6 Ups & 2 Downs From AEW Dynamite (11 Jan - Review)

by Michael Sidgwick

1. Blow-Away Awesome, If Unexpected Main Event

The Elite
AEW

When the timer reached 1:41:00 on the Fite feed, and Jake f*cking Hager was still doing his awful "I like this hat" bit, it was wise to reframe expectations for Escalera de la Muerte. It was going to be more sprint than epic. But what an insanely complex, pulsating, brutal sprint it was.

The first two minutes were unreal, and that is before the two trios blazed through a series of demented stunts, the wires for which were invisible. Worked at hypersonic speed with an intricate series of moving parts, the work here was out of this world impressive. It was a relentlessly brilliant, almost impossibly good match timed to inconceivable perfection. Everybody was in the right place to reverse the momentum at a near-constant, dizzying rate. Somehow, nothing was telegraphed. The blistering work constantly exploded from out of nowhere.

Recapping the action would take longer than is necessary to put across how frenetic it all was, but a Matt Jackson Canadian destroyer on Penta El Zero Miedo looked less like a cooperative spot and more like a warp-speed blur of cool-looking violence.

The standard of this programme was already blow-away great, but Nick Jackson deserves special mention for racing up a ladder and seamlessly executing a twisting springboard dive onto Fénix with full impact. That was absolutely incredible.

Invention, drama, violence: this was a phenomenal trios match, and, faithful to the wider series, the callbacks told the story of the Elite learning from it. Omega grasped how to counter the Black Arrow, and while he couldn't avoid a hammer shot to the hand - delivered after a very clever spot in which PAC trapped it against the rungs of a ladder - the good guys preserved over the bad guys and their nefarious ways with pure guts. As futuristic as this was, it was a classic wrestling tale at its core.

It needed an extra two-to-three minutes to truly enter the conversation of best TV match of all time. The drama of Omega's hand injury could have been exploited to better effect.

But as ****3/4 matches go, this was outrageous.

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Contributor
Contributor

Michael Sidgwick is an editor, writer and podcaster for WhatCulture Wrestling. With over seven years of experience in wrestling analysis, Michael was published in the influential institution that was Power Slam magazine, and specialises in providing insights into All Elite Wrestling - so much so that he wrote a book about the subject. You can order Becoming All Elite: The Rise Of AEW on Amazon. Possessing a deep knowledge also of WWE, WCW, ECW and New Japan Pro Wrestling, Michael’s work has been publicly praised by former AEW World Champions Kenny Omega and MJF, and current Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes. When he isn’t putting your finger on why things are the way they are in the endlessly fascinating world of professional wrestling, Michael wraps his own around a hand grinder to explore the world of specialty coffee. Follow Michael on X (formerly known as Twitter) @MSidgwick for more!