6 Ups & 3 Downs From AEW Dynamite (November 15 - Results & Review)
1. Like A Dragon Street Fight Is Perfect*
The Like A Dragon Street Fight was absolutely perfect - for what it was.
Given the tie-in element and the fact that the big Kenny Omega Vs. Don Callis programme was paid off with a multi-man match with a very random cast of characters, this was never going to feel like a truly important, heated grudge match. This was instead imagined as a crazed, smaller-scale version of Anarchy In The Arena.
A match is best put over by the noises you make in your living room when watching it. This demented, often illogical but who cares match at various points made you pop, howl with laughter, shriek - even care.
It was a bit bad at points. The Golden Lovers used to be in perfect sync - the whole point was that they shared the same heart and thus moved as one - but Kota Ibushi was behind on the Cross Slash by about five seconds. Still, how could you begrudge him when he bumped neck-first on a bike and took a jumping Tombstone to the outside on a mass of upright chairs?!
That might not have been the most insane bump in a match swarming with total, joyous madness.
Paul Wight earned his money in AEW by putting over Powerhouse Hobbs in the most insane way imaginable. After doing some popular creak-and-brawl spots, he and Powerhouse Hobbs wandered backstage. Wight took a body slam bump onto a car windshield in what was an amazing feat of strength and a deliciously cruel sight gag. Paul Wight ate the dirt, at once bumping on glass, the bonnet and the concrete below.
Not to be outdone, Omega took Brian Cage's inside out suplex through two tables at ringside with an arc so terrifying and spectacular that his feet almost touched the rafters.
Messy, chaotic, daft, it was also elegant and dramatic, somehow: Omega cut his hand smashing Kyle Fletcher with a bottle, in an accidental yet effective means of lending the match real heft. The beat that led to the finish - in which Hobbs, portrayed effectively as the game-changing monster, was taped to the ropes in a stirring bit of turnabout is fair play - was a neat bit of continuity.
The Callis Family was defeated in a match so nuts and weirdly effective that, in the moment, it hardly mattered that the stable was a misfire.