AEW Dark Review - August 4, 2020

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

Scorpio Sky def. Will Hobbs

As I've said before, Hobbs is a physically impressive specimen and shouldn't be getting beat as quickly as he has been lately. It just makes me take him less and less seriously every time he's brought back. As for Sky, he continues to climb the ranks with win after win. Even better than his decisive victory was his post-match promo, where he put everyone on notice and made note of how he's only one of two people to pin Chris Jericho in AEW. If he isn't competing for the AEW TNT Championship soon, then something is seriously wrong. 

The Gunn Club def. Aaron Solow and Serpentico

I have no idea why The Gunn Club remains a thing in AEW. They aren't an actual part of the tag team division and I believe they've been relegated only to Dark so far. Maybe it's their way of giving Austin Gunn more experience without having him work singles matches? Personally, I have zero desire to see Billy in the ring in 2020. This was fine but nothing more.

Joey Janela and Sonny Kiss def. The Initiative

Do we still have any idea as to why Janela and Kiss are teaming? I know there was a pair of vignettes that aired for them a while ago, but it feels like they were put together because AEW has nothing else for them to do. If nothing else, their matches have largely been enjoyable, even if Janela seems to look worse and worse every time I see him. As for The Initiative, I assume they won't rest until they lose to every tag team in AEW.

Abadon def. KiLynn King

We haven't seen much of Abadon so far in AEW, but all of her matches have blended together due to being so similar. I'm sorry but she's just terrible. The matches are awful, the character work is lame, and the whole act is tough to get into. This was exactly what I expected it to be in that it was a total waste of time and offered nothing of substance whatsoever.

Jack Evans def. QT Marshall

I honestly couldn't care less about Marshall, but it's nice to see him back after he tested positive for COVID-19 a while ago. It was even better to see Evans back after a long layoff as he's been stuck in quarantine in Mexico since this whole thing started. This also marked his first singles match in AEW since last November. Evans made this bearable and I was happy to see him win for a change, but I'm sure it's leading to The Natural Nightmares beating The Hybrid2 sometime soon.

FTR def. Griff Garrison and Brian Pillman Jr.

What a weird team Garrison and Pillman were. They weren't bad by any means, but it was beyond random. They were just there to lose to FTR and make their offense look as crisp as possible. I love how FTR takes tag team wrestling so seriously as it makes their matches a constant treat. They maximized their minutes and worked well together.

The Butcher and The Blade def. Private Party

Is Matt Hardy already done serving as Private Party's manager? He was oddly absent from ringside here, and it wasn't because this was Dark as he accompanied them to the ring on last week's episode. At any rate, this was a perfectly serviceable main event. I appreciated that it was again two notable teams in the main event slot and not enhancement talent, but this wasn't overly interesting and I wasn't a fan of Private Party losing for the second straight week on Dark.

Overall Show

I can't stress enough how happy I was to learn that Dark would be featuring seven matches this week instead of 12 and would be just over an hour instead of nearly two. That honestly enhanced my enjoyment of the episode. Granted, none of the matches were anything out of the ordinary and most of them involved wrestlers I don't care for, but it was a passable hour of wrestling on the whole.