AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 5/8 - 5/14 (Part I)

MD: Instead of going longform this week, I think we'll do a two parter. Yes, it's a shame that Dark and Elevation are gone, but boy do I like house shows and while we're sure they're taping these and we are going to have to live with the fact that no footage is going to show up for some of them (Corbin, KY, we're looking at you), it is nice when a fancam pops up. Catch these while you can. I'm pretty sure the Claudio vs Daniels match was up before and now it's not.

AEW House Rules 5/13 Salem, VA

Toni Storm vs Skye Blue

MD: Obviously Storm's been active for a while, but her WWE time on the main roster was primarily during the pandemic and she only had a handful of house shows once they started touring again. But she was everything that I wanted from a live event heel here, over the top, stooging, stalling, She ambushed Skye early, posed, preened, and then immediately got shown up with an elbow and a headscissors takeover. That led to stalling on the floor, a rush back in, more stooging, and another powder. This time Skye went after her, got ambushed, but then versed a whip into the pole with a nasty thunk. Skye followed it up by beating her around the ringside area until Toni finally rolled in, begged off, and lured Skye into getting draped throat first on the second rope to set up the hip attack to the floor and the heat. It's the sort of stuff that wouldn't work on TV due to hierarchy and the current angle and Storm's current character, but here in front of a couple thousand people in Salem, VA, it was loads of fun. 

I like Skye. I'm probably going to cover Athena vs Skye on Wednesday actually. She's scrappy, leans into her shots, has that great looking knee in the ropes, isn't afraid to take a beating. I think she's got a ton of promise. Here she takes that beating with Toni bigtiming her with the posing and general Outcast attitude leading to a transition where Skye fires back after a slap (and subsequently gets her stuff in: the knee, the spinout kick, the body press). Things switch back to house show mode with Toni pulling the tights right in front of Aubrey, leading to a rare shove by Toni and the old schoolboy ref push spot and a big pop for a fun nearfall. That was followed by some goofing with the spraypaint backfiring and Toni selling it like she was getting electrocuted with Skye superkicking her (and sending it into the third row), before Toni got a lucky shot in and hit the hip attack and Storm Zero out of nowhere. For a sub ten minute match this had an almost perfect balance of early stooging, heat, hard-hitting, and late stooging. Because it hit that balance so well, it was the sort of match people were going to talk about on the car ride home. I have no idea where Storm would have picked up that level of Larry Zbyszko excellence but she absolutely nailed it.

Darby Allin/Orange Cassidy vs Powerhouse Hobbs/QT Marshall

MD: Speaking of house show stooging, here's QT. They seem to be branding a lot of these shows around the unique (and sort of out of continuity so long as they don't keep following up like they did last time) pairing of Darby and Cassidy, and as much as I'd rather they brand it with Deadly Draws/Lethal Lotteries instead, it's not a bad choice. This was another one where we had the heel charge right in but when the heel is Powerhouse Hobbs and can move with that much accelerated intensity, there's no reason to complain. Hobbs and Darby are natural opponents and it's been a while since they faced off; Hobbs is a different wrestler with different presence than he was in 2020. Starting the match off with Hobbs tossing him about made me want a singles match between these two pretty badly. That led to QT really leaning into the antics. If he had just realized that he should have wrestled like Jeff Jarrett instead of someone who makes sure to do one or two flashy spots a match just to prove that he could, he would have filled a manager who wrestles niche so much better than the wrestler who manages niche we ended up, but it's hard to fault a guy for having pride. As it is, he gives me what I want here, screwing around with the crowd by refusing to get in and then refusing to toss Darby around, right up until the point where he does it one too many times and pays for it.

Paying for it meant that Cassidy got to come in and QT's a natural foil for him as a guy completely unafraid to show ass 90% of the time (it's that 10% that gets him, but like I said, not here). Cassidy went to the pockets, QT bumped his ass off, and Hobbs imposed himself out of nowhere in the best way (followed by some fun mocking of the pockets bit, which makes me think that there's actually a ton of money in a Hobbs/Big Bill heel tag champion run). It was a bit of stretching of Hobbs' character which is one of those things you can absolutely get away with during a house show. This was during the second bit of heat which had QT mock Cassidy to set up a hope spot, the ref miss a hot tag (OC reversing a suplex with the knee and reaching out) due to Hobbs drawing him away, and Cassidy really milking that final moment, going up and over, backwards, upsidedown, and through legs in order to dive across the ring for a hot tag. The finishing stretch was all action, including Cassidy and Allin hitting a new rapid fire Stundog/Code Red combo after Cassidy reversed the Dirtsheet Driver and a triumphant finish that let them celebrate with kids. I don't think they would have worked this quite the same way on TV and even if they did, the commercial break would have made the timing trickier and the effect muddled. Instead we had a straight up southern tag with double heat with babyfaces that don't get nearly enough credit for understanding the alchemy of putting together a match because people are so distracted by the trappings they throw into the mix. My only regret is that we didn't get to see the match vs Moriarty/Big Bill from the night before.

Adam Page vs Big Bill

MD: Speaking of Big Bill, I won't linger long on this. I'm no fan of Page's matches against guys that match up similar to him (like Takeshita), but when you have him in a match with contrast, it can be a lot of fun. This, for instance, was a lot of fun, with Page constantly going to the weapons to get an advantage and Bill leaning wonderfully into that most amazing thing a heel giant can do, act like a cowardly chickenshit heel. That dissonance pokes hard at the part of our brain that registers things like fairness and honor and drives us nuts in the best way. And Bill poked hard at Page's eyepatch-clad injury to get almost every advantage in the match even though he's a literal giant. Between that and all of the character he shows as he lives in the moment, I really hope they have plans for the guy. Anyway, this was big rousing babyface stuff, Dusty in Florida or Texas standing tall against the odds, with an injury, a size disadvantage, and the numbers against him. It's exactly how they should have ended a house show, with the local hero being larger than life.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 5/1 - 5/7

MD: Going to be more words than usual this week. I can't fill any sort of void except for maybe in my own heart but I'm feeling inspired. I know to a lot of people Dean was a sort of distant memory, someone who inspired them years ago or that went to shows or wrote with them. Those stories have meant so much to so many to see. Eric's post was wonderful. To people still on the DVDVR board, however, and there is still a board, and it's a pretty damn good place to talk about wrestling in longer form with more permanence than you can get on twitter or reddit, he was still a fixture. Dean retired a few years ago and started to watch every bit of televised wrestling and drop a sprawl of text immediately after it finished. It was distilled DEAN and an essential daily part of my life even just two weeks ago. Go click on this and read some of his posts over the last few months; you'll be glad you did. 

As for AEW, I said I might shift to covering a the webshows a bit more and what they do? Kill the webshows. If it's really because their TV partners didn't want them pushing content out on YouTube and if it speaks to the strength of that relationship, great. I'm really going to miss Dark and Elevation though. Elevation especially was how I got into AEW the most in late summer and early fall of 2021. Squashes and competitive mid-card matches with no commercials or time constraints or even plot progression built up my connection to wrestlers unfamiliar to me, and there were a lot. I get that you don't want to put squashes on TV and I get that sometimes these extra matches wore out crowds, but at its best, it allowed wrestlers to experiment, to get reps, to figure out what worked and what didn't and let crowds see certain stars (the Matt Hardys of the world), pop for their entrances and themes and signature moves, even when they weren't going to be on the main show. It gave us an Emi Sakura or Nyla Rose tag week after week after week after week and they were all a blast. It let the Acclaimed figure out how to be the Acclaimed or the Gunns figure out how to be the Gunns and let Athena as hard as one could go during one night in Canada and suddenly become one of the the best things in wrestling. I'm not sure how things will shake out in the months to come, if Rampage will serve this purpose more and if we'll get that itch scratched with the ROH studio tapings or if extra matches even end up on Bleacher Report, but I'll miss goofy rookie Elevation commentary from Wight and Menard (and Eddie Kingston for a while there!) and even goofier expert Dark commentary from Excalibur and Taz. I hope we see the return of Super Strong Suplex Machine sooner than later.

AEW Dynamite 5/3

Jericho Appreciation Society (Daniel Garcia/Jake Hager/Angelo Parker/Matt Menard) vs Orange Cassidy/Bandido/Adam Cole/Roderick Strong

MD: Nice big 8 man tag with a lot of little story beats. It's nice to see Strong outside of the WWE system again where he can feel like a big deal. That's part of the joy of AEW. I don't usually have a ton to say about Cole. My main takeaway on him is that he's been woefully miscast as a heel forever. The fans want to cheer him. They want to cheer his song. He has the offense of a scrappy babyface. He has the size of a scrappy babyface. I've seen him in interviews say that it's not an issue because he gets the fans to boo him during the match, but I honestly don't think that has played out in practice, at least not in AEW. This feels fresh. They played up the relationship between Cassidy and Cole but never really did anything with it unfortunately. The only sign of anything off at all was Bandido tagging Cole by slapping him on the back.

I liked how the match turned on the caught dive on Cassidy (with Garcia coming out nowhere with a knee to the back). I like Cole getting taken out when he went for Jericho at first opportunity; in general, even with him getting to tag with Strong again, he portrayed a certain intensity from his entrance to his first big boot, to the finish and both charges up the ramp. The buried what I was looking forward to the most in the commercial break, but 2.0 feeding and stooging for Orange Cassidy was a ton of fun as you'd expect, as was the suplex spots with Bandido. Garcia was a glorious jerk during the beat down on Cassidy, walking over him repeatedly and stepping on the ankle to prevent him getting away. Everyone got to get something in down the stretch. I'm looking forward to Strong against any of these guys and certainly to Hager vs Bandido if they ever want to run that, but Garcia is a top potential AEW Cassidy opponent and they're running that next week.

Darby Allin/Jungle Boy vs MJF/Sammy Guevara

MD: I don't think anyone would say that this main event angle has been a total success, though people can definitely appreciate that they're taking this swing and trying to elevate the pillars like this. What has worked, more than anything else, has been the MJF/Sammy pairing. In fact, given that we're still weeks from the PPV, it's a shame they've gone away from it here. I wouldn't mind if they go back to it at some later point. They were full on Heavenly Bodies/Too Cool here, full of themselves, congratulating one another, constantly jawing (including with the crowd during the commercial break to get big heat), constantly posturing. I would have liked some dumb simplistic double teams but I was ultimately happy with what we got, including the assisted abdominal stretch and Hollywood Blonds' terrible towel with Max's scarf.

Darby and Jungle Boy hit everything clean and played face-in-peril well enough, though the focus was really on the heel antics instead of the come back attempts. It's a bit like seeing Jarrett again. AEW's tag scene has had such a focus on big spots and cut off near falls that bullshit like this is fresh and really stands out. I liked Jungle Boy as a hot tag. We saw him so long with Luchasaurus where he didn't get to play that role. And Sammy looked amazing taking the tiger driver and code red, almost as good as I've ever seen either taken, which was impressive in such quick succession. Max's convoluted killshot looked great too, though he'd probably be better served with something way more simplistic that is just put over as deadly due to superior execution or some such. The finish with MJF and Sammy hitting moves but the other wanting the pin contrasted Darby tagging himself in but to hit a move and then go for the pin instead, making the babyfaces look somewhat more respectable while still playing into the animosity between them and pushing the 4-way to come. I have no idea what Khan has planned between now and May 28 but hopefully it's even more entertaining than the Sammy/MJF pairing; that feels like a bit of a high bar to clear though.

AEW Rampage 5/5

Lucha Bros/Hijo del Vikingo vs QTV (Powerhouse Hobbs/QT Marshall/Aaron Solo)

MD: Figured I'd give this some time too. There are a lot of different possible structures and narratives in pro wrestling. It doesn't have to be shine/heat/comeback. As long as there's a narrative throughline and things have weight and matter, as long as they have some semblance of build and payoff, you can do a lot of different things. Some stories are easier to tell than others. Some are more natural. Some require less work on the viewer. And, it's valid to occasionally just do a your move/my move fireworks spotfest so long as it's driven by a purpose on the card and it doesn't have a negative impact on it. Even then, however, I tend to find that last option limiting. If you pull back just a little on that, if you just take a breath and think things through, you can still hit a lot of those spots but underpin them with a more compelling narrative. Doing that will only make the spots feel more impressive and compelling because there'll be something providing them with actual substance. It's almost always additive if done well and smartly. The best wrestling is when people combine working smart and working hard, when you have both "workrate" and narrative, when one is the means and the other is the end.

So often with the Lucha Bros, I see a heck of a lot of means and not a lot of end. That's most especially true when they're up against similar opponents with similar mindsets. They try to go over the top and in doing so end up completely untethered. It pops the crowd in the moment but you end up remembering spots and moments, not the match as a whole.

One of the great things about AEW is the WAR-like nature of the potential pairings. You'll see Lucha Bros and Vikingo against the most logical guys in the world (let's say Rush and Dralistico) but you'll also see them here against QT, Hobbs, and Solo, three guys with wildly different skillsets. After a bit of posturing, QT took all of Vikingo's flashy stuff. I'll admit I had mixed feelings about his basing. In general, we applaud wrestlers for getting into positions on dives and saving the spot and their opponent. That's outside of the ring; when it happens in the ring however, it always feels a little dodgier. That was the case with the implosion 'rana. QT rushing to position made it feel more impactful but also poked at the suspension of disbelief just a tad. Still, it felt novel for him to be taking all the offense instead of someone like Kommander or Gringo Loco. There's value in that sort of dissonance too. Then Hobbs came in and just shut everything down. Solo is a 14 year vet 34 year old still trying to find his way but he can hit stuff clean and is pretty punchable, so it's not like he's a bad hand to have in there and to follow up Hobbs' stuff with a bunch of annoying offense to get under the crowd's skin. The built through the commercial break to the comeback and went into a finishing stretch. That's where we got the dives and the real bombs and because of the anticipation everything felt bigger than it would have if they were just escalating and escalating through spot after spot after spot. Speaking of escalating, I'm glad we didn't get the 630 through the table here. That shouldn't be an every match move, even if it's teased every match. It's one of the biggest spots in the promotion and they should only use it when it really matters, not against QT on a Rampage with a weird time spot. It was ok to do it a couple of times early to establish it but now keep it in the pocket so that when it happens, it means as much as humanly possible and that it also doesn't devalue other big dives and spots people do across the promotion. The finish felt a little abrupt to me but ultimately worked; Hobbs was distracted. Why was Hobbs distracted? Because he was choking Abrahantes and that's the best reason to lose a match I can think of.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 1/23 - 1/29

AEW Dynamite 1/25

Darby Allin vs Buddy Matthews

MD: The AEW house style special. You had a full 1998 length match, something to disrupt (House of Black, Ortiz, Sting), and then a full match after it. The story here, as much as anything else, was struggle. There was a moment or two, especially before the disruption, seemed to be about Darby's leg, but you have to think of the whole show when putting together a match like this, and not only did Darby have a match the previous week against Juice which was all about his arm, but there was Cage going after Danielson's shoulder ahead of them. So it was an entry point to some offense some Buddy control, but it wasn't about the match, and frankly, it doesn't need to be. Darby is the guy on the roster who can make it about full body cumulative damage. And here, both guys had a lot of stuff and a lot of counters, and a way of making things that were just a bit contrived feel earned. Even when he was working from underneath, Darby didn't just give Matthews anything. He had to work at it, had to pry away a limb, had to get some extra shots in. Excalibur covered for some of that with the mid-match sleeper, but so much of it was just Darby's resilience against an opponent who was bigger, but not quite as big as we're used to, and how personally he was taking this, since he was the one who called for the match. And as such, it felt different than a lot of other Darby matches where he ends up taking and taking and taking, building sympathy and inspiring awe. That's one of the real positives of this last run of Darby's, though; the matches feel different, even when he, by the nature of who and what he is, is working from underneath more often than not.

Bryan Danielson vs Brian Cage

MD: One of my favorite things about Bryan Danielson matches are the entry points. How does a match start? What's that initial lock-up like? What's the early strategy? How does he first test himself against another wrestler? I can think of other wrestlers over the years where that's one of my favorite parts too. I'm a big Nick Bockwinkel guy and he always came in with an interesting kayfabe strategy or story beat against his opponent. He might do something underhanded immediately against Wahoo since he was so wary of him. He might try to humiliate Chavo Sr in Houston since he was a local hero who felt beneath him as AWA champ. GAEA Aja has a bunch of relatively short matches which are a lot of fun because of how her outclassed opponent tries to start out by solving the problem of her. You know what match that people stand by which I didn't like at the time? Danielson vs Lesnar. Then again, most 2010s Lesnar matches have terribly entry points. The big exception is the Joe match (which then has a rote back half). I liked this a hell of a lot more. The first few minutes of this were all about Danielson outwrestling Cage, out maneuvering him, having answers for not just his strength, but also his speed and agility. More accurately, it was Danielson forcing Cage to be unable to rely upon his speed or agility, forcing him to rely entirely upon his strength, and then having an answer for every attempt to use it. It was Bryan Danielson wrestling a perfect match. He was playing cat and mouse, but a mouse with fangs, and it was everything I would have wanted the opening to that Lesnar match to be.

When Cage caught him, he really caught him, sending him tumbling brutally upside-down into the corner. From there, it was everything that makes Cage interesting and everything that makes him kind of painful to watch. Lots and lots of stuff. Here though, it was redirected and honed through the lens of attacking Danielson's shoulder. It meant that he pulled from his almost endless repertoire of "stuff" to use a shoulder breaker or a bearhug with the arm hammerlocked, or a big arm driver. He wrestled with purpose, with focus, both offensively and defensively in cutting Bryan off, That allowed Danielson to take advantage of that focus to wrestle wounded, to sell his arm as he was throwing kicks, to utilize leverage in a way he might not normally, using an anklelock where you can utilize your own body to support the hold, turning it into a German with the ankle still hooked, and then selling the overall story by winning far less decisively as he had the previous few weeks, with a banana peel finish that let him just barely survive and left him open for the post match beating. So instead of a Danielson vs Cage match where they really went all out and gave us endless fireworks, or something somehow more restrained which was a giant vs an underdog, we got something in the middle: Cage was still himself, full of stuff and enjoyable ideas that may or may not hold up under scrutiny; Danielson was wounded, masterful, dangerous, his back against the wall. I don't think this will be the match in the series that people will remember, but I wonder if it won't be the one that will hold up the best years down the line.

Jay Briscoe Tribute and Celebration of Life 1/26

Eddie Kingston vs QT Marshall

MD: House show/amusement park Eddie is a thing of beauty. There's a world where stumbled his way into FCW in 2011 and basically became the WWF Jim Duggan for the mid-2010s. It's not all that different, not really. He's still going to kneel down and ask you to punch him in the face repeatedly. He's also going to have the crowd hold you so he can chop you. QT, is, of course, a perfect foil for this. Maybe, just maybe, he takes a little too much for a guy who is a player/coach as a character, but as mentioned before, AEW needs credible mid-level heels that can lose. That's the value of Jay Lethal, and they'd be worse off without QT in that role. He's smarmy and confident enough that he can transform every bit that he takes into value for when he ultimately shows ass. Maybe someday he can be (a relatively tall) version of the Bobby Heenan that still worked, but Heenan was 40 in 1984 and Marshall's only 37 now. This was a celebratory night and a celebratory match so the finish just having one rotation around the airport before landing instead of two or three matched the mood. If you're going to have a tribute match to Jay Briscoe, being as much of yourself as possible seems like the absolute best way to go, and they nailed that here.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death: Week of 4/25 - 5/1

AEW Dynamite 4/27

Blackpool Combat Club (Bryan Danielson/Jon Moxley/Wheeler Yuta) vs. The Factory (QT Marshall/Nick Comoroto/Aaron Solo)

MD: I know some people are frustrated that Danielson isn't getting obscenely long singles matches anymore, but I'm generally into seeing him in these tags. I'm not entirely sure that I'm overly fascinated by 2022 Danielson's match layouts, but I do love seeing him in specific exchanges with varied opponents. I wish we had seen him really have one with either Comoroto or QT here but it was nice to see him beat Solo around the ring and dropkick him in the face as he came off the top. Then he had a killer tope out of nowhere on QT and Comoroto. Yuta (with his new Punch Out theme) got a hero's welcome in his hometown and took most of the heat. He always got a chop back in whenever they tagged out on him (as we all know, constantly trying to fight back is key for staying over during a heat segment), and in the finishing stretch he survived and then overcame Comoroto, finally winning with the seatbelt. It's a bit of hierarchy which has definitely shifted over the last couple of months. Biggest new bit in the match were the tandem corner running clotheslines and kicks by Moxley and Danielson. They're in the tag rankings now and the act is solidifying. There's still a sense that they ended up together to cool one another down just a little so as not to overshadow Page, but it doesn't mean the matches aren't a blast.

ER: There's a reason Matt and I get along so well, and I'm also in the camp who would really enjoys seeing Danielson working sequences against guys who are much lower down on the hierarchy than he. I don't need to see a 12 minute Danielson/Solo singles, but I like watching Danielson getting Solo as hard as he can right in the chest. But considering I *would* want to see 9-12 minute Danielson/Comoroto and Danielson/QT matches, I guess what I would really want is Danielson singles matches that are just way far away from what would be profitable or wanted by the mass viewing audience. I like QT more than most, I think, and now he's got a rebuilt hairline to go with his Best in the World in 2022 kneedrop. Go ahead, try to come up with anyone else who currently has a better one, you'll know I'm right. As Matt said, Moxley and Danielson are really feeling like a complementary team, a natural pair, who seem to boost each other's similar qualities. Maybe my eyes deceive me but it feels like they're each hitting their offense with as much snap and impact as ever. Moxley treated Solo like a Young Boy just to start the match, elbowing hard across the face and then tossing him onto the back of his head with a release front suplex. Yuta is the guy who feels a bit out of place with the group. I'm still not sold on him, but at the same time it's very easy to get behind a guy with a loud over-supportive hometown crowd. The finishing sequence was both Yuta and Comoroto's best moment of the match, with Yuta fighting to get the seatbelt while Comoroto looked like an incensed caveman trying to drag an alive and kicking animal home. 

AEW Rampage 4/29

Darby Allin vs. Swerve Strickland

MD: There's maybe no one in wrestling that'll take the most convoluted route between points A and B than Strickland. Darby had the right amount of speed, familiarity, and agility to make it kind of work on this night though. Sometimes, if things go so far over the top, they come back around to where they ought to be. I'm not going to say that was true for every exchange here, but it was probably better than 50% which is honestly a huge credit and probably to both guys. I found myself fighting a small groan in the first half of an exchange and then coming around for the back half. That doesn't mean things like Swerve flipping to the floor or rolling about for no reason actually work though. At least when Darby jumped over him for the code red set up it was about positioning, but even that was kind of borderline. That said, the biggest spots, definitely worked. Strickland based perfectly for Darby's twist around stunner on the floor. The knee up on the dive was so fast and impactful that no one even knew what happened until the replay. Darby's grapevine of the leg out of the corner was beautiful and Strickland more or less sold appropriately from there on out. The suplex to the floor, despite being straightforward was grisly and put over appropriately, and then the banana peel finish with just a hint of Starks involvement worked for the match. Darby, through who he was and what he could do, ultimately made this work in a way almost no one else could do. I'm glad I probably won't have to write up another Strickland match for a while though.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death Week of 11/22-11/28

AEW Dynamite 11/24

CM Punk vs. QT Marshall

MD: Not a ton to say here. It went too long obviously, but it only felt too long because they had the Factory kicked out early and the commercial break, maybe due to the long opening promo, dragged the thing down like an anchor. They seem to be telling the story that Punk's having too much trouble with guys he shouldn't be having so much trouble with, but even so, QT's so far down the card and in that player/coach role that it would have worked out better if interference caused Punk's issues. Also, the announcers (JR specifically as Excalibur tried) didn't give proper credit to QT's low blow during the commercial break (something the PiP wasn't going to let you pick up on so easily) didn't help. What I did love here was the opening bit with Punk leaning hard into his reclamation of the bodyslam and QT selling them like death. Honestly, Punk's shine here was the most I've ever seen QT work towards the "wrestle like a manager, manage like a wrestler" mindset, which is, again, how I think he has the most value in-ring to the company. He should just lean all the way into it and wear the one-shoulder Heenan singlet. So this was worked ok but had some production/creative/layout issues.

Bryan Danielson vs. Colt Cabana

MD: Solid TV match highlighting Danielson's new attitude. I would have liked to see their familiarity play out a little more. You got it a bit in the early chain wrestling, a bit more in some of the dodges, and then with a tiny bit of hesitation at the end, but it played out more on commentary than in the match. I'd argue that the hesitation at the end, when Danielson had Colt's hands and was about to stomp, made the match though. There were other similar milked moments, points where everything stopped and took a dramatic beat, like when they were up on the top, but the pre-stomp one felt electric. It was probably the only thing in the match that did, though. Uno made more of his opportunity the week before. Danielson continued to showcase his aggression and uncaring drive, moving quickly to strikes even when he could have tested himself on the mat with Colt. He worked in the pose before the Lebell lock and brandished the tooth about after the match. In the grand scheme of things, highlighting Danielson's aggression was the most important thing, but it's not like these AEW matches don't often manage a number of different objectives at once and I'm not sure this one did.

PAS: I thought this was better then the Uno match the week before, as Cabana matched the hard hitting nature of Danielson more, I especially liked his short elbows. I am not sure about Cabana, who as at this point an undercarder,  doing a flip flop and fly in a promotion with both of Dusty's son's, feels like something a road agent should have nixed. The match had a lot of energy from Cabana being in Chicago, and Danielson showing no mercy on his friend with the stomps to the head was pretty sick stuff, especially with Dragon parading around with the tooth like a trophy. I am not sure what an Alan Angel's match next week really achieves, at this point I think they should get Danielson some partners and run some trios matches if you want to drag out the feud a bit more (Garcia and Moriarty? Call up Biff Busick?). 

AEW Rampage 11/26 (Taped 11/24)

20. Eddie Kingston vs. Daniel Garcia

PAS: I thought this was really excellent, a master class by Kingston who is on an all time great in-ring run right now.  He established hierarchy early, stuffing Garcia's shot attempts and stonewalling him on strikes. It felt like a grumpy Jumbo Tsuruta performance refusing to play along with what Garcia was attempting. When Garcia gets the advantage after the tweaked knee, he really presses it well, and we get two great Kingston sells: bad knee and damaged ear. Garcia's strength as a wrestler is his persistence,  and the whole match is Kingston repelling that. Kingston is still a bigger guy, and I loved he powered through the knee injury to hit that huge lifting powerbomb, and the pair of sick suplexes with the Exploder and backdrop driver. I also dug him using the missed first backfist to set up the second one where he almost beheaded Garcia. Kingston is a 90s All Japan superfan and it was fun to watch him do Jumbo vs. Kikuchi instead of Misawa vs. Kawada.

ER: This was cool, in that it starts like a Kingston squash and keeps building into something bigger. It's really easy to see Kingston running over Garcia while also constantly clowning 2.0 on the floor, and the first parts of this are just Kingston refusing to play along. Garcia would throw uppercuts or chops and whenever Kingston wanted to take back over he would just throw an eye poke or refuse to be Irish whipped, even biting at Garcia's ear. Kingston is one of the few guys in wrestling who can pull off Face Biting as a babyface move and it fully fits him. A weird thing happens when we move into the break, as Garcia suddenly becomes a monster in Picture-in-Picture, booting Kingston in the face multiple times and working over the knee Kingston tweaked while doing a kneedrop to Garcia. Injuring yourself doing something that benefits you is a thing most 40 year olds who still try to keep in shape experience, and nobody works a self-injury into a match better than Kingston. Garcia's fireman's carry roll into a heel hook looked good, and really made Kingston scramble to break. The knee is clearly Garcia's ticket, and Eddie is the best at continuing a plan regardless, so even with the bad knee he still struggles through delivering a big exploder and essentially a one-legged powerbomb. I kept thinking this was about to finish and they kept managing to kick each others' asses back into a match, with Kingston literally fighting from underneath and punching up at Garcia to break holds, then hitting a double backfist for the finish (well the first one missed but he had a second ready to fire just in case). I don't really need Jericho involved in this feud as Kingston really doesn't need Popular Loud Mic Guy around him, but they're nailing this so far so who am I to say. 

MD: Just a really interesting, hard hitting, multifaceted match that went a number of different places. I'd say it was one of the more ambitious AEW matches I've seen this year. I loved the Punk vs Garcia match, for instance, but that was very much just one thing (Garcia dismantling the leg). This was a whole lot more and wholly driven by the personalities involved and the situation of Eddie coming in banged up. One of my favorite things about Garcia is how he enters every match with a gameplan or a strategy. You rarely see him just locking up with someone. Here, he immediately went for explosive takedowns but Kingston was able to use his size advantage to goozle him. That's how most of the first third here went. Garcia would try something direct and Kingston would just shut him down. That might be wrestling; it might be strikes; it might be slowing things down; it might be using 2.0 as a distraction. None of it would work because of Kingston's size advantage, savvy (the eyepoke), and overall toughness. It (and it was Garcia's persistence and smaller, younger dog attitude) all slowly got under his skin though, to the point where he went up for that knee off the ropes when he didn't have to.

The second third was about the opportunities Kingston's hurt knee provided Garcia. Unlike the Punk match, he didn't go right after it. Instead, he stubbornly wanted to prove himself and his striking game, and started targeting the ear. The knee slow down Kingston's offense and unlocked the ear for Garcia, and maybe the ear would have unlocked more, if Kingston didn't cut him off by outright biting him. Which led to the last third, where the knee gave out again and Garcia honed in on it. Even then, as Kingston kept getting the ropes, Garcia would lose his cool and go back to striking. Kingston would lean on the savvy here, playing possum to lure Garcia in for an exploder, drawing him into strike exchanges when he should have stayed focus on the hurt body part. Garcia was out there to prove himself as much as win though, and you prove yourself against Kingston by meeting him head-on. Kingston leaned into this, squeezing out opportunity after opportunity until he finally managed a killshot. What made all of this work was Garcia's desire and penchant to drive forward with every opening and Kingston's top notch defensive wrestling and selling, the most sympathetic, down on his luck, affectionately miserable guy in the world. In the end, both of these characters care so much, even if Garcia can't help himself and Kingston cares despite himself and that made for such a meaningful, resonant clash.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death Week of 11/8-11/14

AEW Dark 11/9 (Taped 11/5)

Darby Allin vs. QT Marshall

MD: This was about getting a crowd that was owed stars a look at Darby. The pre-match promo by QT saying he'd do a favor to a friend and soften Darby up for MJF was just a way to try to put a little more heat on a throwaway webshow match. I have a lot of thoughts about QT actually. He's apparently Khan's Bruce or Fink (probably somewhere in the middle), the guy he'll call to talk booking plans at 4 am and that conveys a lot of the messages forward. Wrestling in AEW wasn't actually a given for him; it just sort of happened. He's also an experienced journeyman wrestler, has fairly decent size, can hit stuff. I saw him vs Danielson in 2010 in Puerto Rico a couple of weeks ago. AEW has an unbalanced, large amount of undercard heels though, and while it's possible, maybe, if all the stars align, that he gets some sort of DDP run that gets over, he'd have so much more value to the promotion if he started to work more like a manager. There are a bunch of managers and seconds on the roster, but they're all older and shouldn't be bumping or more non-wrestling looking guys like Andrade's assistant. I get why QT wants to go out and be more of a player/coach than just a coach of the Factory though. I just don't think he has as much value as he might leaning hard, at 36, into being what Paul Jones and JJ Dillon were five years later in 83.

Ok, the match: Early on, I liked how all the motion was about getting over Darby; Marshall would use his strength to redirect Allin or force him up, but it was all about Darby smoothly recovering and keeping the motion going. Darby countering the suplex in midair with a kick is the third time in a week I saw that sort of spot. Have I just not been paying attention or is it a new zeitgeist spot thing? I like it, but not if it's overdone. Anyway, it's not that Marshall's belly to belly and top rope headbutt didn't look good, but he probably would have stood out more on the show with a chinlock with his feet on the ropes and a Memphis headlock hiding a punch. I liked the comeback and the suddenness of the coffin drop, where instead of just sitting around, you could buy that Marshall had no idea where he was or what was about to happen. Ok showcase match for Darby for the crowd but I still think it would be good for Marshall to see the hole in the promotion and gravitate towards it.

AEW Dynamite 11/10

Bryan Danielson vs. Rocky Romero

ER: I've heard recently of the Rocky Romero Renaissance, but I'm still a skeptic. If Danielson is going to have matches that I've already seen him have 15+ years ago in CA, then I am still more excited for the upcoming matches against Larry Blackwell, Scott Lost, and Jardi Frantz. Still, this is the same kind of very good TV match that Danielson has been having for a long time now, and those will always be satisfying. I liked how Danielson took Romero's offense, like catching a rana off the ring steps or taking a hard back bump off a tope, and I liked Romero trying to spam the cross-armbreaker (as if anyone in attendance thought Danielson was going to tap to a Rocky Romero submission). I wish Romero did some more interesting things to set up the armbars, as other than a cool knee to Danielson's shoulder it was pretty much him doing Rocky Romero Offense and then just trying for the same cross-armbreaker from the same position. They sold throughout like they had already each worked a match, and that was kind of odd, and it felt like there were missing steps in this, as if those glue moments happened somewhere else and nobody will ever get to see that full match footage. But this was a fun Danielson TV match, and it's his own fault for consistently crafting matches better than this one that a match like this can come off Less Than. 

PAS: I am coming off watching Romero kill it with Negro Casas live, so I am at a high point in my Romero fandom. I was into this, it is fun to watch Danielson work as a skilled counter mat wrestler. Romero isn't Drew Gulak, but this match had some of that same energy. I especially loved the last couple of minutes, which were all about trying to grab something and twist. The finish with Romero flattening out to stop the LeBell lock, only for Danielson to switch to the Tequila Sunrise was sick stuff. Danielson is a guy who can come out of nowhere to get you and this was great example of that. 

AEW All In 11/13

33. Darby Allin vs. MJF

MD: I get the build was about MJF winning with a side headlock takeover, and everyone lauded the Malenko/Guerrero opening bits, but they built this with MJF mocking Darby Allin's dead uncle, so maybe that wasn't the way to go? It worked out fine, as Darby would be stepping on MJF's throat on the apron a couple of minutes later and with the goading skateboard finish, but it was all a little too cutesy with mirrored body language and synchronized timing on lifting shoulders up and what not. I think there would have been a way to do this with MJF going for the side headlock over and over and Darby having to reverse and counter that would have been both more logical and story-driven as opposed to chain wrestling for the sake of it. Once the match actually got going and became about Darby's back and ultimately, after backbreaker after backbreaker, MJF's leg, it was very good. Darby's going to bump and sell around the ring as well as anyone on the roster and I liked the variations. If they felt gratuitous, it's because MJF is such a troll. Shame on the announcers for not being able to call the Billy Robinson backbreaker though. 

The leg was a way for Darby to believably stay in it without ever totally taking over the match. MJF's timing for Darby's tope and the camera angle for Darby running across the ring wasn't quite as good as the one with Sting and 2.0 but it was a close second. I liked how MJF used the Scorpion Deathlock and Darby used the figure-four which almost felt like the heel was using the face submission and the face the heel submission. MJF shouldn't have been able to turn it; the heel ought to get to the ropes in that situation instead. That's a nitpick though. The things that hit well, like the code red reversal into a power bomb, hit really well, and the match more specific spots that worked than didn't. I liked the finish. Maybe I would have liked it a little more if he had taken the ring bell because they were aping the Savage/Steamboat stuff as well. The deal with the Savage/Steamboat Mania match is that they'd already worked all of the hate-filled revenge matches around the loop so all that was left was wrestling and the title. This match tried to balance the two a little more and the ultimate result was impressive but maybe a bit uneven.

PAS: I thought this was really excellently worked, but had one too many ideas. I thought the opening of the match actually worked well. Darby was trying to answer MJF's taunts about his wrestling ability by hanging with him with counter wrestling. Darby has such incredible body control that it is really a pleasure to watch him do that stuff. I also liked MJF getting frustrated with being matched move for move and unloading with the cheap shot. The second part of the match, with Darby having the bad back from the missed apron coffin drop and MJF constantly crushing his own knee trying offense was neat too. That avalanche powerbomb counter of the code red, and the powerbomb on the knee were both incredible looking offensive moves. I didn't love going back to the Malenko vs. Guerrero roll ups, felt like that part of the match had passed, and MJF doing the spot with the skateboard and the ring felt like something this match didn't need. Almost like a TV show with too many plot lines, it felt like you could have saved some stuff for a future match.

ER: This was an incredible match yet I wish they had decided to drop a few of their ideas (as if they won't fight again and won't need something to use in that next match) and I wish it didn't have the first couple and last couple minutes. This match is something that excelled far past the headlock takeover and Malenko/Guerrero roll-ups and it's the bulk of the match that I loved so much. Once things moved past fast count roll-ups where shoulders aren't even touching the mat and moved into MJF working over Darby's back, they hit on something really special. I think MJF is an underrated in-ring guy and a vastly overrated promo guy, and this match was a testament to how far his in-ring has come. I loved the story of him destroying Darby's back at the expense of killing his own knees. Darby splats fantastically onto the ring apron on a missed Coffin Drop, one of those falls that would have me laid up for a week, and MJF wastes no time exploiting it. MJF's best in-ring attribute at this point might be that he's really great at being the "smart dumb guy", planning out a smart strategy but able to be lead away from that or continuing his strategy as it hurts him. This was a great match for that, and his work over Darby's back was really punishing. 

"Big move onto my own knee" offense almost always looks stupid, but MJF's powerbomb onto his own knee looked absolutely crushing, like Darby's spine should be completely misaligned. There's an incredible spot where Darby fights for a code red, and MJF fights it into a kind of cursed splash mountain. He drops Darby with backbreakers that look devastating, and his knee selling is so good that even as Darby is getting crushed you get the sense that he has ins. I am happy the crowd rose to their feet while they were both rolling around like goofs getting 2 counts for things that weren't even close to pins, but I hated that choice with a passion and thought it really distracted from everything they had done. The match had become something different and much better than they had initially started with, and it felt like a major regression - not a callback or joined loop - when we went back to that shit. The cheapshot leading to the side headlock takeover win was well done, and the bulk of the match is incredible, bookended by some things that a 22 minute match did not need. 


16. Bryan Danielson vs. Miro

MD: This one was all about Miro controlling the pace. Danielson would try to turn on his asylum-escapee-no-longer-straightjacketed adrenaline and Miro would just shut him down. It's interesting Danielson didn't target the neck earlier. He even went out and said that would be his gameplan when he was on commentary on Dynamite. The leg was bandaged but he didn't gain much ground there either. What's going to stand out, what we'll remember years from now about this one, was Miro taking three shots from Danielson just to hit one of his own. Miro, being one of the great vulnerable monsters in wrestling history, knew exactly how much to give and in doing so put over both the kicks and himself. The finish was sudden and ugly but in a good way given that you needed something out of the ordinary to explain Miro's collapse after a match where he was getting chipped away at but still seemed to have a lot of armor left.

PAS: Danielson has been such a force during his AEW run, it was really cool to watch him run into someone he couldn't just overwhelm. Miro's strength allowed him to shrug off Danielson's submission attempts like Kimo on Royce Gracie, and Miro has one punch KO power. Miro does really cool versions of my two least favorite current wrestling tropes: his religious fanatic cursing god is the best possible version of NXT shocked face, and the Bolo Yeung style offering of his ribs is the coolest strike exchange you can get.  I loved the finish, it looked really awkward in the best way, with Danielson just spiking Miro on his bad neck from the top in a way which almost looked like an accident. Breaking someone's neck is a great way to crack a brick wall.

ER: You know it's a great match when you get a classic fired up Danielson performance where he's leaning  into the prospects of getting a potentially deadly concussion, and get to see an equally fired up career high performance from his opponent. For several years now Miro has felt like an absolute dead in the water guy, doomed to either not live up to or not get the chance to ever really show how far he can go. I had completely written Miro off, a guy whose big run feels much further in the rearview than its actual six years. Rusev Day was four years ago? Feels like a decade. When he joined AEW and immediately started goofing around with the worst act on the roster? I thought he was unrecoverable. Now, Danielson has been on a genuine tear in 2021, having high end matches all year with everyone, and it's really easy to credit Danielson and Eddie Kingston for Miro's big resurgence...but he is clearly a changed man. 

Lean mean crazed eyed murderous Miro looks like the star that Believers have been saying is there since before the Cena win. Danielson *could* have worked this great match with just about anyone on the AEW roster, but Miro helped this get to a higher level because Miro felt legitimate. Miro looked like a New Japan Red Army psycho here, hammering into every part of Danielson's body and responding to Danielson's kicks and elbows with more violence. Miro took all of Danielson's offense and made it look damaging, while making himself look properly unmanageable, and it's a really impressive window to hit this well. He threw Danielson so wildly overhead, and Danielson is a maniac who will take great throws on his head and shoulder, and that kind of give and take punishment made this feel like a FUTEN fight. Miro takes a DDT on the top of his head that made him look like the guy on the cautionary Check Pool For Water sign, and the KO stoppage from that looked great, like Kurisu shoot knocking a dude out but still locking in a submission. 

2. Eddie Kingston vs. CM Punk - EPIC

PAS: An absolute classic. The build on this match was tremendous and they went out and delivered everything in the ring. So many brawls these days are full of elaborate set-ups for stunt bumps or weapons shots, so it is great to see an old fashioned fist fight. I enjoy someone getting hit with a chair, I love it even more when it is a fist.  Kingston laying Punk out before the bell with a backfist and laughing maniacally was a great start, as was a dazed Punk flipping him off from the floor. We were off from there with great hard shots from both guys, Kingston delivering some of his epic selling (both GTS's felt like he got hit in the head with a shovel), and Punk leaning into his assholeness. I thought the Cena taunt was great (although I could have done without the Guerrero tribute, I get why he did it, but not this match), and Punk really looked deranged with blood flowing down his face. I loved near the end when both guys were slumped in the corner, and they rose up to maybe the only good looking Frye vs. Takayama exchange in wrestling history (non-Necro Butcher division). I am torn on the finish. I really am so invested in Eddie at this point that any time he loses it pisses me off, but hopefully they keep this going and its leads to Eddie's moment. There is so much meat left on the bone.

MD: Totally unique, unbridled match, with a lot to pull apart. Was it a case where the match got away from Punk in the most amazing ways or was it the plan all along? They definitely got the mood right here to start, with Punk skipping all of his usual pre-match antics and getting right to it, only to walk right into the backfist. That said, while it never really let up from there, it did take a somewhat bizarre turn. The blood came early, to the point where Punk worked most of the match with it and the back half of the match with it basically dried all over his face. I'm not sure I've ever been more disappointed with announcers than in this one. They left so many potential hooks on the table, and with Khan's post-match comments about the boos for Punk being like Rock's at Mania vs. Hogan, I can only imagine some of the way the match turned wasn't entirely the plan. Those boos came late in the match when Punk pounced on a mostly defenseless Kingston with the elbows and knees, though. They weren't facile boos. They weren't boos in a bubble. They weren't goofy Canadian nostalgia boos. The fans specifically disliked what Punk the wrestler chose to do in that moment. It was heat. And it had been something building in the match until then. 

Before that, Punk clearly disrespected Kingston by hitting the Cena spots. Even with the blood coming down his face, that's what he chose to do against this opponent, with this issue, in this setting. Then there was the moment that the crowd first went from dueling chants to chanting solely for Eddie, a real turning point in the match. How did Punk respond to it? By deciding it was time to do the Guerrero tribute (the third or fourth of the night at that). Whether or not it was genuine and heartfelt and whether or not it just happened to be the point in the match when it was originally planned, it came off as a complete jerk move, using Eddy's memory as a way to willfully (and pettily!) misunderstand and twist how the crowd had decided to solely get behind Kingston with their chants. In the end, even if the announcers didn't pick up on virtually any of it, even if Khan seemed to indicate it was something else in the media scrum, I'm pretty certain Punk knew what he was doing, and it all added to the animosity in the match and got the crowd more and more behind Kingston and his defiance. Ultimately, I had a sense that Punk, the character, was punishing Kingston for ruining his fun, and though it seemed like he was offering his respect with the handshake post-match, to me, there was something else going on entirely. Hopefully this isn't the end of it, because there are still places for this one to go.

ER: Not many matches can come off as both a feud blowoff and a feud starter that's merely laying the groundwork for the danger to come, but this managed to do that while being 25% shorter than the next shortest match on the PPV. I had no idea how the fans would react to this one and wasn't sure they would turn on either man (I was expecting far more Both These Guys type chants) and loved how Punk was able to draw those boos WHILE being busted and without resorting to any kind of actual cheating. Punk drew heat by just choosing the best moment to throw grounded punches at Eddie Kingston, a man who talks constantly about how much he loves punching and being punched. Punk and Kingston understand the moments and the context within their matches, and they understand how to use it to add even more depth and then pay that depth off. 

I'm with Phil, in that Kingston matches are some of the few in modern wrestling where I stop thinking about who will be booked to win, because I only want to see Eddie Kingston win. Eddie Kingston makes me root for his victory in the same way I root for the Giants to win (presumably) shoot baseball games. But he's so easy to connect to that I also root his stupid decisions, especially if they seem like its what he personally wanted. I didn't want to see Kingston get nailed with a GTS, but I cannot deny the man the joy of popping up before getting hit with one. Kingston took both GTS as effectively as any man can, and I love how Punk has shifted his delivery and selling of the delivery. The move doesn't look sloppy, as it used to, and now just looks difficult to hit, and like it takes more out of him TO hit it. Those are conscious changes to a small part of a wrestler's game, and seeing someone evolve their game like that always catches my attention. These two catch my attention, and I want to see them evolve this feud. 

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AEW All Out 9/5/21 Pt. 3

CM Punk vs. Darby Allin

PAS: This was excellent, maybe one of my favorite Punk matches ever. He really leaned into what he does well, and I thought his execution in this match (which was always a bit of a weakness) was precise and excellent. I don't really think of Punk as a stiff worker, but he throws a brutal looking short clothesline, some hard punches and a great looking leg lariat, which is a Punk spot which I had always thought looked sort of crappy. Darby was of course tremendous, he has some of the best offense in the world and is an all time bumper. I loved how the sick ringpost bump led into all of Punk's abdominal stretches, and how hard Darby bumped for simple things like shoulder blocks. He is so fast, that he always seems moments away from winning, and eats offense so well that he is always moments away from losing. They cribbed an opening spot from Bret Hart vs. 1-2-3 Kid, so that is the obvious comparison, but this was a very Bret Hart performance by Punk, and Darby is an even more self destructive 1-2-3 Kid. I honestly think this is a classic match, it easily exceeded my expectations. 

ER: If this match somehow didn't exceed someone's expectations then that person may want to find a new fandom. This was going to be a difficult match to make memorable beyond "return of the guy people have been waiting to return for 7 years". The return was always going to be memorable, but that's no guarantee the match was going to be. Hometown Returning Mega Babyface vs. one of the biggest AEW babyfaces is tough to work around without one of them working heel, and I'm happy that they used Bret/Kid as a loose framework to successfully work around that. Nobody wanted to see either as the bad guy, and so instead they made the match work with some excellent focused work and execution. Punk has always famously been a John Cena bad execution wrestler, but execution is just one facet of a great worker. Here, however, his execution looked as good as any Punk match I've ever seen, and Allin's offense was on another level. Allin is one of the best "body as weapon" wrestlers today, and he was hitting Punk so hard with shoulderblocks and corner body attacks harder than ever, like he wanted every back row Chicagoan to know how hard the hometown boy was getting hit. Allin's ringpost bump was insane, and no matter how redundant it has felt to still be calling Darby bumps insane, he somehow keeps managing to top himself. I've never seen someone take that bump as a cannonball, bouncing back first off the ringpost. 

Punk immediately starts working over Darby's back and it's the most effective use of an abdominal stretch in a big match in who knows when. Excalibur smartly pointed out before the match that Punk's gas tank would be his biggest concern, so I loved how all of Darby's offense was focused on Punk's stomach and ribs. A guy with a iffy gas tank getting pounded in the abdomen makes a ton of sense. Darby was great at moving this show along, taking a mammoth bump through the ropes to the floor off the first Go2Sleep, and I loved the spot where Punk merely sat up out of the way of the first Coffin Drop. Darby made Punk's calf kick look lethal, and Punk made the Diamond Dust really look like something that could break your jaw. Both men really lit it up and the time really flew by. There was no nonsense, no unnecessary outside involvement, and that couldn't have been easy to pass up. This match had to accomplish several things, and they managed to find the best way to balance a huge star's return while having the best match possible and STILL keeping Darby strong. This was a smashing success in every way. 

Paul Wight vs. QT Marshall

PAS: This was great for it's spot, I believe in a cooler match, and Wight bumping around some goofs is a great cooler. This was a Women's match spot in the WWE forever, and it is smart for AEW not to demean their women by putting them there. I liked Comoroto not dropping from the punch, that guy has potential and I would be into him and Wight going at it. 

Kenny Omega vs. Christian

PAS: Good main event, focusing on vicious Omega rather then spot guy Omega. Christian took a real shellacking in this match for an older guy, blasted in the mouth with knees, big bumps to the floor, that double stomp with a table on top of him. You get the sense his body was one giant bruise after that match. Omega kept the do-si-doing to a minimum and instead just tried to drive his knee through Christian's head. Some of his facial expressions are too Tom Green for me, but I appreciate violence. That one winged angle from the top rope is a great looking super finisher. Adam Cole debuting post match is sort of a bummer, but I am excited to see what Danielson can do in this stage of his career. 

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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 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 6/17/20

What Worked

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

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

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

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

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

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


What Didn't Work

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

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

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

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 5/6/20

What Worked

-I liked Nyla Rose's cannonball off the top, and her powerbomb delivered a nice flat landing. But somewhere, some man is crying about it.

-I overall liked Moxley/Kazarian, though I liked more what they were going for in the first half than the second half. After Janela's goofy brand of dancing, I was getting into these two just basing a match around heavy chops and headlock takeovers. And I thought the layout was much stronger, even if there was some shady execution on some of it. This should have been Moxley beating Kazarian down while Kazarian does his best to keep up and fight back, and that's mostly what we got. I liked Kazarian utilizing "holding my leg out" two different times, letting Moxley run himself into a boot off the top to the floor and in the ring. And Kazarian took a couple of tough bumps, including getting backdropped out of the ring onto the ramp and landing on sprawled knees. Finish was simple and easy, no need to have someone kicking out of your best stuff, and I appreciated that.

-QT Marshall did his best to make Archer look good, and I think QT has some of the best strikes in AEW. He's exactly where he should be within the AEW hierarchy, but he's become a guy I really like seeing when he shows up.

-Loved Britt kicking Brandi in the stomach and hitting a nice DDT on the floor. But for all of JR and Excalibur showing concern for Brandi when Jake's snake was crawling on her, nobody ever asked how awful it must have felt for the snake to see Brandi wearing snakeskin shorts.

-The peaks of the main event made it work, even though it still had that weird combination of "pretty dangerous bumps but also yuks" that they always go for. Can you picture Buzz Sawyer getting punched in the head and thrown hard into a guardrail, and then hit with an inflatable pool float? No, because that would be pretty stupid. There's always this weird vibe when they do a match like this where they have to do some crazy stuff so that they're taken seriously, but this weird shame where they don't want to be the guys taking something like pro wrestling seriously. I don't understand it myself, but it's clearly the house style. Sammy Guevara took a lot of big bumps and is the best guy to be teaming with Jericho in something like this, to take all of the big bumps while acting as his hype man. Sammy takes a gnarly powerbomb into a roll up door, and leans way into a golf cart bump (much better than Jericho, who JR immediately had to give a "well luckily I think Jericho got out of the way of that cart..."). Omega was much better doing wild stupid stuff like that awesome moonsault off the cherry picker, than he was at simple brawling (I'm not sure why he was throwing punches a foot past people's heads in a brawl, but there they were). Even Swagger takes a big bump through a stack of guardrails. Those type of things kept the match up here.


What Didn't Work

-I really liked the opening of Janela/Rhodes, loved the fast scramble small package nearfalls especially, but disliked it the longer it went and thought it was pretty lousy by the end. The longer Janela matches go, the more he shows that he has no idea how to transition back to offense other than "take someone's move fully, and just get up and go on offense". That kept happening throughout the match, and it looked worse each time. There were moments that were good on paper, like a chop exchange ending with Cody goading Janela into throwing one more, only to have Cody kick his arm as he chopped. But with Janela it's really obvious when a spot is going to miss or hit, as he telegraphs things from a mile away making it clear when something is going to whiff. He started that chop while standing 7 feet away from Cody, made a cool on paper spot look silly. Beyond that it was awkward positioning (like Cody's moonsault off the entrance way that Janela had to casually walk 10 feet to take), or awkward movements Janela's silly little run to miss a ramp charge, or that sad little flub where he couldn't hop up onto the apron to finish a spot). By the end of this I was already tired of Cody hitting something big, Janela kicking out with a dramatic nearfall, and then that nearfall meaning nothing when he just stood up to do his own move. Moves trading sucks when someone just stands up after a reverse superplex. The strike exchange in the home cement was shit dressing on a turd salad.

-Why does Lance Archer pick his weakest looking offense to finish matches? His twisting splash off the middle rope looked better than anything he used down the stretch of the match.

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 4/1/20

What Worked

-I laughed at Cody saying "Anna Jayy with two Ys for some reason"

-I'm a fan of amusing product placement, and having Britt Baker casually eating a chicken sandwich at ringside while trash talking Shida, leading directly to a KFC commercial, worked for me. We don't need to know where she got the sandwich, but we can be grossed out that she was kinda letting it just rest on the guardrail while Shida came over (these are people who clearly don't care about social distancing anyway, as there are 8 people at ringside and they all managed to be clumped together), but Baker just suddenly wanted a chicken sandwich while watching wrestling. My dad is a dentist who treats his daily food intake like one extended meal, so this felt like it captured my own individual view of dentists.

-Marko/Archer was a great use of both guys. Marko shouldn't be competitive against Archer if we're talking level playing field, and he was perfect as the guy making Archer look like a monster in his debut. Stunt took some brutal stuff, loved the release vertical suplex that sent him all the way across the ring, and that high angle flipping powerbomb finish was awesome. Tossing Stunt violently into the crowd would have been made better if there was nobody to catch him due to social distancing, but the whole presentation of this was great.

-Dustin on my TV is almost always going to make top side, and I was way into the Dustin/QT team. Dustin teaming with one of the promotion's scrubs against two identity-free cult members is good wrestling by me. I mean hell yeah, give me a fucking QT Marshall showcase against guys that QT *should* be showcased against. He's a good pro, hit a big dive down the stretch, broke out a sweet corkscrew senton that really landed hard, and had a couple nice double teams with Dustin (including the cool assisted suplex finish). Dustin worked like Dustin, so it was great. Love seeing him run hard into the ropes, slap cult members in the face, hit the - STILL - best powerslam in wrestling, all of it was good. 8 and 9 got in an appropriate amount of offense for what they're doing, this whole thing worked.

-Darby had another monster main event performance, really letting his lunatic superstar shine in a match with too much horseshit. Both of his dives into Guevara were pulverizing (why did the camera show Cody's not good dive instead of Darby's first great dive??) and his coffin drop off a pole was some classic Darby shit. Love this guy.


What Didn't Work

-Omega/Trent was one of those matches that kept winning me and losing me. I liked it when it was 80/20 Omega, felt like a kind of slow, dominant Omega win. And then when Omega was finally taking too long and Trent came back, stomped on Omega's hand and started working him over, I got really into it. I suddenly thought Omega's last couple weeks of sluggishness were being played into a match, where he was dominant but not necessarily capitalizing, and this time it might cost him. Even when Omega came back the match felt like it had a whole new energy, with Trent getting tossed hard into the guardrail and eating a great powerbomb into a support pole. I was hooked. But by the time it just turned into Trent taking a cross legged brainbuster onto Omega's knee and responding by getting up and hitting a tornado DDT, I was back out. I didn't love the end stretch as we got far too much of Trent selling offense by fixing his hair, and Omega selling offense by getting to his knees and peaking to see what time he should hop back up and hit a knee. I think there was a really good match in there, but I didn't love the direction they took it.

-All of the stuff that was supposed to purposely miss in the Shida/Jayy match looked really awful, clotheslines missing by two feet while thrown at 2/3 speed, a Shida enziguiri that missed even with Jayy completely forgetting to duck, and all of that followed up by Jayy getting one of the very ugliest backslides possible. I don't think there has been a Dynamite women's match without some disastrously ugly moments.

-Still not feeling Brodie Lee as the abusive father who angrily breaks a glass in a restaurant when the waiter brings his wife something she didn't order but she doesn't want to ruin the night by sending it back.

-They've been getting into a bad habit of letting the main events run way too long. It's the old 205 Live problem or the PWG problem where a tight 14 turns into a loose 23 and we get too many stops and starts and a bunch of shtick that goes on too long. Shtick is one of my favorite things in wrestling, but it's way tougher than it looks. Great shtick is integrated into the match by the personalities of those involved; bad shtick makes everything grind to a halt and all rules of the match get thrown out the window for the jokes. There was a really good 14 minute match in here, but I got to see a really long "working on material" match. Some of the bits work (I laughed at Brandi excitedly catching Cody's weight belt), a lot of it wore out quick.

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 3/4/20

What Worked

-AEW should utilize the 8 man format more, because the opening match was a very fun use of several guys I don't really love. Colt Cabana was given the spotlight in his debut, getting the opening run, playing hammy apron guy, and then getting the finish run hot tag. But everyone else really held this together and made good use of the 10 minute runtime. Evil Uno is a goof but his plays to his role well, and Dark Order feel appropriately represented with him directing traffic. Their group beatdowns and orchestrated attacks are good enough, and they all bump well. Cabana at least had a nice pair of back elbows and nice headscissors, but SCU had a really polished performance. Kazarian was the standout with a great fiery hot tag (probably my favorite section of the match) with him running in hard on everything, hitting an especially impressive straight arm lariat and a great flying forearm. There was a cool stacked attack with Daniels hitting a slingshot elbow, Kazarian hitting a slingshot legdrop, and Scorpio hitting a slingshot splash, cool old man Kaientai stuff. There was weirdness, like SCU's Lambda Lambda Lambda rap entrance, or John Silver/Alex Reynolds being under masks for some reason but still referred to as John Silver and Alex Reynolds. But who cares because Stu Grayson looked like he crushed his shoulder taking a Cassandro bump straight into the ringpost. Well timed, nicely paced multiman.

-Big Swole squash was what it should have been, and the wind up punch finish should be played in every single hype package and commercial.

-Great Hager squash, started easy with a couple nice slams from Hager, but jumped up a level with a nice QT comeback before getting put down. QT is a fun job match babyface in the same vein as Bob Cook, where he'll throw a couple nice worked punches in before getting absolutely worked over. That's a good guy to have on a roster. Post match big brawl was good too, and while Hangman's drinking gimmick is as dumb, and his clothes scream "Guy who hangs around rodeos but can't ride a horse", he at least hit Hager with a big clothesline and Hager bumped it on the leg of a chair.

-Main event was a great segment, and another superstar performance from Darby Allin. Moxley got taken out and strangled in the concession area, so Darby was left to defend himself in a handicap match against Jericho and Guevara. The latter are great at stalling and delaying a beating, allowing openings for comebacks by cockiness, and Darby is obviously someone who is going to be great at quick comebacks. Guevara bumps all over for the cause, Darby hits the Coffin Drop onto all of the Inner Circle, really flattens Guevara with a senton, and topes right into a Judas Effect. You knew he'd be great at being outnumbered, and he didn't disappoint.


What Didn't Work

-Opening segment felt like an absolute eternity to me. The scars looks like cool Jack Pierce monster makeup, but this felt way more like a dragged out Raw opening segment than the typically more efficient AEW promo segments.

-That was too much of a Chuck Taylor match and somehow not much of a PAC match. PAC just went 32 minutes with Omega, he did not need to give a big rub to Chuck Taylor the next week with several close nearfalls.

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 12/11/19

What Worked 

-I really liked Jericho's promo. I'd been off Jericho for quite some time, but his promos are very impressive within the specific environment he's working, and it's clearly because he knows the environment he's working. But...

-It appears that many people hadn't heard of QT Marshall before the AEW tag, because he was Matt Riddle's third ever opponent in what was a really good match. And I really liked this tag! We got Butcher and the Blade naturally cutting QT off from Cody, and while it looked like some of B&B's best moments came during the commercial break, the whole thing was structured simply and everyone came off well. Cody really does come off like a big deal, really looked like a guy worthy of being the star tagging with a nobody. Marshall gets to throw a couple nice punches that are treated as big, surprising moments, and he gets a fun sloppy tumbling dive to the floor onto B&B (I liked it because it looked like whenever Akira Taue would try a tope and it looked more like him stepping over the ropes to the floor real quick). I don't love a lot of Cody's offense, but a good hot tag needs good energy, and he carries that end easily.

-Overall dug Swole/Sakura, even if it went a bit past its effective runtime. It was hurt a bit by actual commercials cutting into it, and them going to the comedy spots in the final 2 minutes instead of the first 2 minutes. Sakura grabbing fists of braids by the roots and snapmaring Swole was great, made exponentially better by Swole popping her right in the jaw after warning her to lay off her head. Do you how long those braids took? Swole should have beaten the shit out of her the rest of the match. Sakura is fun and hits hard, although I wish there was some more focus to her matches, but working with Swole felt like a fun shake up.

-Shawn Spears made it look like Hangman Page has a good lariat. Shawn Spears managed to look good in ALL of his exchanges with Page, while Page was looking like Page. Is Spears the secret super worker of AEW? Page is typically the anchor who takes anyone down with him...but not Spears.

-I'm a sucker for a sneaky manager rana from the apron, and Penelope Ford had a nice one.

-Guevara continues to be the non-Darby MVP of Dynamite. This kid is money and Luchasaurus is a fun opponent for him. Guevara's bump off the top to the apron to the floor was wild, and they integrate some fun takes on spots we've seen, like Luchasaurus catching Guevara by the throat off a standing shooting star attempt. Luchasaurus throws a bunch of strike combos that shouldn't work, but most of them worked here; I especially liked his knee strike that went right to left instead of up. They kept this at a good pace and it went out at the right time.

-Wonder if they're going to run a Hager/Stunt angle where Hager mistakes Stunt for a child and spittle mouth yells at him on Twitter using seemingly random capitalization.

-Main event too long in the tooth and just about everything was shrugged off, but I can't hate on guys going through like 7 tables without me having to see any table set up time. The table bumps came off shockingly natural for being so damn frequent (and meaning so damn little) but they all looked great. Looked Great/Didn't Mean Anything feels like a cool catchphrase for AEW.

What Didn't Work

-...Jericho talked for 7 straight minutes while Moxley stood there making as many silent dumb faces as Jake Hager. I don't need there to be lively interplay, but it just came off really odd to me to have Moxley standing there dumb and confused, thumbs in belt loops. He looked like a kid who was getting a stern talking to from a teacher because he brought his paintball gun to school, and that's just not allowed, even if you DID "leave it in your locker".

-Whipped my head up to the screen way too fast when I heard Swole was going to be on my TV. That was an unnecessarily cruel trick, AEW.

-I chuckled at "shitty little lisp", but MJF ruined it with a bad fake laugh and way too much ham. I just can't take this guy seriously as a threat.

-Kenny Omega wrestles like a chorus member of Jesus Christ Superstar, the one who has to constantly be told to stop abusing jazz hands and spirit fingers.

-Brandi does not have the acting chops to pull off her new role, and I am comparing her to others in wrestling who have done this kind of cult leader role, which is not a high bar.

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