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In this article we highlight 5 in-ring statistics that defined the in-ring action from AEW Dynamite in Long Island, New York. We look at Dax Harwood's evolution into a babyface, CM Punk's limited offence vs John Silver, the youth and athleticism in Jungle Boy vs Starks, how Storm and Hayter brought fighting spirit to AEW and the statistically extreme nature of Hardy vs Allin.
1 Dive and Fewer Fists
'No Flips, Just Fists', was Dax and Cash's moniker when they were The Revival. However, babyface Dax Harwood used significantly less 'traditional wrestling' than 'movez' guy Adam Cole. In fact, Cole doubled Dax's strikes, trebled his heavy strikedown-strikes and doubled his submission usage.
Dax's offence was characterised by more grapple usage and, incredibly, the only dive of the match. It seems contradictory to Dax's entire gimmick and more poignantly the traditionalists championing of him as a 'real' wrestler that he used more grapples and dives than Adam Cole of all people.
'Spamming' suplexes and dives while Adam Cole 'grabbed a hold'.
Old Man Punk Struggles
Wrestling matches are built around strikes. Strikes are used to knit the matches together, wrestlers exchange strikes and use sequences of them to signify control. They use strikes to build to bigger and more noteworthy moves that stick more in the memory. In this match John Silver's use of strikes is used to present Punk as on the back foot.
It's particularly striking that Punk only managed 10 strikes in an 8 minute match, check the other matches from Long Island, you will see this is easily the lowest achieved.
The Young Guys Pick Up the Pace
37 reversals in a 10 minute match is by far the most intense exchange of control of the match of the night. This is clearly a marker of their youth, their fitness and their athletic prime. It's hard to continuously struggle with your opponent, to lift their body weight and to run across the ring in evasion.
Storm and Hayter Bring the Strong Style
The majority of the offence in this match is submission and strikes with a liberal sprinkling of grapples. This is a very Japanese structure; less reliance on grappling exchanges and reversals and more tide changes coming via consensual strike exchanges. 40 strikes in a 8 minute match means a ratio of just under 5 per minute is the second quickest pace on the show.
All Killer, No Filler
The theme of this match was set from the first moment as Darby struck down Jeff with a huge strikedown; drop kick. This match only had 5 non-'Big Offensive' moves in the entire 10 minute run time. Usually wrestling matches have a Big Offence rate of around 20-30%; this match saw 72% of the moves fitting the Big Offence criteria (strikes that do not result in strikedown or submissions that are shorter than 10s are no Big Offence).
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