AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 7/29/20

What Worked

-The visual of Stu Grayson's huge tope con hilo past the turnbuckle, hitting the cameraman on the way down (and running right at the cameraman) was awesome.

-Couldn't be much less interested in Zack Ryder as a new AEW recruit, but at least Ryder showed up ON THE GAS. I am more excited for hulked up juice god Ryder than Woo Woo Woo Ryder.

-This show needed Darby in the main event, because this was a real 2 hour drag if you were looking for good wrestling. This was a quick, under 10 minute sprint with a hot pace, totally unnecessary (but fun) weapons, and some classic Darby crash tests. The whole thing starts with Darby doing the Coffin Drop off the entrance tron, so this rules from go. Any match based around Darby dying is going to be cool, so crashing with a Coffin Drop, eating a powerbomb, a German, a nasty spill to the apron, it's all great. Starks and Cage had decent chemistry as a team, but I like Cage a ton more as "guy throwing two men around at once" than "guy going up easily for everyone's suplexes", and luckily we got a bit more of the former. Darby's late match comeback to save Moxley was great, there were a couple good nearfalls, and the finish was fantastic. You give me Darby smashing tacks into Ricky Starks' back by dropping in off the top rope and planting that deck on his back, and that's a finish I'll be into. Starks' sell was awesome, left leg stuck out straight and lifted off the ground while being pinned, shaking like he had spinal damage or like a man who just got his back tacked for the first time. Thank god for Darby tonight. That's a guy you get the ball to with seconds on the clock.


What Didn't Work

-Dang, that opening 10 men sucked, and it had zero excuse to suck. A 10 man given enough time should be the highest hit rate match out there. Any match with 6+ people where at least four of the participants are capable, should be a guaranteed good match. But this was just a sloppy, unfunny, poorly timed mess. People stood around awkwardly, waiting to take offense, missing offense, or just not doing anything. The dive train started well with a cool tope con hilo from Chuck Taylor (who appears to have lost some of his added quarantine weight), but then a long stint with Marko Stunt getting tossed back and forth between Hager and Luchasaurus while everyone just watched. There was a lot of "just watched" in this and it blew. Any time they tried to string a moves chain together it fell apart by the second move, everyone moving at a completely different pace than everyone else.

-I really love the idea of Cody vs. Top Indy Guys, and I have to accept that most of them are not going to touch Cody/Kingston...but I'd like to think that most of them will be better than Cody/Warhorse. I've never been much of a Warhorse guy, the whole thing comes off forced an unnatural, and let me tell you: if something comes off forced and unnatural on small scale indy shows, it is going to look downright bush on a big league presentation. Warhorse looked like a guy who won a sweepstakes, not a guy who earned his shot at the champ. Cody really busted his ass to make him look good, but it's a two way street. Warhorse throws a nice clothesline, and that's about it. Cody is good at taking lariats, and Warhorse had a big running one and a nice flat foot standing one that looked really impactful. Amusingly, JR called him "offensively minded" in a match where up to that point he had only thrown clotheslines and some stomps. Cody did a good job setting Warhorse to shine, Warhorse just didn't shine. His timing was a step earlier than Cody's, and it pulled back the curtain too much on a lot of his rehearsed pins or missed strikes. There were several times where he was already reversing the move he was set to reverse, while Cody had barely started the move. Grabbing a small package off a figure 4 attempt is a smart nearfall, but it looks bad when you're showing your reversal hand before Cody is even in position. Later, he committed to a missed double stomp off the top after seeing that Cody was 8 feet away from where he was stomping. It wasn't a blind leap, he watched Cody move, then leaped into a double stomp to the mat as if a person was there. There's debuting on national TV the way Eddie Kingston debuted, and there's debuting on national TV the way Warhorse did. This was Dancin' Homer debuting in Capital City. We've set each end of our Cody vs. The Indies bar.

-Man has Omega's stock fallen. The tag match was not a long match, but it felt like a long match. That's never good. Omega looks more and more like a broken man in tags like this, but this thing was mildly cursed beyond Omega. There were unfortunate hiccups that you can't really blame on anyone, yet take a match down anyway. Little things like the ref getting in the way of a Page clothesline, requiring Page to completely stop his momentum before continuing the spot as planned. Grayson doesn't always hit with his stuff, but I appreciate a lot of the stuff he goes for. The slingshot senton to the apron didn't fully connect, but it's something that is crazy enough that I want him to keep trying to make it look better. I like Uno's AEW work and dug him here, thought he took the snap dragon like a beast, loved Page wrecking Grayson with a lariat, but this never quite came together as a match.

-I was curious to see some more Diamante after her match last week, even though I was not into her match last week, but now I think I'm good for awhile. She did not look good throughout much of this. Every Shida singles match always has to have these really bad strike exchange sections, always looking like the most brutal slap play. For all I know those shots sting like hell, but I have yet to see a Shida vs. Opponent strike exchange that actually looked ready for prime time. Several of Diamante's chops hit hard, a couple things looked good, but I'm still waiting on an AEW singles match where the participants actually have chemistry.

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Matches from Southern Underground Pro 12/21/19

Kevin Ku/Dominic Garrini vs. Warhorse/Graham Bell

PAS: I liked parts of this a bunch, Ku and Garrini are guys who come up with fun ways to really hurt people, and Bell and Warhorse also hit really hard, I especially liked the parts where Garinni would hold up Bell and Ku would kick him or stomp him in the back of the head. Still this had a bunch of winky shit at the beginning, Ku wearing a Christmas sweater to block chops,  Ku and Garrini bringing in crowbars and begging the ref not to DQ them,  Bell doing a dive that required both opponents to stand their agape waiting for him. Liked the finish run enough to recommend it, but disliked the bad comedy enough to keep it off a MOTY list.

Brett Ison vs. Zach Cooper

ER: I was really excited for this one when I saw the card. Cooper is a really young guy who hit the ground running in 2019, and feels like a real quick learner. I got to see him at SCI this year and at the end of my weekend his match vs. Manders and Big Beef wound up being my second favorite match of the weekend. It put all three of them on the map for me as guys I would be actively seeking out. Sadly the next night I was enjoying Cooper vs. Garrini, but Cooper got injured mid match and the match got stopped. Ison was a guy I saw in the main event of the same show. Ison won the main event, Cooper left the opener injured.  My eyes saw that story play out, and I wanted to see this progression. And it was fun! It wasn't quite the type of big hoss battle I like, but that's fine. This was more of the modern If RVD Was 60 lb. Heavier matches and while big guy handstand spots aren't really my thing, there are still going to be heavy guys slamming into each other. And if there are going to be cartwheels in a match, they may as well be Cooper getting his arm knocked out from under him on the apron. And there are some RVD spots that are much better as big guy spots, like their big corner dropkicks. Coast to coast dropkicks are going to look cooler from a 260 lb. guy. I thought things built well and had a nicely ramped finish, and both guys are going to keep getting better.

Big Beef vs. Adam Priest

ER: Oh yeah, this is a peak Worldwide match. Beef looks like if Chris Sabin was never able to control his munchies, almost to the point where it's a shame Beef isn't coming out wearing a Guatemalan sweatshirt. In another life Beef was the guy selling poorly made grilled cheese sandwiches in the parking lot of Dead shows, trying to bum a way in. This whole thing is 3 1/2 minutes, and it all rules. I don't think I've ever seen Priest before, but he makes a nice impression by cheapshotting Beef and hitting a big dive before a bell has even rung, and from there they work a quick sprint filled with hard shots and nasty spills. Beef struggling to recover from the cheapshot gives Priest believable openings, including a couple of believably thrown and nasty suplexes. Beef has a lot of size on Priest, so it would look silly if he was lifting him easily, so instead he hits a low angle fast German that is more of a leverage throw than a strength throw (bouncing Beef right off his shoulder), and later barely gets him up for a back suplex (which makes the landing look harder). Priest threw nice chops and was always smart about burying a knee into Beef's stomach before going for Irish whips, but Beef is what was for damn dinner tonight. He can really move and really lands with a thud; he hits an awesome crossbody while Priest is draped over the middle rope, just flying right through Priest to the floor, and he wins the match with an ungodly top rope splash that made me respect Priest more for not immediately puking his guts out. This feels like it would have been a legendary Worldwide match.

PAS: Really fun sprint. Both guys get a big to shine, and the highs were really high. I liked Priest coming out fast and fierce early, and getting some moments of real near falls, only to fall to that three move combo from Beef. His nasty powerbomb, into a smushy bodypress against the ropes, into a final top rope splash is about as cool a jab-right cross-left hook combo as you are going to see in wrestling.

Big Twan Tucker vs. Jaden Newman

PAS: Big Twan is a total stud and so much fun to watch. He would have these monster burst of offense, where he just slammed Newman through the mat, there was a tremendous spot where he caught Newman in mid air and just flung him like a bag of flour into a sidewalk slam. He also countered a dive by splitting Newman in half with a spear. Then Newman would fire back with some super weak looking shit, and make faces. Newman wins the match with a terrible looking flippy elbow to the back of Twan's head which he has to sell like he got hit with a lead pipe. Just a chasm between the credibility of both guys stuff, one of the most BS finishes of the year. Twan can take the beating that Manders gives him, and beat guys on TV like MJF and Ethan Page and he goes down to that?

AC Mack vs. Mr. Brickster

PAS: Man I loved parts of this a lot and absolutely hated a big chunk. Brickster is a super likable babyface, while Mack is a great asshole heel and this was a really classic pro-wrestling set up. Mack had put Brickster on the shelf for 8 months with a knee injury and Brickster was going for revenge and to take the title. It goes great for a while with Mack working over the bad knee and Brickster firing back. Then they do this long section where Brickster takes a dick pillow with Mack's face and has a bunch of people in the crowd hit him with it. This was the big babyface comeback to get revenge for a knee injury, having a bunch of hipsters hit him with a pillow. Just awful stuff, which ground the match to a halt. They then try to have have a bunch of dramatic near falls after we just saw the top heel sell a pillow fight like a chair shot. The finish with the GA vs. TN civil war stuff was cool, and it was smart to keep Mack on top and push off his eventual revenge, but I am losing faith in this fed's ability to keep their winking TikTok wrestling out of their main event angles.

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IWTV Worth Watching: IWTV All Stars vs. Team Beyond! Dickinson vs. Homicide!

Chris Dickinson vs. Homicide Squared Circle Project 9/21/19

ER: This got plenty of time but never really jumped up to that next gear. The parts I enjoyed the most were the opening minutes, where we got to see them trading holds, doing some grappling and doing some tiring submission work. That wasn't what I was expecting and I found myself pleasantly surprised. And so by the time they worked up to the brawling portions of the match I was less interested, and the brawling also felt sluggish in spots. All of the brawling felt very 70%, like they were going through the motions of a Homicide/Dickinson match, including throwing in stuff like a ringpost chop and multiple chairshots that felt half-done and immediately forgotten. There was some inspired stuff like Homicide tying up Dickinson in the ringside barrier tape, and these are two guys who can still throw some nice strikes. They had a couple punch exchanges that looked really good - including Homicide punching Dickinson right in the throat - or Homicide going back to the mat and Dickinson biting him in the head to get him to break a kneebar. There was also a bit of weirdness, like Homicide maybe sandbagging a powerbomb leading to Dickinson just kind of sitting back into a piledriver, or a stand and trade section towards the end where Homicide keeps doing weird stuff like rubbing his hands through Dickinson's chest hair, yanking chest hair out (which Dickinson does not react to), or rubbing Dickinson's bald head mockingly (which is a weird flex for a bald dude to pull on a bald dude). This just felt a bit too meandering without much payoff.

IWTV All Stars (Manders/Dominic Garrini/Kevin Ku/Matthew Justice/Warhorse) vs. Team Beyond (Nick Gage/Kris Statlander/Thomas Santell/Bear Bronson/Bear Boulder) Beyond Wrestling 11/28/19

ER: I love team challenge matches, and this was even more on paper exciting to me because it's elimination. On paper this had the chance to capture the vibe of a good NOAH Captain's Fall match from the mid 2000s. It has a good collection of sizes and styles, and it wouldn't have shocked me if this wound up being something special. I do think it underdelivered, had a couple minor messy moments, but far more big spots and to it's credit, felt like a big main event. There was a wild dive sequence where Ku hit a fast tope while Warhorse hit a big tope con giro, Garrini hit a freaking Asai moonsault into everyone which just upped the energy level (is there anything Garrini won't try?), and then Matt Justice reminds everyone that he's Matt Justice and leaps off a 20+ foot ladder. Boulder is a huge guy and a nice presence to have in a match like this, especially when he's hitting double cannonballs and double powerslams like he's in an arcade beat 'em up. We get a lot of stiff strikes, Ku and a Bear really going at it, Statlander hits a totally nuts 450 splash while Ku and Garrini are stacked, and Manders kept showing why he's a cool guy to have on a show. Manders squaring off against Boulder was what I wanted, and we got a great taste. Those two slammed into each other as hard as I was hoping for, and Boulder leveled him with a lariat. This was a nicely assembled group of talent, and it kept a nice pace for the duration; a long match that stayed fresh is a solid rec.

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