Reviewing wrestling, or an entertainment medium, with the benefit of years of hindsight is often a strange experience, as you enter possessing knowledge that those living in the past could never, and will never, understand. AEW's decision to push Jimmy Havoc made sense in November of 2019; he's a unique entity that had gotten the new promotion mainstream attention at All Out in the insane "Cracker Barrel Clash", and while he likely was never going to be world championship material or anything, you can absolutely find a spot on the card for the skills that he brought to the table. Of course, we know now that Havoc was a mess of a human being, and his wrestling career was destined to go down the tubes, which makes this episode of Dark an odd viewing experience, as Havoc occupies a prominent spot in the main event, in addition to joining Cody Rhodes for his weekly "From Undesirable to Undeniable" interview segment. I can't blame anyone for wanting to bail on this review after reading that, but for those that wish to stay, I'll try and make this as enjoyable as I can.
- The November 5th, 2019 episode of AEW Dark comes to you from the Charleston Coliseum in Charleston, West Virginia, with Excalibur once again joined by a new color commentator, as Cody's best friend, MJF, is here to call the night's festivities. While it's obvious that Friedman lacks experience in this role, his quick wit carries him through, as he kept pace with Excalibur and fired off a multitude of entertaining one-liners. I could definitely see a commentary career in his future.
- Our opening contest is an odd singles clash between Shawn Spears and Michael Nakazawa, who might have the furthest divide in the company when it comes to gimmicks, and the crowd doesn't seem to know what to make of the two facing off. Nakazawa gets up to his usual baby oil shenanigans, and MJF delivers his best line of the night, inferring the oil is made of babies, which cracked me up. Tully looks genuinely pissed at Nakazawa's antics, and the fact that he has to sell slipping on the oil, which seems way below a character of his stature. I feel awful for both Spears and Tully, who moved from a featured program with Cody to this, but at least Shawn gets a decisive win, pinning Nakazawa with a slingshot suplex, an old finishing move from Tully's playbook. I'm glad AEW at least avoided having Spears take the embarrassment of having Nakazawa's thong shoved down his throat, that was a visual that he might never have recovered from.
- AEW appears to be setting the stage for a Mercedes Martinez/Big Swole tag team, as the Latina and the bodybuilder team up to take on the ill-fitting pairing of Sadie Gibbs and Allie. Martinez and Swole are fun as a duo, as both women are roughhouses in the ring, and have already worked out a couple tag team spots. The first sees both hook up for a double suplex, which leads into Martinez's adaptation of the Three Amigos, and the second is an elevated powerbomb by Martinez into a neckbreaker by Swole, which the latter didn't quite execute cleanly, but it was still a good idea for a tandem move. Martinez is far and away the most polished performer in this match, all her strikes are snug, she transitions between moves with ease, and her suplexes pack a serious punch. Swole was clearly more green, though I loved her ripcord spinning elbow smash, which got a huge reaction out of MJF, and deservedly so. As for the other side of this match, I liked a few of Gibbs' spots, the delayed vertical suplex and handspring plancha could both be super over in front of a hotter crowd, while Allie was largely unimpressive, though she got hot for the finish, delivering a crisp avalanche armdrag to Mercedes and dropping Swole with a crunching thrust kick. Gibbs polishes Swole off with a moonsault.
- Britt Baker gets some airtime in a talking head segment, as she discusses her beef with Bea Priestley, calling Bea "unprofessional" for a stiff kick the latter delivered during the Fight for the Fallen Buy In tag match, and declaring that on the Full Gear Buy In, Britt will be just as reckless as Bea. The attempt to work in a shoot element to this scripted feud didn't really work for me, although Britt delivered her promo with more conviction and swagger than I've seen out of her thus far, she seems to be growing more comfortable on camera.
- The Jimmy Havoc interview I mentioned in the intro didn't end up being anything special, as he flips off the camera a few times, and discusses how he incorporates his love of horror movies into the way he films backstage promos. You know, beyond my general distaste for the man, he isn't very charismatic, and seems to lack any sense of a character beyond just being violent with weapons.
- Main event time, as Havoc teams up with fellow hardcore warrior Joey Janela to take on Jungle Boy and Marko Stunt of the Jurassic Express. Jungle Boy and Stunt are on point in this one, flying around the ring with reckless abandon, and showing off impressive tag team chemistry, combining for one of the damndest moves I've ever seen, as Stunt gets serious rotation into a wheelbarrow splash with Jungle Boy adding in a standing moonsault after releasing Stunt. That was awesome, and wasn't the only highlight for Jungle Boy in this one, as he also delivers a gorgeous moonsault to the floor, and nearly breaks Janela in half with a backflip double knee drop. Stunt, while not close to his partner in terms of athleticism, does provide his share of the match with his full body selling, as he gets dismantled by Havoc's Tiger Driver '98 and Janela's match-ending avalanche Package Piledriver. I now a lot of stogy wrestling fans turn up their noses at Stunt competing with guys so much bigger than him, but it's always entertaining to see him get ragdolled, and he fills that Rey Mysterio/Spike Dudley mold of a smaller midcarder that elevates those that step into the ring with him, because of what you can do to his body. There will always be a role for someone like that on your roster, I don't care how implausible the physical differences might seem at times. As for Havoc and Janela, I enjoyed the story of Joey wanting to win clean, and his delayed German suplexes looked great on the smaller men, while Havoc's biting was entertaining solely due to MJF's reaction on commentary, and Jungle Boy doing it back to Havoc.
- To close out the night, we have a vignette filmed in the parking lot, as Janela enjoys his win, before being confronted by Shawn Spears and Tully Blanchard, who execute brutal revenge for Janela's disrespect to Tully as Spears pries open Janela's mouth and burns him with Janela's own cigarette, resulting in Joey screaming in pain as Tully covers the camera. It's a great way to get Spears over as a sadistic heel, but it was odd to cut away from that scene to Tony Schiavone and Dasha Gonzalez in the "Control Center", who completely ignored the footage of one of the company's talent being viciously maimed to sign off for the night.
5/10
I enjoyed both tag matches, while the opener was repulsive and the two promos didn't add much. On the whole, this episode of Dark, much like the recent episode of Dynamite, was the weakest in the show's run thus far, though it wasn't a bad hour of wrestling.
- Henry
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