AEW Five Fingers of Death 8/21 - 8/27 Part 1

AEW Collision 8/26/23

Orange Cassidy/Penta/Eddie Kingston vs. Kip Sabian/Butcher/Blade

MD: One of those random WAR like six mans that we get just a bit too rarely in AEW. It's good to have Eddie back between the injury and the excursion and the fans felt the same. Penta handled most of the shine (against Kip who reacted but didn't do anything novel like I'd expect, though at least Penelope got to take out Abrahantes on the glove catch) and Cassidy most of the FIP (after a very solid transition, with Kip goading Cassidy right into a Blade superkick, which IS what I'd expect). Penta and Abrahantes did most of the apron-working, including a freshly squeezed chant that was perfectly timed, with Eddie's only contribution being a memorable face made at Butcher. Butcher and Blade were pretty vocal in there with their 1966 Batman Goon muttering, like Butcher calling out a powerbomb that would never come and Blade shouting "Butcher and the Blade!" in a moment of beatdown on Cassidy.

It was a bit of a consolation prize for Kip and co. for not making the Wembley card. It was a longshot but Kip is local and original and worked hard to reinvent himself and Butcher and Blade are loyal, capable soldiers who pull off whatever's asked for them. The crowd was behind Cassidy when he worked from underneath, but they really wanted to see Eddie and he delivered, coming in hot, chopping everyone, and then starting the chain reaction of spots and linked finishers that set off the stretch. This ended with a sort of WWE dark match main event multi-man feel, with everyone getting their stuff in, but with an AEW twist, as all of that stuff ended up connected together. Eddie capped it all off by debuting a sliding elbow (obviously "a move he learned from Japan," which if a more present announcer was there, might have actually been noted). Fun stuff to open up a go home show and set up the post-match in-ring interview that followed.

Sting/CM Punk/Darby Allin/HOOK vs. Swerve Strickland/Jay White/Luchasaurus/Brian Cage

MD: Challenge here was to follow a fairly similar match. Well, not follow because it was taped first but you get the idea. This had plenty of time to breathe, with heat on both Punk and then HOOK. Theoretically it was all leading to White and Sting because that was teased early in the match but it only got there with a chop block cheapshot by White, probably a combo of making sure to protect Sting before the PPV and teasing something for the future. That'd be a great interaction somewhere down the line. White is a guy who is just always on. He tries to make the most out of every second he's on the camera and he's constantly active. It makes for a good pairing with hyperactive guys like Juice and Austin Gunn. The most interesting things here were Punk interfacing with Swerve's offense (he didn't take the headscissors well but did take the rolling suplex fine; when they were just posturing it was great) and to a lesser degree White (including the Sting tease that they really milked) and then HOOK having to work from underneath, especially against Luchasaurus and Cage. In the end, the fact they didn't pay off Sting and White was fine. He had his big moment against Luchasaurus and Punk and Joe was the ultimate focus, with Punk getting to make up for the flimsy GTS last week with a pretty solid one on Cage, and then to use the Kokina Clutch to end it setting up the perfectly timed Joe (who was a total pro on commentary) run in. Fun stuff with big star moments, but maybe a little slight relative to other Collision main events.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 3/20 - 3/26

AEW Dynamite 3/22

Darby Allin/Sting/Orange Cassidy vs Kip Sabian/Butcher/Blade 

MD: There was a Dustin/Lee squash on Elevation on Monday but there's not much to say about it except for how fun Lee's nonchalant overhead throws were and Dustin having some fun with shifting his body around during the pinfall. He's about to be a granddad and if you follow him on social media, pretty nervous about it, so I'm glad they're keeping him busy.

Onto this then as there was a lot to like. I'm not sure I've mentioned this here, but to me, Cassidy and Moxley are two sides of the same coin. They're the ultimate grindstones that provide someone opportunity to really show their character. In wrestling, like any other form of fiction, character comes down to what you would do in any particular situation. What makes Wrestler A different from Wrestler B when faced with the same stimuli? With Moxley, he presses and presses and presses and you see what sort of wrestler exists under that sort of pressure. For Cassidy, it's endless frustration and aggravation. Moxley's "One Bad Day" involves car crashes and landmines going off around you and teeth piercing your flesh. Cassidy's "One Bad Day" is being stuck in line at a supermarket behind an old lady using coupons and a checkbook and dealing with that one asshole who's constantly changing lines even though you're in the middle of a traffic jam. Both of them will push you to a limit, but just what that looks like will be very different. 

Here, you could see him do it to Sabian early. I'm fortunate, I think, that I wasn't watching AEW a few years ago during the pandemic shows. The only Kip I know is after he took the mask off. As such, I think he brings a lot to the table, as he's very self aware. He tries to be a heel version of Cassidy in some ways, but as a heel, the act isn't nearly as genuine. It's hypocritical, a mask he puts on because he lacks the sort of easy confidence Cassidy lives and breathes on the inside. That's the character at least, and Kip plays it perfectly. He contrived a supervillain plan to throw Cassidy off his game to try to win the All Atlantic Title but even when it worked, it wasn't enough in the end because Kip will never be enough. There's value in that for a mid-card heel in a company that needs mid-card heels that can keep some heat in defeat. Anyway, that was a long way to go to say that I liked how the opening exchanged was summed up, with Sabian thinking he had the upper hand by escaping to the floor only to rush back in when Cassidy went to the pockets. 

And of course, Sabian got to then experience the thrill and the joy of not just one, or two, but three big moments with Sting. Speaking of confidence and awareness, Sting had big interactions with both Butcher, who beautifully missed his own splash, but Sabian, and he knew given the scope and the nature of the match, he didn't need a big dive here. What he needed instead was comedy and character, doing the Cassidy role to stymie Sabian, throwing the Cassidy kicks while Sabian was doing his down-up-arms fan interaction, and then finally just milking the Scorpion Death Drop forever. There were a few moments where things seemed just a bit off (I would have liked someone to break up the pin on Cassidy after Butcher and Blade Dragged the Lake on him, for instance) and this was a lesser match in the AEW Sting collection, but it was still a ton of fun and I'm happy for every heel team or trio that gets to interact with him, not just for the photo opportunity and adulation they likely feel, but because Sting puts so much effort and thought how to make the most of each and every match.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (And Friends) 3/13 - 3/19

ROH 3/16

Athena vs. Hyan

MD: There's a Kingston vs JVSK here, but the match was short, sweet, and exactly what it ought to have been to keep the build going for Kingston vs Claudio, so I don't have enough to say about it and no one needs me to write three paragraphs on Wooster and Jeeves and how VSK should be reading Wodehouse to figure out how to work more comedy of manners madcap antics into his matches. The big logical choice for the week is Jarrett vs Cassidy, but it's sort of self-evident and writes itself (Jarrett's mind games! Cassidy's punches! Crowd brawling through the commercial break! Do a blindfold tuexedo match next, Tony!). Therefore....

Let's talk more about Athena. She starts this with a bowing, over the top handshake, drawing a smile from Hyan, and then proceeds to hit the magic forearm and drop her. That forearm as an entry point is such an important part of Athena's matches. It sets the tone immediately and you go looking for it, but also there's the awareness that her opponent's looking for it too. While this wasn't a squash, it really shows why squashes are potentially important to a broader pro wrestling ecosystem (or dare I say "universe"). There are so many things that happen now in matches that are so distanced from their initial purpose. We had decades of dropdowns happening with no one ever getting tripped by them. I'm sure, as a kid, I had no idea what the purpose of a dropdown even was. It just felt like something done to get out of the way of a running opponent. There are a bunch of spots that are just apart of the lexicon of pro wrestling without unpacking the reason behind them (look at the old Waltman classic that starts in rocker dropper position and ends up with a flip). Point being, sometimes you actually need to hit the move instead of just having it countered in every match. Sometimes you want a mid-match move to look impactful enough that it ends a match. And in this case, you need Athena to hit that initial forearm half the time because then it actually means something when someone does duck it or reverse it or she has to work to sneak it in. You need to establish a baseline so that you can subvert expectations. In 2023, maybe that's a cooperative scenario where the crowd is just going to play along whereas in 1983, you were actually conditioning them, but maybe things have also been a certain way for so many years that laying these tracks might actually really, truly matter. Still, it's a hell of a forearm, right?

Hyan certain felt so as she spent the rest of the match selling it, disengaging after (shaky at best) kicks or pinfall attempts to rub at her chin. Athena, through coincidence or intent, stayed on it with a wrenching grapevine cravat and the crossface that she ultimately won with, so maybe it was all by design. Hyan had a couple of bursts of offense, but nothing seemed to be hitting hard. Moreover, Athena's worked in an incredible cutoff over the last few weeks, a Big Boss Man style choke drop off the ropes, just a perfect addition to her violent attitude, something that feels like a transgression and abuse that she can hit so suddenly in the midst of her opponent's offensive flurry. ROH has been a great show so far, two hours without any constraints (commercial breaks, quarter hour ratings to plan for, demos to aim at), a studio wrestling show, building to a PPV, but also very much great wrestling for the sake of great wrestling, and hey, if that means we get a couple more Athena matches a month, without limits and without restraint, I'm all for it. 

AEW House Rules 3/18

Darby Allin/Orange Cassidy vs. Butcher/Blade

MD: Look, I thought about not covering this because we're not supposed to see it and all, but we spend half of our time watching things we're not supposed to see between handheld footage and the entire 30 year output of pro wrestling in France. He may not like it, may not prefer it, but if anyone's going to understand it, it's a former tape trader. So there was a houseshow and someone went and fancammed it for us and you can probably find it on your own. And we thank that kind soul for his efforts. 

AEW is all about unique and interesting match ups. It's about things that a crowd knows they're going to see and no one else will get to see. You skip out on a house show and you never know what you're going to miss. That's the idea. Here, it's Cassidy and Darby teaming. They've been in some multi man matches before but had never teamed. Honestly, part of me just wants them to run with the idea you'll be seeing unique interactions and run house shows with the Deadly Draw/Lethal Lottery gimmick. This served more of a purpose though. Britt got to try out being a babyface in a low pressure environment. Anna got another match under her belt. Pillman, Jr. got to sit under Jarrett's learning tree. Hook was able to work from underneath against Ethan Page without worrying about keeping him perfectly protected. They dusted Pat Buck off for a unique crowd moment. 

And yeah, Cassidy and Darby got to team. It definitely hit the marks you'd want. Blade's an ideal Cassidy opponent since he's going to seethe at the antics. That's your shine, building to Darby doing running coffin splashes in the corner while Cassidy pinwheeled and got closer and closer. Darby just accepted it and leaned into it. Why not? And just as ideal was Butcher and Darby working together, where Butch was able to catch him off a spring back leap and takeover with massive power moves while Darby writhed and sold. The craziest bit here was when he just maneuvered him all over the place with a Texas Cloverleaf; unreal visuals. They made Darby work and work for the hot tag and then Cassidy brought it back down to tepid and they had a pretty active finishing stretch leading to a mousetrap finish. Post match, Butcher and Blade took some more licks and Darby celebrated with a kid which again, is one of those great moments people in that crowd would remember later and that kid will remember forever. There was a moment during the face-in-peril where Cassidy drew the ref away and was maybe just a little too animated for who he was (it let Blade use a chair), but otherwise, this was a pretty ideal house show tag.

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2022 Ongoing MOTY List: AEW 8 Man Tornado

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

ER: Man this rocked. Jeff Hardy debuted the previous week in a big way against Private Party, and I love how he kept the chaos going. At the same time, this continued the improbably, amazing run of Sting, somehow putting in his greatest work of the century in his early 60s. Tony Schiavone has been so good on commentary during Sting matches, and I loved the brotherhood in his voice when Sting flew too too far with an early match plancha onto everyone. Tony is totally beside himself, talking about how he told Sting to "not do crazy things like that anymore", but laughing to himself at the same time. 

The action splits up and goes all over the arena, and really the only bad thing about the entire match is that we couldn't possibly see everything happening. Every pairing looked like it was worth seeing, at least based off what we were able to see. Everybody played into their role and did it well. Jeff had this crazy clothesline over the barricade (silly me thinking that would be the most reckless thing Jeff would attempt), Blade bumps all over for him, Darby falls down stairs and gets ragdolled by Butcher, and the action flowed really well from ring to ringside to crowd to backstage. 

Jeff did a crazy swanton off a concourse window ledge, never denying his yarder's heart. Teenage backyarders have that skateboarder mentality of looking for things to do a move off of, and here's a broken Jeff still looking for ledges that would be cool to stunt dive from. A majorly underrated part of the spot was Sting holding Butcher and the Blade onto the tables during Jeff's climb and then bailing out at the last possible moment. That kind of attention to detail is the perfect encapsulation of Sting's veteran knowledge and how the smallest things can make a match great. Matt Hardy looked awesome during the finishing stretch, like he and Private Party had been feuding for years. Private Party have come a long way in the past couple years, and they're getting so much better at feeding for offense and moving into position. I thought the finish was spectacular, as at this point I fully believe that Sting is as crazy as Terry Funk ever was and would be foolishly willing to take a frankensteiner into a cutter. Sting hopping off the middle buckle and blocking the cutter, dropping into a dragon sleeper and fighting up to his feet for the Scorpion Death Drop was such an awesome moment, timed expertly with a Twist of Fate. This is the most hyped I've ever been for Sting, a man still gaining new fans into his AARP membership. 

2022 MOTY MASTER LIST

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

AEW Dark 12/13

Eddie Kingston/Ortiz vs Trustbusters (Slim J/JVSK)

MD: Sometimes AEW will tape something and then not show it due to changing circumstances. This was taped all the way back on 11/4 in Atlantic City, and Eddie, post Akiyama, has apparently cooled down. He was still pretty hot for this one. Still, they came through and showed it nonetheless and we're glad they did. Slim J vs Eddie Kingston is about as much of a Segunda Caida match as is possible. If Punk doesn't come back, then Slim J becomes the fifth finger sort of by default. This got a ton of time too and was a good showcase for everyone involved.

Eddie and Slim J got really stretch to start with Slim just absolutely driving Eddie nuts and goading him into things. Eddie came back by responding to some more goading with a perfect eyepoke. Later on the Trustbusters would get to really lean on Ortiz, looking pretty good working as a unit for a team that has maybe one or two Dark matches together. Slim J has been around forever but he's traveled in different circles than a lot of the other AEW guys. I think Davari said that he'd first met him the day that they started as a unit. And I don't see any signs of VSK working him before either (even though VSK has been around for fifteen years). This broke down to some pretty wonderful chaos with Eddie suplexing everyone, taking Slim J's flying reverse DDT perfectly (which not everyone does), and less perfectly eating another dive. They had Eddie break up a couple of lesser things by VSK but made Ortiz kick out of the Amityville Horror/Cradleshock, which I think is JVSK's finisher, so that was a dubious choice but it fit the moment of the match, I guess. I liked the little bit of Sonny Kiss we got as a second in this one, including to set up the finishing miscommunication. Trustbusters are just such a weird and random unit but it somehow works. Excalibur was trying one last ticket sale read as Ortiz made the final hot tag and Eddie spun into the backfist and he carried that manic energy forward into the call. If this is the only Eddie and Slim J encounter we get in AEW, it'd be a shame, but it still felt pretty substantial for a month and a half old Dark main event and I'm glad we got at least this much.

AEW Rampage 12/16

Dustin Rhodes/Orange Cassidy/Chuck Taylor/Trent vs Kip Sabian/Trent Seven/Butcher/Blade

MD: Feel good way to end a yearly themed AEW taping, especially important considering the big hometown babyface lost to end Dynamite. Lots of moving pieces here but they came together pretty well, with everyone more or less where they should be when they should be and plenty of gaga. I enjoyed the Trent-off to start and the fans got into it. Seven is a guy with a couple of unique ideas, a slightly different body type. I think there's probably more value to AEW overall to bring guys like him in occasionally instead of full time, that sense that anything can happen at any moment as opposed to just making a huge roster even huger, but he was more than happy to play along with everything here. Probably my favorite moment in this one was when he was taking Dustin's punches by really throwing his head all over the place. Sabian is someone I give some credit to, as while I don't entirely think the act works, I like how broadly he thinks about things; there was a moment during Dark a week or two ago where he was mocking Alex Reynolds about the Preston Vance turn that is something almost no one else on the roster would have done in that spot. Sort of a galaxy brain approach to his matches.

I get that WWE is better in many ways than it was at the start of the year, but it's always refreshing to highlight someone like Dustin in Texas. It's so intuitive and so special. It's part of what WWF was doing for years at the start of the war in the 80s, bringing in people like Wrestling II in Louisiana or Mad Dog Vachon in AWA territory. All of Dustin's interactions with Danhausen (constantly staring at one another) or Cassidy (playing air guitar to the theme as Cassidy leaned upon him on the entrance) were enjoyable and the sort of things I'd hope would lead to something more. I feel it's off brand to note on Segunda Caida that I would have liked a hug with everyone involved, but I kind of would have. The bits with Danhausen and the faux low blows (and the one actual one) set up the finishing stretch in a fun and different way than a dive train would have. They could run a match like this once every few weeks or once a month, highlighting a local guy, pulling together some characters and some feuds, to send a crowd happy, and it'd be part of what will always make AEW special compared to a lot of what we've been forcefed over the last two decades. I still hope this is leading to Dustin challenging Cassidy for the All Atlantic Title at some point though. I'd even take Dustin and Danhausen interacting more.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death: Week of 5/2 - 5/8

AEW Dynamite 5/4

Blackpool Combat Club (Bryan Danielson/Jon Moxley/Wheeler Yuta) vs. Andrade Family Office (Angelico/Butcher/Blade)

MD: This is the first of these trios matches where I came off a little underwhelmed. It needed another minute or two, maybe. Angelico got to do one tricked out submission on Danielson and Danielson responded by kicking the soul out of him in the corner, but it wasn't the 90 second exchange on the mat that we've been itching for since Danielson came into the company. That said, as a cliff notes version of the sort of match you'd want, everyone still got to highlight what makes them special, it's just that no one got to do a whole lot of it. Moxley got to toss Blade around the ringside area, and Blade got to get tossed around; Butcher got to be a brick wall against Yuta, and Yuta got to scrap against everyone and then fight from underneath, and the fans plenty happy to chant for him. This was by far the best use of Yuta's "through the legs" theatrics, and that means something. It shouldn't be in every match and he can do it as part of a feeling out opening exchange, but it's way more effective when used to build to a hot tag. A guy like Butcher is the perfect guy to use it against. Hopefully we get that ten minute Dark match between Angelico and Danielson at some point, that's the pairing everyone wants to see.

ER: I really loved the enthusiasm everyone worked this with, but I also thought that Angelico was the worst part about it. At one point I swear he threw a legsweep at Moxley that swept 5 feet in front of Mox's feet. Moxley still hopped in reaction, and it kind of made the follow up make more sense. But I don't care about Angelico, I care about how good The Blade looked here, because I thought The Blade looked great. I've always liked the Butcher and the Blade team even though I don't view them as a team that has great matches, but Blade gets better as a worker the more he just works like LA Knight. Watch the two of them: the movement is near identical, and the way they feed opponents is identical. Blade has really good timing when it comes to feeds, and I'll always love a worker who tags into a match and then runs immediately into a backdrop. I think Blade is always really good in matches with a lot of guys, as he seems to always be among the best at knowing exactly where to be when everything starts to break down. Also, Blade has Actually Great punches now. He throws a lot of long right hands in this match and I was really impressed by how they connected. I've said before that AEW isn't really a fed with a lot of punchers, and now I have to talk about how The Blade is one of the best punchers in AEW. Love to see it. 

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

AEW Dynamite 3/23

CM Punk vs. Dax Harwood

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AEW Rampage 3/25 (taped 3/23)

Dustin Rhodes vs. Lance Archer

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

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

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 11/25/20

What Worked

-I liked most of Hangman vs. Silver, good way to start off the show. Silver is a fun guy to feature, a compact power pack who was really good at cutting off Page. One of my least favorite things in Page matches is how unnecessarily complicated some of his offense is, and how it is never reversed. I liked how Silver cut off a lot of signature offense, like hitting a rana to counter the rope flip lariat. It made Page approach things differently and made for a more satisfying story. Silver has a low center of gravity and can use it in cool ways, like dropping low to the ground to do a quick go behind and snap German suplex. I wish Page had treated Silver's kicks a little more seriously, as it felt like we were building to something really cool when Silver was kicking away at Page, not letting him up, dodging right when he needed to, landing a big hooking kick to the jaw, but Page kinda just stood up and beat him anyway. Also, Silver doesn't need to do the half gainer flip bump every time he takes a clothesline. He did it three times here and you really don't need to be doing the same signature bump three times in three minutes. However, he also planted Page with a brainbuster and took a nice high backdrop bump, and there was more than enough here to make it work. 

-When Lee Johnson makes it onto Dynamite, you know you're getting a nice squad match, because he always takes the best beatings in squash matches. I need to seek out some of his Dark matches to see how he does with actual offense, because I like the way he bumps for lariats and other big offense. He doesn't take intentionally athletic feather soft bumps, his bumps look like he is being hurt. He made that lariat on the floor look brutal, and I don't think Will Hobbs has a very brutal lariat. 

-I do like that AEW is the kind of fed that makes mention about how cool it is that Jericho and Chris Daniels are meeting for the very first time. That's always cool to me when two guys who have been in wrestling for so long finally cross paths in the ring, like Buddy Rose facing Kerry von Erich in WWF. And let me tell you, if this was the year 1999 or 2000, I could not tell you just how over the moon excited I would be to see a Jericho/Daniels match. But this 2020 version is probably about as good as could reasonably expected. Jake Hager was my favorite guy here, and Hager might be THEE guy that I am absolutely never excited to see on my TV screen who can actually deliver something cool. He always gets an "oh sheesh this guy?" reaction from me, but I can't deny how much I enjoy Hager's meathead mouth breathing style. The best part of this was when Hager was driving his knee right into Danielses' back while throwing fists right into the ribs. It looked nasty as hell. 

-The gear AND choreography of the Omega Sweepers has improved every week. It's really satisfying to watch performers get better at their craft in real time. Moxley beatdown was strong. I want Moxley to wreck this guy. 

-Shida/Anna Jay was better than I expected, mainly because Jay doesn't even have 20 career matches work. Obviously there are going to be some glitches, so I'm more impressed with the things she can pull off naturally. She is really strong at making up the difference when selling strikes, like when Shida threw a dropkick that landed a little low and Jay sold her jaw convincingly. She goes to the jaw/mouth sell a bit much, did it right before that dropkick when missing a charge into the buckles, but it's a strong looking sell so hats off. I liked a lot of the ways she would counter Shida offense, like blocking the running apron knee with a downward strike, and especially her shifting weight at the last minute to land on Shida after a vertical suplex. I thought it was just a bad looking suplex at first, but I love a reversal that actually makes it look like the move wasn't pulled off quite right. Reversals in 2020 wrestling are so clean that they usually don't look like they're reversing anything. This looked like Shida tried to do a suplex and wasn't expecting Jay's weight shift. The nearfall kickout by Shida was perfectly timed, actually got me to buy into Jay sneaking away with the upset. 

-Fenix running into Blade's awesome powerslam, that works.

What Didn't Work

-Taz dropping silly shooty comments like "creative has nothing for me" or "wish me luck in my future endeavors" does nothing for me. Taz does not come off threatening to me at this point, and there are too many guys on the roster who could have locked in a better looking submission. Cody's burn about Taz's son (Hook!) training with Cody and not Taz was strong. 

-I feel bad for all the people who have strongly backed Rusev and have been gifted Miro. 

-I love Jack Evans and would rather see him on Dynamite than any number of other less interesting flippers that have been featured. But it's also really weird to give Top Flight a big Dynamite match last week ago, a match that got them buzz and made a big impression, to then bring Evans and Angelico back to Dynamite just to beat Top Flight. I don't think the match worked as a match, as all of these AEW flyer vs. flyer matches feel so same-y. I don't think Top Flight does much of anything that comes off natural, can't adjust on the fly; They can either do long semi-complicated sequences that end with something dumb like kicking Angelico in the arm, or they do weird things like adjust their several feet while rope running. It all comes off like guys just running through some spots that don't always feel like they belong to the same match. I did like the way Angelico went after Daunte's leg, thought his roll throughs to trap Daunte in leg locks and holds looked super cool and felt like old IWRG bleeding into AEW. Also, it is supremely annoying to give these guys names like Darius and Daunte, because there is no way I'm going to remember which one is fucking Daunte and which is Darius. Air Wolf I can remember, but Darius Martin? 

-I didn't think Fenix and PAC looked good as a team. They're two guys who, from their styles, seem like they would complement each other nicely, but their set ups felt long and things missed the mark. But I thought Butcher and the Blade looked good as heel opposition, thought Butcher looked great as a fist swinging bully, thought Blade worked some nice sequences with Fenix and especially loved Fenix aborting a flying attack off the top, jumping past Blade, and running hard into a great snap powerslam. But the match overall felt scattered and like it would have been a real mess without Butcher and Blade. 

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 11/18/20

 What Worked

-I'm never excited to see Kip Sabian wrestling on TV, but I appreciate that AEW has significantly cut down on his televised ring time. There was one point earlier this year where Sabian had actually wrestled more TV matches than anyone else on the roster, and I am thankful that AEW at least realized how fucking stupid that was and now only put him on TV occasionally, rather than weekly. 

-I like the level of temper tantrum unprofessionalism that pours out of Thunder Rosa during her matches, always makes things way more interesting than the typical bad women's matches they put on. There are always a couple of things that land in meaner than normal areas and you just don't see that in other AEW women's matches. I liked her hitting a hard senton right across Serena Deeb's chest, Schiavone says "Her reputation is well earned," and I think he was talking about her match quality but that's not what I think of when I hear she has a reputation. I like her unprofessionalism the most when it actually applies to a good match, and this was a good match. There was messiness, which is baked in at this point, and the roll up counter stuff at the end felt completely unnecessary, but I liked a lot of this. Deeb's Tenryu powerbomb after Baker snuck in a swinging neckbreaker on the ramp was a great nearfall (bad move hanging in the crowd after the match, Britt), some shots to the jaw landed great, loved Deeb scraping her boot on Rosa's face and hitting a cool diving shoulder tackle off the ropes. 

What Didn't Work

-It's cool that AEW gives high profile TV time to a team like Top Flight, but I cannot imagine a new team working a style I'm any less interested in than Top Flight. It feels like every single indy I have access to has 1-2 teams exactly like Top Flight, who all do at least One Cool Athletic Thing and really wholly on taking moves to reverse moves and need opponents to be in very specific locations for the bulk of their offense to work. There were a couple cool moves, and I liked the speed Duante brought to cartwheels and the impressive height he got on leapfrogs. But I'm going to need to see more than someone hitting the same tope con hilo that literally two dozen guys on the AEW roster can also (and do!) hit. I hate that kind of offense where someone takes a move, but then that move gives them the power to reverse a move. Duante took a Finlay roll from Matt Jackson and then just turned it into a crucifix pin. I guess it looked cool, but if you can just eat offense and act like that gives you leverage to take a pin, I'm probably not going to understand it. But I'm sure many people are stoked to see more guys on TV who can go through the motions of hitting a dragon rana, and not care that neither leg actually hooked the shoulders on said rana. 

-Kip Sabian is a good opponent for Orange Cassidy to work his hands-in-pocket offense against, because Kip Sabian's strikes never look like they actually connect with anything anyway, so it makes sense that Cassidy is so easily able to avoid it. Sabian's wrestling is really confusing, because him throwing elbows, or kicks to the stomach don't look like it is connecting anyway, so when he misses a clothesline I can't always tell if it is just Cassidy avoiding him or if that was Sabian's finisher. I liked Cassidy blocking the drop toehold and stepping out of it, because it looked like a drop toehold that would not have taken anyone down. Appropriate sell. Sabian actually hits two clotheslines during picture in picture, and they actually do make the same amount of contact as the missed clothesline earlier. He also makes the decision to throw a dropkick at a turnbuckle, which I can only assume was his intention because Cassidy moved away from the turnbuckle well before Sabian threw the dropkick. Odd choice. He also made it so his head only connected 1 of 3 times while being hit into turnbuckles, so there's a strong chance that Kip Sabian is playing some weird game of wrestling telephone, where he is interpreting movements as explained to him by several different wrestlers but without ever actually seeing pro wrestling. 

-THAT was the promised contract signing!? I love a good contract signing, and a decent contract signing is something that even the worst era WWE can still make look good. But this was one dry dick of a contract signing. Moxley attacked backstage and rubbing his head while Omega gets all his Observer accomplishments listed? Fuck man just shove a table onto someone. 

-You put Eddie Kingston on commentary and then cut right to a commercial? I had to listen to Miro mumble his way through a brutally bad Kip Sabian match with a far shorter commercial break. That's just the lousiest time management. 

-PAC/Blade was not the comeback match I assume the wanted for PAC. They did that dumb kind of shit where they chase each other back and forth to opposing turnbuckles and kick each other in the head, lotta boots to the head that didn't actually look good. PAC hits a missile dropkick that Blade doesn't quite get into position for so it just looked like PAC took the hardest possible back bump off the top. Blade's powerslam looked good, the superplex looked good, but a lot of this match stunk. 

-Sadly, I got into a very long and very pointless argument during the main event, so missed a chunk of the middle. That stretch I missed could have been very awesome. The parts that I saw were not good, primarily due to Brian Cage working like a really terrible joshi wrestler. Gimme them shitty enziguiris and keep working like a 140 lb. woman, yeah! I thought several moments looked off and I still do not understand all of the praise I see for Ricky Starks. Is this the same kind of praise that people gave to MJF when he first became a thing a year or two ago? Or the way a bunch of people thought Damien Sandow was the fucking future 7 years ago? 

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 11/11/20

What Worked

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

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

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

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

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

What Didn't Work

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

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

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

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

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 10/21/20

 What Worked

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

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

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

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

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

What Didn't Work

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

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

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

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

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 7/22/20

What Worked

Eddie Kingston vs. Cody Rhodes

ER: I wasn't sure who to expect when it was announced a "top independent star" would be challenging Cody. My first thought was Hero, my second thought was Kingston, my third thought was "someone I don't care about nearly as much as Hero or Kingston". I think we've been just about the loudest Eddie Kingston drum beaters on the internet this past decade, and not only was he our favorite wrestler of 2019, but both Phil and I agreed that he was the #1 wrestler in the world. This is a great get for AEW, and you can bet the beautiful eyes of Eddie Kingston's mother that I am excited. This is Eddie Kingston, in his debut, getting to do every single thing that makes him great against the top guy in the company, and I can't imagine a better debut. Kingston talks a bunch of trash to Arn (actually surprised it didn't lead to any kind of moment where Arn throws a left at him, especially once it became No DQ), incredibly threatening to gouge his eye out if he keeps "throwing Murder Ones his way", and clowns Cody into accepting a No DQ stip.

This match, again, is everything that any Kingston fan could - and any pro wrestling fan - could want out of a match. Kingston is a great foil for Cody, and Cody wasn't afraid to lean right into having an Eddie Kingston match. Cody goes right in on Kingston's head with hard punches, a straight overhand right to the jaw, and some of the best headlock punches I've seen in a year. Kingston lands heavy chops and the best desperation bar fight offense in the game, grabbing at Cody's face, ear, hair, just digging nails in to break holds. Kingston is my favorite injury salesman in the game, bringing that cumulative damage finer than anyone since Kikuchi. It's not in your face, it doesn't guarantee the match will lead to a "work the limb" match, it's just a 38 year old banged up man not sure what part might give out. Kingston and I were born the same year. I went out jogging after work today and sometimes when I jog for too long I get a twinge on the inside of my right shoulder blade. Don't know why it's there, don't know what caused it, but I'm pushing 40 and I have weird aches. Kingston plays those aches better than anyone. His knee injury wasn't always the focus, but it was used to set up cheapshots and smart attacks. Kingston crumpling on an Irish whip is a spot that I love, but a spot that I've seen played way too melodramatically, and Kingston is a guy who knows how to hit just the right notes. I like how he blurs the lines between doing something like that just to land a cheap low blow on Cody, or doing the low blow as a last resort. It's the sign of a smart, confident wrestler that he doesn't need to show his hand, just leaves us speculating.

I cannot believe thumbtacks got involved, and I can't believe Cody was crazy enough to get powerbombed into those tacks. Eddie Kingston debuted on national television, and powerbombed the face of the company into thumbtacks. What?! I would have liked one more beat before Kingston tapped to the figure 4, something like King grabbing a handful of tacks and grinding them into Cody to force a break, but King played such strong attention to the knee that you can't argue with the quick tap. What an incredible segment, the kind of thing that should put Kingston on everyone's radar.

PAS: Pretty much the platonic ideal of What Worked. Eddie is one of all time favorite wrestlers, and while the EVOLVE show on the Network didn't let him do his thing, AEW gave us every bit of peak King. We got a great promo to start it off, establishing him immediately as a long time veteran tough guy who was going to make the most of his last chance. Then he actually integrated that story into the match, constantly ripping at the eyes, tearing at the face, throwing low blows, even breaking out a bag of thumbtacks. We have written a William Vollmann novel amount of text on Kingston's masterful body part selling. It is the thing he does as good as any wrestler ever, and his knee selling in this match was perfect. Him tweaking it early, attempting to walk it off, stomp it out, and how it slowly minute by minute betrayed him, leading to his downfall. Kingston has always been the guy who has fallen a bit short, that has been the story arc of his career. I am not sure if Eddie gets another AEW shot (if they have any sense they bring him back, #SignEddieKingston was even trending on Twitter), but if this is the only chance he gets I can't imagine a more perfect one match story.


-MJF has been one of the best squash match workers in AEW, always bringing the right amount of stiffness and intensity while showing just enough ass to give his opponent a little dignity. MJF showing that Garrison got under his skin with a "you got beat" comment is a strong aspect of his character, just enough of a peak that he's not quite as confident as he plays.

-Ricky Starks blindsiding Darby looked great, really flying down the ramp and smacking him. Cage hitting that big powerbomb into the ring looked great too.

-Bucks/Butcher and Blade brawl wasn't perfect, but it's a cool thing to have on the show as a change of pace. Blade was good at bumping around a kitchen (shame we didn't get a Sudden Death kitchen fight though), loved Matt Jackson's big flip dive out of the semi trailer, dug Nick getting lawn darted right into his own large face on the truck door. The big stunt spots played well, the fun stuff like Blade eating a superkick and falling into an up escalator played well, it was all fun. You don't need a match like this every show, but it's good to have something like this for flavor.

-Who was that ginger who got his head thrown up through a ceiling tile, landed hard, and then got dumped even harder by Archer into a trash can? Because that guy is awesome.

-Main event tag was good, felt like a cool ramped up house show main event, and Jericho is someone who has decades of experience working crowd pleasing house show main events. Jericho uses slightly different versions of his act depending on which Inner Circle member he's teaming with. I can't decide if I like Jericho/Sammy or Jericho/Hager more as a team, they both bring different elements. Sometimes I'm more into a stooging match and sometimes I'm more into a bully match, and  tonight I was into Jericho teaming with and being inspired by a bully. Hager has the dumbest face imaginable, a guy who always has his mouth open, but when he closes it you wish he would open it, but then he hangs it open again and you know he's unbearable when chewing food. But he's been real good in AEW as nothing but a Mongo Smash type dumb jock. He's not clean and not smooth about it, but I like him just taking guys down and lurching after them. Fun tag match to round out a very good night of wrestling.


What Didn't Work

-I've been really impressed with MJF's AEW work, but that's a tough call to have MJF come out to do a "Get in your opponent's face in the ring" promo in the segment directly following an Eddie Kingston segment doing just that. That's sending Kajagoogoo out on the stage after Napalm Death.

-Cool to see Ivelisse back on TV, but the match as a whole didn't work for me. They went out to have one of those compact "We're in a WAR" epics and it would have been more interesting for them to work a match more suited for the time they were given. I just can't get into a short match that needs to include a slow motion Godspell curtain call heavy breathing stand and trade. Both of their "big" high kicks looks like they were thrown at half speed. This had moments, and I'd like to see them both turn up in the Dynamite women's division, but this fell short.

-Page/Angels wasn't helped by mostly taking place during a commercial break (which is an immediate mute from me), but the timed step sequences didn't look great, Angels threw bad mounted punches (Dark Order need to do a Team Building weekend and work on their mounted punches), and a lot of stuff looked like they were focusing too hard on steps instead of where strikes landed. Page's lariat looked good, but a lot of this didn't.


2020 MOTY MASTER LIST

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Eddie Kingston is Behind The Diner Selling Marijuana to a Minor

Eddie Kingston vs. Thomas Shire vs. Joe Black vs. Matt Kenway AWE 11/3/19 - FUN

PAS: Kingston vs. Shire was one of my favorite matches of the year, but I never think this really got going. I did like that they mainly focused on one on one matchups, rather then running through a bunch of complex four way spots, and Kingston and Shire were really throwing heat both at each other and the other guys in the match. Black has a great look, he looks like an even more jacked Sabian, but I didn't have a great sense of his ring work and had an awesome loony dog collar match in 2020 . This was built up as a big Kingston win because of his history with Black, and I feel like they might have some good singles matches in them, hopefully AWE uploads more of their back catalogue to IWTV


Eddie Kingston/Homicide vs. Butcher and the Blade Empire State Wrestling 11/23/19 - FUN

ER: This doesn't quite rise up to the level I thought it could, but I'm happy we got to see these teams cross paths. Things felt almost a little too structured, especially during the parts where Butcher and the Blade were in control. I was impressed how quick Homicide was moving around, really working quick sequences even when it was setting up stupid stuff for The Blade (like that indy BS where Homicide will get knocked down with a move, hard enough that it makes him get right back to his feet, in time to get put down with another move). Kingston worked great shtick, was yelling from the apron the whole match, tagged in only to whiff on a backfist on The Butcher and gets dropped hard on the mat, then rushes to tag out. Even when Kingston is focusing more on making jokes to the crowd, he's still someone who will take a couple of high back bumps in a match. Homicide and Kingston's energy made this one for me, Kingston throwing big chops before taking a beating, and the finish was really nasty with Butcher suplexing Homicide right across Blade's knees, Blade sliding in at just the right time. This never lagged and had a lot of good, but the high floor didn't make way for a high ceiling. If they ever cross paths again I wouldn't be shocked if they did it even better. This felt more like Kingston and Homicide squaring off against Kazarian and Daniels to me.

PAS: This had it's moments but overall it didn't totally work for me. I thought Pepper Parks was pretty bad in this match. Kazarian is a good comparison, because he had that "old guy trying fast juniors wrestling" vibe to it. Butcher isn't great but he hits hard and the exchanges with Kingston were the highlights. This was house show Eddie, and he is a really great house show wrestler, shit talking, strutting, jaw jacking with the crowd. He still takes some big bumps and such. Didn't love the finish run, but the actual finish was badass. Worth watching for sure, but not a real standout.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE EDDIE KINGSTON

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 7/8/20

What Worked

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

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

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


What Didn't Work

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

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

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

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

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 6/10/20

What Worked

-Good debut for FTR, which my reptile brain just realized probably stands for Formerly the Revival. They could gain some notoriety if they cut a promo saying it stood for Fuck the Racists. I would like it to be Friendship to Remember, and in WWE it probably would have stood for Foreign to Raw. Also, I genuinely had no idea that their WWE names were like Fire Pro versions of their actual names. And really, their actual names sound like the Fire Pro versions. But this was a good tag that didn't go above and beyond, played as a decent showcase without being any kind of walk in the park. This was the Just a Taste and that's fine for a debut, although after complaining about not being able to let loose in tags it was a little odd seeing them have a tag that wouldn't have been in the top half of their WWE syndicated matches. I liked Blade's extra kickout on the Cash elbowdrop, liked that we got a little late match twist.  

-Feels good putting the women's tag up here, and it's crazy to think that it lands up here because of Penelope Ford. This was easily her best AEW performance, and the best performance I've seen from her period. I thought the layout was a little wonky, and Shida is still a problem, but a good Ford performance really elevated some of Shida's offense. It also helped that they didn't throw out another 4 way. Tag matches are just going to be more satisfying that a messy 4 way. Ford really started opening my eyes when she pinballed off a Shida missile dropkick (with Ford stumbling around decently before the bump, as Shida naturally made her wait way too long before hitting the dropkick), but she made every piece of offense look good here, and played a late match nearfall for max effectiveness. Statlander probably also had her best AEW showing, with only weak elbows to break a Nyla fireman's carry the only thing that looked off. The timing on her late match tope to Kip Sabian was strong. I thought the set up on Nyla's double knee was preposterous, and as much as I think Shida stinks, I'm not sure a wrestler in history could have stood on the bottom rope waiting to be hit as long as she did and still make it work. Nyla hung her on those ropes for an eternity and I think only Terry Funk would have had a chance of not looking like a complete idiot standing on that rope for so long. Terry's rope flopping game is strong, he has the best chance. Curious how Finlay would have handled it. However, the payoff looked great, Shida and Statlander flipping and crashing in unison off the big kneedrop. Of course, Shida is up and running around moments after selling this devastating move, so guess it wasn't that painful after all and definitely not worth the wait. But overall? A strong Penelope Ford performance got us up top.

-Ortiz and Santana go up here, most of the rest of the trios is down below. Santana and Ortiz had a real nice standout tag team match in the middle of several middling or non-existent performances. Ortiz stomping the hell out of Taylor in the corner really made this feel more violent than it had up to that point, they really played into Cassidy's big run, their beatdowns looked really good, and Ortiz's cannonball down the stretch looked super high impact. These two looked like the best team in AEW here, and just give me 15 minutes of them vs. Free the Raccoons.

-Guevara/Colt goes up here, even though it wasn't really bad or good. It had more things that I liked than disliked. I mostly liked Guevara's cool as hell wild dive, and the fact that he saves all of his bullshit for the picture in picture. Doing a bunch of rope running and Fargo strutting and chinlocks while most of my screen is showing cat food commercials? That's great. Plenty of this didn't really move the needle, but Sammy entertains me. 

What Didn't Work

-The second AEW started, a smoke detector started beeping in my house. You know, that kind of beeping that you can't actually locate and sounds the exact same volume no matter where you're standing in the house. I'm not saying that is the fault of AEW Dynamite, but I know for a fact that it didn't beep this entire week *until* AEW Dynamite. It's a small sample, but it's a sample that doesn't favor Dynamite. 

-Young Bucks came off like real dweebs after the FTR match, and a feud started over a "you didn't introduce yourself" angle plays real lame in 2020. If they want YB to be the heels of the feud, couldn't they have just come out and kicked their ass or something?

-Several guys held back that trios match. Trent looked real bad, his timing off the entire match. Hager looked like a stumbly dork, even though I liked a couple of his slams. Cassidy looked fine but I have a feeling he would have looked much less so without Santana and Ortiz bumping and getting perfectly into position with everything he did. Still, his dive was good and his part of the match was exactly what it should have been. Plus, he got beat with a sack of oranges and that should be enough to put his performance topside.

-Could not get into the long Marq Quen singles match. Private Party don't really do it for me in general, and Cody main events against guys who shouldn't be having 8+ minute singles matches are just going to need Cody blood. I liked how Cody paid off the knee work well enough, but this could have been snipped in half.

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 3/18/20

What Worked

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

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

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

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

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


What Didn't Work

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

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

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

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

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 2/26/20

What Worked

-The Iron Man is kind of a conundrum for me. I think I enjoyed it overall and appreciate the physicality, but I also didn't buy into a lot of the lore behind Omega, and also I don't totally feel like watching the rest of the show now that I've sat through all of it. But I also liked it? What raised the floor was the hard contact throughout, from things like Omega dropping knees right across the jaw to PAC elbowing Omega right in the throat. So I can sit through some theatrics (there were theatrics) and some lopsided kickouts if they're also crushing each other on strikes in between "the big stuff". All of Omega's knees ruled, some really vicious high running knees that made me want to see Omega/Akiyama. Both guys had nasty suplexes, Omega's snap dragon whipping PAC into the mat, and PAC with maybe the spot of the match when he almost murders Omega on live TV with a brainbuster superplex. The big spots were all big, the shooting star through a table on the floor, PAC hitting a falcon arrow off the apron, all great crashes. But some of the drama didn't work for me, they established a couple odd recovery times, and I really disliked the finish and thought it felt cheap. I wouldn't have wanted a draw (and I don't think it should have been a draw anyway), but I also didn't want Omega just blitzing him into a finish.

-The trios had enough good moments to land it up here, and it was probably the most impressed I've been with Jungle Boy. He was really quick and had a lot of snap, really naturally flew into things (two nice dives that hit hard for his size) and had some pop on things that I've seen look punchless. Marko had a couple big bumps and cool stuff like breaking up a pin with a missile dropkick, Santana hit a great cannonball, Sammy felt a little underused but still contributed big bumps (just didn't get as much personality as we usually do). They had about 8 minutes to do something and that packed a lot of action into that time.

-Strong performance from Butcher and the Blade, a shame that a lot of the great cutoff section was shown in the small picture in picture. Picture in picture had all the good Butcher cutoffs, nice tracks stopping clotheslines and uncomplicated choking over ropes, nice quick tags to isolate. Blade fed into Best Friends' offense really well, really wish they could have been treated better than the finish we got. Good dive from Orange Cassidy.


What Didn't Work

-Not into a lot of Chuck Taylor in the tag, and I didn't like the entire match stopping for an Orange Cassidy routine. I don't hate Cassidy, but I've much more enjoyed the non-invasive use of him in AEW. I think he's good at ringside, I've laughed at some pre-match gags, and he's good for a spot live the dive in this match. I just don't like when a nice tag performance has to stand aside and wait for a routine to finish.

-Women's match didn't work for me as a whole. Shida is messy even if she has charisma, and Sakazaki acts a little too precious. It was fine, nothing horribly offensive, but there was enough disconnect with everything that I could never get into it.

-That main event interview was a real collar tugging few minutes, with Page coming off like a rebelling teen who just found out his parents are divorcing, and the Bucks both working off a script that needed a couple more rounds of polish. The Hangman Page: Hard Drinker stuff is really bad, and the Bucks comments about it and about him storming off came off wooden as hell. Jim Ross was probably the only actual strength of the segment, but this segment made that whole match come off way more dumb and childish than had they done no hype at all.

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 1/29/20

What Worked

-Really enjoyed Young Bucks vs. Butcher and the Blade, especially when we got to the B&B(&B) control. Butcher is also really good at taking offense from both Bucks and making it credible, loved the way he honestly sold their stomach kicks and transition strikes depending on how hard it looked. His big crossbody is a nice spot, he had a couple of really good saves (including a perfectly timed one after a great Nick somersault senton). I'm not sure why Butcher and Blade grew out their hair for the AEW run, but I like the hairline positive attitude. Look how confident they look while stomping out Nick, while Nick shamefully hides behind Brett Michaels Rock of Love accessories.

-Swole should probably drop most of her kick offense (feels like we have a 1 in 3 success rate on those), but there was a lot to like about her match with Nyla Rose. Nyla had a couple nice bumps, Swole's thrust headbutt and her sell afterwards looked great, and the guillotine choke spot is the moment to beat tonight. Strong visual of Swole locking it in while Nyla wound up in a deep squat, powering up a couple of times but not quite, before finally getting fully extended and tossing Swole. Nyla's strength really came through there, awesome moment.

-When you go down to the Honda dealership this weekend, you're gonna want to talk to my guy Arn. He's the top guy there in charge of Fleet sales, total pro. You need a top notch Sales & Leasing Consultant? You talk to Arn.

-Cody did the best he possibly could opposite Sabian, really looked like he was working for two men. He flew hard into the turnbuckles even though Sabian can't even pretend to be doing an Irish whip with any strength behind it, and the impressive thing was Cody's bumps didn't seem disconnected from Sabian's awful offense. The timing was on point and it actually looked like Sabian's nothing strikes were damaging. Has to be tough to make Sabian look formidable, but he did his best.

-I'd actually like it if Britt Baker did more dental related putdowns and insults. My father is a dentist and all through my childhood he had a habit of pointing out dental shortcomings of TV actors. He had strong suspicions that Gillian Anderson did not regularly floss, due to her slightly irritated gumline. I need more Britt Baker calling out the dangers of periodontal disease, and less Britt Baker in a wrestling ring.

-Jack Evans hasn't been on TNT in 3 months, and that needs to change. There have been so many bad Jack Evans on Dynamite, and the actual still great Jack Evans has been slumming it on Dark. You need someone to bump a suplex on the side of their face? You have Jack Evans on your roster. AEW priorities are so bizarre.

-I probably would have rather just seen Darby work the entire main event, but sitting through a match long Private Party crapfest just made Darby's hot tag look even more amazing. His sudden tope on Jericho was so damn good, and in 90 seconds he outclassed Private Party in every single way, hitting all of his spots harder and twice as fast. They really picked the wrong team to sometimes occasionally get behind.


What Didn't Work

-Opening promo came off a little weak to me, neither guy's snaps were really landing, no real update on Moxley's eye (after having it worked on over an entire match a week ago), Ortiz Howard Dean'd the introduction of 5 local Puerto Rican goons, but I thought the pull apart looked good enough and laughed at Moxley mouthing "TEN!?" to the cameras while holding up his fingers.

- I'd say that Kip Sabian should stick to strikes that he can actually pull off, but after this match I think it might be best if he just not use his legs or arms for anything approximating a strike. He threw half a dozen kicks to the stomach that looked almost on par with mid 2000s Torrie Wilson (Edit: 2000s *babyface* Torrie Wilson. Heel Torrie Wilson had better stomach kicks), threw a couple missed clotheslines slowly enough (possible he was parodying the weekly Britt Baker matches, but probably not), just nothing but bad strikes. He took the Cross Rhodes like a champ, and maaaaaaybe Sabian should just be one of those guys who exclusively takes offense. The knee injury was a fun way to spend the commercial break, but we cut fully away to a commercial before we found out if he was faking it or not, and when we came back from break it wasn't referenced again. Odd.

-Can't be a coincidence that the weakest LAX performance in AEW is against Private Party. Private Party are the Young Bucks without the timing, forcing every team to stand around and wait while they hit some convoluted flip that ends with Quen almost touching someone with his feet. LAX looked like goobers having to wait around for stuff to land, looked like it threw off all four of them.

-Jon Moxley should have practiced swinging a bat before going on live TV. Swinging at bat is harder than it looks. Moxley looked like Pedro Cerrano if Cerrano faced nothing but curves.

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