Chair Shots With Killem Faulkner: Not Sports Entertainment Dynamite

This week’s Dynamite may have taken place in Bridgeport, CT just down the road from Stamford where a certain other wrestling company is headquartered, but AEW wanted to make a clear point that the two companies are not the same. Several storylines continued to take shape as we close in on Revolution, the company’s next premium live event pay-per-view. Two qualifying matches, a title match, and several important segments contributed to the building hype for what promises to be a big show in just two and a half weeks. Let’s take a look at the most and least promising developments from this week’s show.

Best Match of the Night

Despite all of Eddie Kingston’s bluster that this is a professional wrestling show, not sports entertainment, the in-ring action actually took a backseat this week to some red-hot promo work. (More on that in a minute.) Not that the matches were bad, of course. Battle royals suck, but the Revolution tag team qualifier that opened the show was better than decent as far as that match type is concerned, even if there was an inevitable uptick in quality once at least half the teams were eliminated. Sorry, but throwing 20 bodies in the ring at the same time is just not that interesting as a match setup, and these types of matches are never good until you get to a manageable number of participants, which in this case was somewhere around 6 or 8. John Silver fought valiantly for his team, considering his partner was the first man eliminated, and we even got a brief “Johnny Hungiee” chant at one point as he tried to carry the banner for the Dark Order. Everyone hates Trent Beretta for some reason, as the Butcher and the Blade tried to take him out early and Best Friends’ rivalry with Santana & Ortiz was renewed later in the match. Unsurprisingly, this match came down to the dissention between reDRagon and the Young Bucks, as Matt Jackson eliminated John Silver only to be immediately dumped out by Kyle O’Reilly to conclude the match. The Bucks got their revenge, sort of, by leaving O’Reilly and Fish to get jumped by the AEW World Champion after the match, and the most likely outcome of next week’s Casino Battle Royal remains the Young Bucks punching their ticket to Revolution so they can settle things with Adam Cole’s new best pals. It was a reasonably enjoyable match all things considered, and we should get a banger of a three-way title match out of it, so that’s probably good enough to land it as an honorable mention this week.

Kings of the Black Throne vs. PAC & Penta Oscuro was another standout match this week, but the finish knocks it down a notch in my eyes. Surprise rollups always suck, even if the match was ultimately just a setup for the post-match shenanigans (more on those in a second) and Malakai Black getting pinned clean is not ideal, though the newcomer Brody King arguably needs to be protected a bit more for now. You could argue that it was a relatively logical finish as Penta blocked Black from spraying his signature mist, causing him to inadvertently swallow or inhale some of the mist and incapacitating him just long enough to score the pinfall. Still, it was obviously meant to be a non-finish to protect the inevitable trios match that is coming somewhere down the line, so it felt like a bit of an anti-climax as the match was really starting to get going. These two teams are capable of much more, and hopefully they’ll get to show it at Revolution or maybe May’s Double or Nothing, but this was far from a bad showing for a TV match designed to build hype for an even bigger confrontation to come.

The best match of the night, unsurprisingly, was the main event between Daniel Garcia and Bryan Danielson. (Side note: if this Danielson-Moxley faction ever gets off the ground and Garcia agrees to join them, do you think they’ll form a team of Daniel & Danielson? I’m just saying, the merch practically prints itself.) This match was exactly what you’d expect from the participants involved – plenty of strikes, reversals, and technical wrestling. AEW is sometimes criticized for going overboard with its epic, drawn-out main event matches, and I’m certainly not advocating for this match to be 30+ minutes long, but I feel like it would have been even better if it weren’t so obviously constrained for time, just as Danielson’s match against Lee Moriarty last week would have benefited with a few more minutes as well. Then again, the point of these “Bryan Danielson takes on AEW’s young guns” matches is that there is every possibility that we’ll see them face off again somewhere down the line when Garcia and Moriarty have a bit more experience and have been built up as equals to the veteran Danielson. As a sneak preview of what they can do in the ring together, though, this was a great success. Danielson could probably have a great match with a broom if he wanted to, but he really shines when his opponent can give it right back just as good, and Garcia certainly fits that bill. Young Danny boy seems to be growing in confidence on the mic too, as he’s been given more of an opportunity to speak for himself despite being paired with 2point0 ostensibly to allow their stronger promo skills to cover one of his weak points. It will be interesting to see where he goes from here, but he’s in a good spot at the moment with a string of standout performances under his belt and a few main event opportunities to build upon. As for Danielson, the post-match confirmation that we’ll get that dream match against Jon Moxley at Revolution drew one of the biggest cheers of the night and promises a potential show-stealer on an increasingly stacked pay-per-view card. All in all, a pretty efficient main event that delivered what it needed to and set up for some exciting developments to come.

Best Moment of the Night

As mentioned, the House of Black may have lost its tag match this week but gained a new weapon in its war against Death Triangle in the debuting Buddy Matthews. It was smart to have him appear just as Malakai Black was threatening to crush Penta’s throat with the shovel, as it momentarily implied Matthews was on Penta and PAC’s side – after all, he’s the one who messed up Black’s eye in the first place, so if you weren’t paying attention to the hints of a third member joining King and Black last week, you might have thought he was there to finish the job started in the summer of 2020. Alas, it was all a ruse as Matthews sided with the baddies to deliver a post-match beatdown that concluded with a stomp that drove Penta’s head into a steel chair. As I mentioned last week, this all obviously seems to be leading to a trios match once Penta’s brother Rey Fenix is cleared to wrestle again, and let me tell you, I am all the way down for that.

Eddie Kingston‘s confrontation with Chris Jericho was another highlight – Jericho’s old school heelish delivery meshed well with Kingston’s more shoot-style promo, and each man got in a few good verbal jabs at the other in advance of their clash at Revolution. In particular, I enjoyed Kingston telling Jericho to bring the guy his friend “Levesque” hated rather than the guy from the mimosa match or the guy who got pushed off a cage by MJF. Also, I legit laughed out loud when Kingston asked “what’s a babyface?” in response to Jericho saying he knew Eddie would get over with the AEW crowd. Jericho called Kingston a loser who didn’t really believe in himself because he comes from a family of losers, and he pointed out that Kingston didn’t break out until he was 38 as opposed to Jericho who was 22 when he got his big break and had won world titles and main evented all around the world by the time he was Kingston’s age. Kingston countered that he achieved his success organically and had to fight to earn everything he’s got, unlike Jericho who cut others down and leeched off of anyone he thought could help his career. The central point of both men’s promos was basically “we are not the same, you and I” just from two opposing perspectives, and as a way of selling their match at the pay-per-view (which is in March, not May, as someone apparently should have reminded Jericho beforehand) this segment worked in a big way. It’s just kind of a shame it had such a limp ending, with Jericho recapping points he had already made before walking out – you had security stand there for the whole segment with one of the most violent guys on the roster and it didn’t end in a brawl?

The best moment of the night, and probably the biggest talking point from this episode, was MJF‘s worked shoot-style promo about how much he looked up to CM Punk growing up and how let down he felt by his hero walking away from the industry at just the wrong time. After last week’s fiery speech from Punk left him speechless, MJF was much more subdued this week, and that benefited the promo about a bullied Jewish boy struggling with mental health issues and trying to find his way in the world who discovered his love of professional wrestling thanks to the man who will be his opponent at Revolution. His delivery struck a more vulnerable, emotional tone as he recounted the story of his football teammates rejecting him right when he felt like he was about to gain social acceptance and how looking forward to meeting Punk was all that got him through that tough time, only for Punk to take his ball and go home shortly thereafter, leaving a young MJF feeling abandoned and disillusioned. He spoke of his conviction to become a pro wrestler and never give up on his journey to the top so that no young person in a similar situation to the one he faced would feel similarly abandoned, and he vowed not to quit no matter what Punk puts him through in their dog collar match. This was a brilliant promo and really displayed the versatility of one of the best mic workers going at the moment, and even if it’s ultimately played off as nothing more than mind games to allow MJF to get the upper hand as Punk hesitates to go all out on someone who sincerely looked up to him so much, it will still stand as one of the best promos he’s ever cut in his AEW career.

Worst Matches/Moments of the Night

I am always reticent to pick a worst match when nothing was actively terrible, but I will say Ricky Starks vs. Preston “10” Vance was the weakest in-ring offering this week. Big strong guy vs. smaller quicker guy matches can be very good, as we’ve seen in the past with the likes of Starks vs. Brian Cage, but these two just didn’t seem to mesh that well. The match was also hurt by the fact that there was absolutely no way 10 was winning here. First of all, the Face of the Revolution ladder match already has 3 big guys qualified in the form of Keith Lee, Powerhouse Hobbs, and Wardlow. There’s no way that match needed another guy whose primary role in the match is to catch other wrestlers who go flying off ladders. (With all due respect to Keith Lee, who is probably going to have a crazy ladder spot of his own.) Secondly, you just knew Team Taz wasn’t going to have just one entrant in the match when Hobbs qualified last week. No offense to Pres10, but he’s not exactly the first Dark Order guy you’d expect to be contending for a title, whereas Starks has been in a fairly protected spot in the midcard. (To be fair, Stu Grayson and Evil Uno or John Silver and Alex Reynolds going after the tag titles are about the only realistic title aspirations I could see the Dark Order having, so I guess Vance isn’t in that bad of a spot.) Like I said, it was far from a bad match, but it was definitely more of a footnote than a highlight and wouldn’t have felt out of place on Rampage rather than Dynamite.

Parting Shots

• I feel bad for the fans who get spotlighted singing “Judas” each week – it seems like so many of them get nervous knowing the camera’s on them and forget the words. Either that, or AEW fans really do need to study up on the lyrics like the company encouraged them to do when MJF banned Jericho’s entrance music during the Labours of Jericho.
• Tay Conti calling her shot for Jade Cargill’s TBS Championship at Revolution was a fairly underwhelming development, but at least that means we’ll get two women’s matches on the show. I don’t think Conti vs. Cargill is a bad matchup by any stretch of the imagination, but unless there’s been a big feud built up or a surprising return/debut, I feel like it’s always kind of lazy to have a champ standing in the ring calling out anybody who wants to step up just a few short days/weeks before the pay-per-view. That goes extra for a company that only has a pay-per-view every few months – you couldn’t have built up a challenger at some point since Full Gear in November?
• Alex Abrahantes went full Dark Souls/Ghost for his entrance this week, and I am here for it. Penta going Oscuro opens up plenty of possibilities for all the members of Death Triangle to explore with their ring gear, and it’s nice to see Abrahantes playing along with the dark priest gimmick.
• Bryan Danielson may not have had much time to deliver his challenge to Jon Moxley after the main event, but his warning that Mox shouldn’t be surprised if he’s the only one who ends up bleeding at Revolution was *chef’s kiss* perfection.

So that’s it for another week – pretty solid show all around, and the Revolution card is starting to fill out pretty nicely. Thanks as always for checking out this week’s review, and I hope to see you all back here next week for more Chair Shots!