run. Cruel to have Schiavone the one absent. JR can't take a break?

-Is Scorpio Sky trying to talk like The Rock, or has his promo pentameter just leaked into general backstage promo styles?

-I'm just not into Nyla Rose's brand of monster. The set up is long and requires everyone to go along with everything. I'm tired of spots where people have to pretend to be hung up on the ropes while waiting to get hit, and while AEW typically has people doing that 1-3 times per episode, I think Rose is the biggest offender. And here she really hung Shida out to dry while taking forever to get to the top. The knee that ended it looked good, but the journey was long and arduous. Nyla has a "better version of Tamina" vibe, but that's a low jumping off point. Riho had good energy that added to things, and I liked Baker's comeback spots. There's a chance Baker is someone who thrives in multimans but gets exposed in singles matches, and that's at least promising.

-Matches like Moxley vs. Trent are part of what makes some stretches of Dynamite a real drag. Moxley is in a program with the champ, he doesn't need to be having 2.9 count matches with Trent, there don't need to be Malenko/Guerrero roll ups, he doesn't need to give Trent 70% of the match to make sure Trent comes out of this like a star. He doesn't need to "make" Trent. This started fine, with Moxley kind of shoving Trent around the ring with big full arm chops, but they pretty quickly went to "This is an equal contest between two guys who both have what it takes" and AEW needs to just stop that. This should have been 5-6 minutes and a not really in doubt victory for Moxley. He doesn't need to give Trent 5 different close nearfalls.

-The commercial cut in Dustin/Sammy was cruel unfortunate brutality. We're already in the tiny 1/8 portion of the screen, Sammy has his head draped on the apron wedged into the ringpost, Dustin is approaching and swinging a chair at Sammy's head...and then we cut to a Little Caesars and Thor, and when the match comes back Sammy is holding Dustin in a chinlock. What!? How did he escape the chair predicament? How did Sammy untie himself from the train tracks in time? Let alone get to the position of hitting an Asai moonsault? That thin crust pizza ad wasn't THAT long. The most unfortunate ad break.


2019 MOTY MASTER LIST

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 10/30/19

What Worked:

-The non-wrestling stuff in this show worked for me. I thought the Tony Schiavone limo ride with Cody was great old school stuff. The Dusty and Willie Nelson story was great and the whole presentation made the contract signing seem like a big deal. Jericho is pretty great as a bloated creep leading a pack of wolves, heel Rock of Love era Brett Michaels is a great fucking gimmick, I can just see him faking an OD mid ring only to roll up his opponent when he tries CPR. Dustin's broken arm is a great way to heat up the PPV main event, although that might mean we don't see in ring Dustin for a while, and this show could desperately use him.

-Similarly Santana and Ortiz beating down the Rock and Roll Express was simple pro-wrestling storytelling. Ricky Morton is an all timer at taking a beating and Santana and Ortiz are really great as out of control thugs, you can tell they are from that JAPW family tree (speaking of which, sign Homicide and Eddie Kingston already AEW, what are you waiting for). I liked them jumping the Bucks too, nice use of the Rick and Morty gimmick which actually gave that goofy thing some purpose.

- Moxley's promo was fine, and he is undoubtedly over. I miss the old Moxley promos where he was talking about his mom turning tricks where he came off like a real unhinged psycho, but he is clearly in a different place in his career. Don't love Tony Khan showing up as an on air character. AEW should stay far away from Authority Figure angles, it has been a stain on wrestling for two decades now, and no one is ever going to approach Vince as a performer. If you need a Jack Tunney for an angle, give it to Arn or Bob Armstrong or something and just have them make pronouncements and don't have them do anything else.

-The six man tag was the best of the car crash matches on this show. It isn't really my thing, but the Bucks have clearly mastered that formula, and Jack Evans is still breathtaking to watch. If they did one of these matches a show it would work great, unfortunately that isn't what is going on.

What Didn't Work:

-God, is the ringwork on this show one note. Every match is worked at the same pace, with the same headdrops, 2.9 counts, dives and near falls. They need some fat guys, some mat workers, a couple of guys with good punches, anything to break this up.

-Why is Adam Page doing flips and dives? Isn't he your tough Cowboy character? A lariat does not need a fucking front flip. I liked Sammy faking a dive and instead slapping Page, but outside of that this was just white noise

-Why does your undercard women's match go 15 minutes with the same dramatic near falls as every other match. Is Shanna even part of the roster? If you have plans for Shida, why is her debut undercard squash worked like a main event title match. Outside of a couple of nice knees by Shida (and there were a bunch that looked bad too) the work didn't particularly move me, and there needs to be an agent telling people that they can't use up all of the tricks in every match.

-Why in god's name does your comedy squash have an insane headdrop finish? If your comedy guys are doing moves that look like they should lead to a stretcher job and six month hiatus what does that mean for your main eventers? Just insane escalation which is going to lead to someone breaking their neck trying to outdo the undercard. On the plus side, I think they may have tweaked the Orange Cassidy character enough to make it work for me, having those kicks be a taunt as opposed to something their opponent has to play along with, makes a big difference. The hands in the pocket tope stands out in a show with dozens of crazy dives. Shoot the Best Friends into the sun though.

- Fenix is really special to watch, on a show where everyone is working as some variation of his style, he still outshines them. I almost feel sorry for Kazarian and Scorpio, those guys are old, and they are still trying to work a gogo highspot style. Cut off the ring or something. No wonder Kazarian almost broke his neck on that rana to the floor, Vince Carter isn't still trying to thunder dunk every time he gets the ball. You guys are almost 40, work on a midrange jumper.

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AEW Double or Nothing 5/25/19

This wasn't a show I was particularly excited about. I imagine we are low voters on a bunch of the guys on this show, but Dustin Rhodes is an all time favorite, and the show is a big deal for sure.

Christopher Daniels/Scorpio Sky/Frankie Kazarian vs. T-Hawk/El Linderman/CIMA

PAS: This was what you would expect for a opening six man tag. I hadn't seen the SCU team in years and they seem to have kept all of their athleticism, pretty impressive that old man Daniels can still look so smooth, although smoothness isn't something I care a ton about. Strong Hearts was fine, I liked Hawk's chops and Linderman's deadlift German suplexes, but if you are going to bring in OWE guys, they really should have bought in the crazy Chinese Shaolin Monks rather then just second tier Dragons Gate guys. Fine but ultimately forgettable.

Dr. Britt Baker DMD vs. Kylie Rae vs. Nyla Rose vs. Awesome Kong

PAS: This was pretty bad and way too long. Awesome Kong was a cool surprise, but didn't look ready for in ring work and spent most of the match hanging outside. Rae doing her Gillberg version of Bayley was probably the most bush league thing on this show (either that or Cody's sledgehammer stuff). I am not sure there are enough non-WWE women to make a real division, this wasn't a good start, and I am not interested in seeing any of these ladies again.

Best Friends vs. Angelico/Jack Evans

PAS: I think it is a mistake for a fed basically main evented by the Young Bucks to have so many B-Team Bucks running around: SCU, both these teams, Lucha Brothers, Super Smash Brothers. They really need some teams who don't work the same style. You can't have 10 versions of the Rockers, you need a Twin Towers or Demolition. This is my semi-annual attempt to watch a Chuck Taylor match and get it, and I still don't. He hits some spots OK, but there are parts where he can't run the ropes and his forearms and kicks look terrible. Trent was mechanically fine, if uninteresting. Angelico is still Angelico, some of his stuff looks cool, the double teams with Evans are nifty, and then he throws a punch. Evans is still awesome, his body is made of jello, and he flips like crazy. His moonsault to the floor was one of the crazier spots of the night. Didn't care for this, it was a worse version of Bucks vs. Lucha Brothers and I didn't love that either.

Aja Kong/Yuka Sakazaki/Emi Sakura vs. Hikaru Shida/Riho/Ryo Mizunami

PAS: This was a fun showcase for all six ladies. Everyone got a chance to run through their stuff, and a lot of it looked pretty good. Sakazaki's magical girl shtick is pretty creepy, there already is a pervert constituency among Joshi fans and that seems to lean way into it. Aja is still a beast and definitely stood out, I especially liked any time she faced off with Mizunami, as I am always going to dig a big gal punch out. Shida got the big with with the knee, and I think a version of her 2018 singles with Aja would get over pretty big.

Dustin Rhodes vs. Cody

PAS: Opening part of this match was just OK, Cody doesn't really have good looking offense and some of the spots felt more cute then impactful. I loved the set up for the Dustin blade job, with Dustin setting up the nut kick, Cody removing the second turnbuckle to block it, and and Cody drop toe holding Dustin into the exposed buckle. That Dustin blade job was an all timer, it looked liked Strawberry Fanta was coming out of a fountain soda machine. I liked Cody's knuckle punches to the cut, and the figure four spot was really well executed. The punch exchange at the end of the match actually felt like a fist fight between brothers, and I loved the Code Red. I thought the ending was a bit anti-climactic, but man what a performance by Dustin. It was all bleeding, selling and emotion. It is up there with some of the best last ride, old man matches I have ever seen, and last ride old man matches are some of my favorite types.

Young Bucks vs. Lucha Brothers

PAS: Pretty much what you would expect, there were a couple of nice storyline moments, with the Bucks being a little rusty due to their long layoff, and the very end of the match with the work on Matt's arm. Still most of the match was running through a million headdrop finishers for 2.9 counts. Fenix had a couple of amazing moments of high flying, including a rope trick on both Bucks which looked great. But this was everything turned up to 10, and my eyes eventually just glassed over with the nearfalls. This kind of match is clearly going to be a showcase for this promotion, and I think it will keep me from really investing in it.

Kenny Omega vs. Chris Jericho

PAS: I wasn't coming into this match expecting to like it, and ended up kind of loving it. Omega is pretty much a poster boy for maximalist wrestling, but this was a match built around two guys stiffing each other with shots to the face and head. There were a couple of big spots which were done really well and sold really well, the double stomp with the table was kidney mushing, and I liked the surprise of Omega getting backdropped through the table. I loved how Jericho took all of his normally loose 2000s offense and made it eye socket crunching, those code breakers looked like they were going to shove Omega's cheekbone through his teeth. The broken nose really added to the match too, and Omega sold the shots like Gerald McClellan, it felt like we were watching him get beaten to death in the ring. Really liked the back elbow KO finish too, great performance by both guys, and one of the most surprising matches in years.

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MLW Worth Watching: Hart Foundation! Lucha Bros! Ki! Lawlor! Reed!

Teddy Hart/Davey Boy Smith Jr. vs. Rey Fenix/Pentagon Jr. MLW 2/2

ER: For a modern spotfest tag match, this had a lot more in common with an early 2000s JAPW spotfest with stiff vaguely uncooperative work, increasingly dangerous spots, and of course MLW/JAPW Original: Teddy Hart. This doesn't waste any time like other Pentagon matches, these guys get right down to it, and I loved Lucha Bros. controlling and double teaming Davey Boy for the first several minutes. I thought it was cool because it kind of flipped what I expected the layout to be (Smith dominates early, Hart eventually gets worked over to build back to Smith hot tag), and instead Smith gets swarmed for several minutes, unable to get out from the middle of it, Lucha Bros. working together more like hyenas than ninjas, one of them distracting while one attacks a leg or kicks him in the back of the head. At one point Davey Boy fought back with hard slaps and a big knee, but was quickly picked off again and I was impressed that Lucha Bros. really looked like they were picking apart the big man. I loved things like Davey picking up Fenix for a powerslam only to get kicked right in the patella by Pentagon. When Teddy comes in you know the laser light show is really going to start, that's when we get to the stiff "top that" stretch of those JAPW matches, with Hart throwing mean as hell right hands, sharp knees, breaking out moonsaults off of everything, his awesome moonsault elbowdrop that I've seen him nail the landing every single time but once, and some ridiculously escalating flipping piledrivers (obviously we were getting a crazy one on the apron, but I had no idea how far they would go until the finish). Finish is crazy with Fenix bursting into frame and hitting a bananas Jean-Claude Van Damme spinkick off the apron to KO Pillman, and then the Hart Foundation hitting what should be immediately inducted into the Indy Wrestling HOF: A flipping piledriver Doomsday Device. And you know everybody was at least partially expecting a kickout.

Low-Ki vs. Tom Lawlor MLW 2/2

ER: This is kinda weird as they spent literal months building to a match between these two, but after all that build they worked a short, brisk 5 minute match with a kind of sudden finish. Ki is really great at fitting a bunch of cool things into 5 minutes though, so that works for me (even though just like with the Yehi match I really wished we could have gotten twice as much). It's really weird because right before this was a Ricky Martinez match that was at least twice as long as this one, so was there some kind of weird timing issue with the live show? Did they go too long earlier and then suddenly had to end this match way short? Maybe Ki and Lawlor knew this, which was why they went out and had the awesome scrap they did. If this came from Worldwide it would certainly be legendary, as they really don't waste any time beating each other senseless. Lawlor even knocks Ki to the mat with an early left right to the ear, and Lawlor was throwing hard ground and pound, working for a choke, and from that knockdown Ki was really trying to tangle him up. Lawlor muscles Ki over with a cool suplex, nothing really coming easy in this match, Ki kicks out Lawlor's knee and boots him right in the chest. A freaking door gets involved, and we get a cool visual of Ki missing an attack and punching right through the door (particle board everywhere!!). Striker points out some cool Ki psychology when Lawlor tries to lift Ki and Ki is making himself as tough to lift as possible, scrambling his legs to the ropes so he can get leverage on Lawlor. I dig the shots these two were throwing on the top rope, nice body shots and some genuine struggle around a superplex attempt, and Ki ends up stomping Lawlor's kneecaps before hitting a big double stomp. Things after this feel like they got cut way too short, as Ki grabs the dragon sleeper but Lawlor somewhat easily (for someone who just got his sternum crunched) grabs a rear naked choke. I wanted more from this, but the 5 minutes we got was dynamite.

PAS: I really liked this, but it was really weirdly paced. I dug how they went right at each other, and the standing 8 count on the punch behind the ear was a really nice touch. I have seen Ki get hit with hellacious shots before, and would have liked Lawlor to lean into some of the body shots especially, still it was a neat and different start to a match. Ki was really good at countering Lawlor's straight ahead attack. I thought the door was a misstep, Ki punching it to shreds was a neat visual, and I liked how the hand injury tied into the finish, but it was really outside of what they were doing in the rest of the match, and for such a tightly paced match, we didn't need Ki wandering around outside like Sabu. Finish was pretty cool with Lawlor rolling through and using technique to lock in the choke. Fun stuff, although everything felt chopped.

Myron Reed vs. DJ Z  MLW Fusion #44 2/2 (Aired 2/8/19)

ER: I really like Reed, a flyer who still has some improvements to make but already has a handle on basic stuff that a lot of flyers jump right past. We have no shortage these days of ultra athletic flippers and floppers who can intersperse cutter variations with flipping piledrivers and pinball around a ring. Reed has the grace an easy movement to stand with any of them, but here you can see him actually aiming for where DJ Z's throat would have been on missed clotheslines, locking in a nice looking headlock (especially liked when he flattened out on it), and hooking deep leg during pins. I mean sure we get a cool dive past the ringpost from DJ Z and a nice dive from Reed, and a big somersault senton from Reed turned into a sitout powerbomb from Z, and while there were certainly some dance-y moments I really like what Reed brings to these matches. He's super young but works a ton, and he's already got a higher floor than most within his style.

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