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We are quickly approaching AEW's Revolution PPV and it's time to look back at the past several weeks of action on AEW Dark and Dark: Elevation. The data below covers single matches from November 15th, 2021 to March 1st, 2022. This is the cumulative total of 164 singles matches. Workers that wrestled at least three times in that period are listed below.
This "season" of Dark had some stand out performances by younger talent which we will point out below. The Dark environment is a great place to watch as characters develop and workers learn their art alongside veterans.
Fouls
It shouldn't be surprising to see a pair of established heels with the most fouls like Andrande (.57fouls/min) and Emi Sakura (.34f/m). Our first young talent to spotlight is Angelica Risk who managed to score .27 fouls per minute across four matches. Of special note is our fourth highest foul/minute which belongs to Julia Hart (.26). The young cheerleader is slowly showing heel traits and it's one of the slow burn storylines in AEW that will be interesting to watch develop.
Of the 35 workers featured, 15 recorded 0 fouls. Surprisingly, Fuego del Sol is not one of them as he had to resort to biting in a failed effort against Lance Archer.
Pin Attempts
Top three to attempt pins are Red Velvet (.88 pins/min), Riho (.86p/m), and Jay Lethal (.86p/m). All three were undefeated, but a high number of pin attempts doesn't equal success as Lance Archer (.39p/m) and Dante Martin (.37p/m) were also undefeated with six wins each. Andrande is even more impressive with 5 wins and only a .07p/m rate. There's no overlaying trend that I noticed, it all comes down to wrestling style and how a worker presents themselves. Pres10 Vance is the only worker with a 0% pin attempt rating and he won all his matches via submission.
Strikes
Julia Hart has clearly been more aggressive since her meeting with Malakai Black. She scored over eight strikes per min, a considerable lead compared to second place Emi Sakura (5.12 strikes/min). Lance Archer rounds out the top three at 4.97 strikes/min. Looking at the top average strikedowns and we have another young talent in Zack Clayton taking second place. Clayton even managed to get a win (over Serpentico). Dark still features plenty of squash matches, but lately they've given young talent time to show what they can do and even pick up a win here and there.
Grapples
Julia Hart is first in grapples/minute with 1.28, just barely beating out Thunder Rosa (1.26). I was expecting Thuder Rosa to get featured a lot on Dark these past several week in order to get her ready for the much anticipated rematch with Britt Baker. Thunder Rosa still looks strong though as she went 5-0 during this season. Rosa should also be commended as I feel she is one of those veteran talents that enjoys teaching and inspiring new talent. Her journey has been great and I hope that she holds the AEW Women's Championship by the end of Revolution.
Reversals
Another veteran that new talent can learn from, Kazarian was featured four times on Dark. He was clearly the the most elusive opponent as he had the highest reversal per minute of 1.69. Ruby Soho came in second with 1.32 r/m and Alan Angels with 1.05 r/m. It should be noted that Kazarian and Angels had a match against each other with a combined 20 reversals (the season average for reversals per match was just over 4). Marina Shafir is one of the newer talent's featured with AEW, yet she's managed to impress early. She ranked 3rd for average reversal rate.
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