AEW Five Fingers of Death 12/9 - 12/15

ROH TV 12/12/24

Athena vs Billie Starkz vs Leyla Hirsch vs Red Velvet

MD: This was to see who would go on to WrestleDynasty and represent ROH. It was set up backstage with Athena demanding that Billie lay down for her. Though we didn't know it yet (though we kind of did) it also set up Athena vs Billie and highlighted Leyla vs Velvet which are the two women's matches at the PPV. 

And, it was a very creative, imaginative four-way right? There are good things about that and there are bad things about that. I liked a lot of the character bits overall. There was Athena ducking out early as everyone was upset with her antics (even Billie). There was Hirsch getting in Velvet's face. There was Athena picking her spots at times. All of that was good. I wouldn't say the creative spots all hit the same way. There were a lot of moving parts. People had to get in position. It didn't always go well. It didn't always feel smooth. There was a particularly bad bit where Athena and Billie had to wait on the apron to get knocked off and then had to wait again until they could get dived on from around the ringside area. There was a tower of doom spot. There was Velvet rolling up two people at once. A lot of imagination and effort but I'm not sure how it worked out in practice. Some things, like Athena holding up Leyla and Velvet at the same time and then doing simultaneous moves on both worked on sheer impressiveness.

Obviously the interplay between Billie and Athena was the most interesting issue here. That made me forgive things I might not otherwise, like a spot where everyone put a submission on everyone else one after the other. Billie, desperate to get out, grabbed Athena's hair. That felt like a small but poignant moment where Billie had no choice. Later on, the ref had to avoid counting a pin for a few long seconds so that Athena could bound off of the pinfall itself to hit a 'rana on Billie. But that was an intentional act as opposed to Billie's desperate one and the story benefit made me look past execution concerns. The finish had Athena stealing the win from Billie and gloating to all parties. And THAT led to the post match backstage where Billie demanded a match and Athena misunderstood and thought she'd be getting an easy night at Final Battle. 

Unlike their match last year, you get the sense that comeuppance is heading Athena's way. I don't know exactly how it's going to go. On paper, she's going to underestimate Billie and get taken by surprise. Then she's free to reemerge in the main roster next year with an excuse for why she lost. I have seen the spoilers from the ROH taping for next week and it sounds like a hot way to set things up but maybe not hot enough. Lots of other things can happen. Maybe Billie emerges as the monster Athena created and destroys her in a bloody mess and becomes the new heel to rule the division. 

I'm assuming that we're just getting a plucky babyface moment here though, and if that's the case, the build hasn't really worked for me. Let's recap. Athena created a monster in Billie, Billie stood up for herself and took Athena to the limit but lost, Athena finally embraced her and guided her to the TV title. Billie lost the title. Athena shunned her. And here we are. At no point has Billie ever become a babyface again. She's still a heel. She's still petulant. Now the difference is that she's a petulant brat that's not getting the attention that she craves from her abusive cult leader. There are a lot of ways this could go that are interesting and complex but us being happy that Billie finally got petulant enough to stomp her foot like a brat and stand up to Athena isn't actually one of them. So I guess hopefully that's not the payoff here, right? We'll wait and see.

It does speak to a broader issue I've seen in AEW that I want to briefly touch upon even if it ends up not being entirely applicable here. AEW has done some great heel turns in the last year, since the start of the company. I'm less impressed by the babyface turns. Statlander's happened backstage. Hangman is cheered but not necessarily acting any different. Swerve just sort of meandered onto the other side of the line and only later did the Gates turn on him. Jay White returned to save his friend who was also probably more heel than babyface last we checked. The list goes on. 

If it just happened once or twice, you could attribute it to a more modern and maybe mature sort of storytelling where people aren't just good or bad but layered and things happen with nuance instead of in a sharp moment of alignment shifting. On the other hand, we still have pretty clear and crisp heel turns and there just isn't any of that nuance (except for maybe in the fans' heads as they try to make sense of everything). I worry that sometimes it's just a matchmaker's contrivance, the idea that if no one's really a sharp face or heel, any match can be made at any time with anyone playing any role. It washes things out though. Dynamism is often traded for a versatility that should be unnecessary given the size of the roster and the fact that people accept face vs face and heel vs heel matches more in 2024.

Face turns, the actual moment of that ultimate crystallization, even when there was subtle or overt build to it (especially then), are some of the most memorable and moving moments that pro wrestling can create. AEW is doing itself a disservice by leaving them on the table so often.

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 3/3/21

What Worked

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

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

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

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

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

What Didn't Work

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

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

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

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

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

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

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 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 11/4/20

 What Worked

-The strong AEW tag opener is becoming a decent staple for them and has a higher than average success rate. This was worked around an extended Sammy Guevara hot tag and some really cool understated arm work on Ortiz, with MJF continuing to show that he's way more interesting working the little things into his matches than when he's just working "big reaction wrestling". He had a lot of subtle ways he would work Ortiz's arm, no big hammy arm attacks, just cool things like bending and trapping his wrist in painful ways while tagging in Wardlow. I didn't even know it would turn into an arm work match because he wasn't acting like it was a specific attack, and instead was just using it as a smart way to neutralize an opponent. Wardlow had nice little moments too, like the way he leaned into Sammy's big leaping hot tag knees or the way he delivered a nasty forearm to the back of Sammy's head to break up a pin. MJF and Wardlow are still bad at catching dives, both missing Sammy on consecutive flip dives (although Sammy was running through things so fast that it was genuinely difficult to tell where his landing spot would be, so plenty of people could have missed these), and Sammy figures out how to work around MJF's weak catching skills by later hitting a huge 450 lariat to the floor, and the lariat landing looked great. 

-I still don't understand any step of the Young Bucks/FTR build, but I liked the Bucks/Private Party tag. Private Party should be used as a team that has a couple nice spots before getting run the hell over, and that's what happened here. I enjoyed the way Matt worked in his tweaked knee (you know except they are heels and a heel working an injury in a match literally ALWAYS leads to crowd confusion), loved how Nick Jackson hit a superkick that stayed glued to the side of Marq Quen's face, and the BTE knee comes off - to me - like a way better finisher than the stupid years long setup Meltzer Driver. Confusion about the tag title build below. 

-Eddie Kingston. Live mic. Building the title match that he is in. Is there a safer bet in pro wrestling history? Incredibly, I thought Moxley brought just as much to this as Moxley. Eddie was going to bring the color, the emotion, and the emotional body language, but Moxley got under his skin without resorting to cheapness. Moxley bringing up King's mother was a great move, as it wasn't Moxley taking a cheap shot to trap Kingston into touching him, it was Moxley using a cruel weapon: a mother's disappointment. I've heard more than enough about Eddie Kingston's mother (how many times has Kingston sworn on "his beautiful mother's eyes"?) to know how big a deal it was for Mox to bring her up, and I loved this segment. Cannot wait for this match. 

-Butcher and the Blade backstage beatdown on Dustin/QT looked great, not many ways to build much more excitement for a match in 10 seconds than they did here. Butcher handled that cane like a samurai sword. 

What Didn't Work

-Not buying Miro as a singles guy at this point but I can't really blame them for trying. He had something at one point, and the jury is still out on whether he still has that something. The parts of this that worked felt like they worked because of Trent crashing when he was supposed to crash. I can't actually say that Miro looked good, although I would have thought he looked good if this was his second year. But he still comes off like a green monster who needs big bumpers. The finish looked great, as I loved a blown spot (intentional or no) leading to a finish, and Trent made his rope slip look really good, right before eating a big kick. I have zero insight into the popularity of gamer streams, so for all I know Miro the Twitch Streamer might be the biggest wrestling star by 2021. I'm not seeing it though. 

-So can someone explain FTR/Young Bucks to me? Young Bucks have been heels for over a month, but now FTR attacks them with their backs turned and Matt Jackson is going into the title match with a knee injury? I think the match has potential to be pretty great, and I think it can work great with either face Bucks/heel FTR OR heel Bucks/face FTR. But both teams as heels? Both teams as babyfaces who get cheered by acting like heels? Workrate faces who are just playing heels? None of that shit works and will tank a potentially good match. 

-I should be into Nyla Rosa squashes, but I am not. Something is missing. I always end up liking her opponent more in her squash matches, as it always feels like they are more responsible for whether her segments are a success or not. Red Velvet had a cool leg splits corner choke, and got driven super hard into the mat on a delayed sitout powerbomb. Again, Nyla's matches always just make me want to see more of the person being squashes. Also, Nyla's strikes over the guardrail on Shida post match, the final shots that are to lead into their big title match, looked incredibly bad so...

-I wasn't feeling Billy Gunn's kid so I opted to stop watching Dynamite tonight and watch 1993 Raw instead, which happened to feature Billy Gunn. Then I wondered how many guys in 1993 WWF are still wrestling as frequently as Billy Gunn in 2020 and...I guess PCO? Probably just PCO? 

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 9/30/20

What Worked

-I really haven't seen a ton of Ricky Starks but was impressed with how he pinballed around for Darby and set up a bunch of his offense. They had cool callback stuff throughout, like Starks running a spear right into a Darby guillotine early but then hitting that spear late in the match as Darby was springing off the ropes, leading to a nice nearfall. Starks took some big offense from Darby, like a vertical suplex on the apron and stayed in to get killed by a Darby tope, but he also flipped hard onto his shoulders off the Code Red and got launched across the ring by a weird/cool monkey flip armbar thing (it was like Darby was giving him an airplane ride and then kicked him off while holding the arm). Starks paid attention to the damage his back took from that apron suplex and really put on a selfless bumping heel performance to make Allin look like the superstar he is. Great way to open up the show.

-We got what I think is easily the best FTR performance since showing up in AEW. Tons of people were excited for them to go to AEW where they could "finally work" and then they proceeded to have several matches that weren't anywhere near as good as the matches they were regularly putting out on Main Event. THIS felt like the FTR that people were excited to see. Cash hilariously got Daniels thrown out from ringside by faking a picture perfect trip from the floor, planting on his face and holding his mouth (so of course you knew Tully was going to grab someone's leg from the floor at some point and I loved it was the finish). FTR were working quick tags and cutting that damn ring off, going fast on exchanges, taking all of Scorpio Sky's pillow soft landing crossbodies and making them look impactful, taking silly cutters (Cash flew high over the ropes on Kazarian's derpy slingshot cutter) and making them look good, really building a hot match around a tag team I don't find very interesting. The nearfall stretch leading up to the finish was really strong, with Kazarian getting dropped by a gnarly dragon suplex (I like commentary pointing out that being sweaty was probably the only thing that allowed him to slip out of the pin in time) and a couple of tight Scorpio Sky roll ups. Tully grabs that leg for the finish, and this is the FTR I'd like to see more from.

-JR doesn't really have much of a place on a good commentary team anymore, but I get repeat amusement out of his glowing descriptions for picture-in-picture. This week he called it "restaurant quality" and that got a real laugh out of me.

-Old man Jericho is really great at crafting these 80/20-yet-competitive matches around guys of all skillsets. Kassidy brings little to the table for me (and here he whiffs on a tope con hilo onto several guys, barely clearing the ropes) and Jericho works a nice match around making it look like Kassidy was *this* close to putting him away. Jericho's short right hands are maybe my favorite punches in current wrestling, and he has a couple different variations on them. His mounted ones look strong but here I was especially in love with a couple of standing shots in the corner, short hooking rights to the cheek. I also really love his short kicks to the ribs, they always look like they sting. The finish was one of the very best Judas Effects ever, casually spinning through a Kassidy springboard to hit the killshot, then getting the hell out of dodge when a ringside brawl breaks out. Jericho as old gunslinger Misawa rules. And I really want the Jericho/Luther match.

-The Beach Break that Orange Cassidy polished off Ten with was nasty as hell, and I dug that tope en reversa off the top to the floor into Dark Order.

-Loved the Britt Baker return squash. That look over her shoulder into the hard cam before hitting a butterfly suplex is the stuff legends are made of, and she kept trying to pop Red Velvet's shoulders out of their socket with holds and more butterflies. Her kicking Velvet throat first into the middle and bottom ropes feels like something nasty that Greg Valentine or Ronnie Garvin would have done, and she somehow made it look as violent as I imagine they would have. Yes I am talking about Britt Baker and Greg Valentine in the same sentence and I feel minimal shame about it.

-I wasn't clamoring for a Butcher showcase main event, but him going after Moxley's knee was fun as hell. Butcher doesn't really have clean offense or stuff that looks particularly great, but he's a big guy who hurls his body weight at people. I don't need pretty moves, just leap at someone with a big mustache and wild hairline. Butcher had a big chokeslam and was tossing Mox around, dropped a knee on his head, choked him over the ropes so Kingston could talk shit, stops a Mox tope with a punch, and snaps Moxley's leg over the apron. I'm a sucker for limb-focused DDTs, so Butcher DDTing Moxley's leg put me over the top, and Butcher twisting Moxley's leg around his own to work on it ruled. This was really Moxley as Cena, but Moxley works well enough in the Cena formula. Nobody was ever thinking that Butcher was going to win, but I liked the path they took to Moxley's finish. Butcher really got stuck on that piledriver and DDT! Moxley limped his way through and never went on a big hulked up run, and his small comebacks were handled well, especially knowing he has that bulldog choke as his big silver bullet.


What Didn't Work

-Kazarian actually dropped a "You might be playing checkers, but we're playing chess!" If there was a post match promo I assume he would have talked about how tomorrow is another day, and they have to take this one match at a time, gotta move forward and forget about the past.

-Joke cutting smug heel Young Bucks are not something that interests me, but we'll see how it translates in the ring I guess? FTR just standing there like goofs after Matt superkicked Schiavone made them look so lame. "Oh, you're just gonna kick him? We're right here," they say, as they don't move and allow Matt Jackson to walk away. I don't think anyone came off well here, and Tony isn't someone who gets routinely attacked, and yet it came off like a non-event here.

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