Chair Shots With Killem Faulkner: Unlocking The Forbidden Door Dynamite

Last week, I said AEW turned the page on Double or Nothing and began looking forward to Forbidden Door. Well, this week’s Dynamite got some rocket fuel shoved up the tailpipe as several matches for the big New Japan crossover show were either confirmed, announced, or otherwise hinted at. With new AEW World Champion CM Punk unable to compete, a battle royal and number one contender’s match for the interim title were set. Elsewhere on the card, we got a surprise title defense, the announcement of a new title, and a number of callouts that figure to set the stage for more matches down the line. What were the best and worst moments from this show, which matches delivered on their potential, and what were the biggest takeaways from this week’s show? Let’s take a look.

Best Match of the Night

Last week I cheated and picked four candidates for match of the night. Okay, there are no particular rules for this weekly article and nobody to enforce them even if there were. And I don’t want this to be taken as a make-up call to balance out last week. But…I’m just going to say there were only two matches that really struck me as match of the night contenders this week. I know, I know, it seems too convenient to be a coincidence, but I promise it is genuinely because three of the five matches this week were not worthy of inclusion here. I’m infamously anti-battles royale, Adam Page vs. David Finlay was just okay, and I’ll get to the women’s title match later. That just leaves Kyle O’Reilly vs. Jon Moxley and PAC vs. Buddy Matthews as our contenders this week. I’ll give the slight edge to PAC vs. Matthews, so let’s talk about the main event in which the winner would go on to compete for the interim AEW World Championship at Forbidden Door. As mentioned, the opening Casino Battle Royal was pretty meh, as such matches virtually always are, but at least O’Reilly was an interesting choice to win. Not as interesting as the returning Wheeler Yuta would have been, for instance, but out of the other options, O’Reilly was a good choice and could more easily absorb a main event loss than, say, Keith Lee or Eddie Kingston. From a stylistic standpoint, Moxley and O’Reilly made for a good match – both men can strike and stretch their opponents like few others in the company – and it isn’t a matchup we’ve seen too much. Blackpool Combat Club vs. the Elite might be a fun faction rivalry if they aren’t busy with bigger and better things. Both men delivered big here, with plenty of stiff elbows, knees, and kicks with submissions and counters liberally sprinkled throughout. The main problem with it was how obvious Moxley winning was as soon as O’Reilly won the opener. You could argue that the company could pick someone unconventional for interim champ because CM Punk will likely just win the unification match whenever that happens, but since it will be the only world title on the show until Punk recovers (and we don’t know exactly how long that will be at this point) I think it still makes sense to pick a sure hand like Mox who has already proved his bona fides as a world champ. Yes, he will face the winner of Hiroshi Tanahashi and Hirooki Goto at Forbidden Door, but…is anyone really expecting a New Japan star to win the AEW title? Unless Punk will be back a lot sooner than expected and Tony Khan really wants to give us the Tanahashi match that was all but promised last week, I just don’t see AEW’s representative losing that match. The predictability of that outcome is a bit of a bummer, but at least Mox is pretty well guaranteed to put on good matches until then, and this week’s clash with O’Reilly was just the first entry in this run of excellence.

That said, however, I do feel like the first All-Atlantic Championship tournament qualifier was a slightly better match primarily because it legitimately felt like it could go either way. Sure, Matthews feels much less likely to make it all the way through the tournament to be crowned champ, but there’s no reason to believe he couldn’t pull an upset in the first round. This was Matthews’ first solo match in AEW, after all, so it wouldn’t have been too surprising to see him pick up the win for the House of Black, which could certainly use a big win or two given its recent run. (Julia Hart getting involved after Double or Nothing, especially, would have made sense.)  That said, PAC is the bigger star at this point in his AEW run, so it didn’t seem like a bad idea to have him win and advance. There was a pervasive sense that these two had each other scouted well, which made sense given how often House of Black and Death Triangle have faced off lately. There were several moments in which the two traded strikes and counters only to end in a standoff, and there was an early moment in which PAC opted not to go for a dive knowing that Matthews would see it coming, only for both men to end up standing side by side on the outside after faking each other out as they switched places in and out of the ring. The intensity ramped up as the match wore on, and the crowd broke out the sometimes overused “fight forever” chant as both men threw everything they had at one another. The closing sequence in which PAC hit a poison rana jumping backwards off the turnbuckles and followed it up with a Black Arrow for the win felt like a fitting conclusion to an intense, physical encounter. Miro still seems like the odds-on favorite to win the tournament, but PAC should provide some highlights in the four-way at Forbidden Door, especially if he and Malakai Black get the chance to lock horns.

Best Moment of the Night

Hey, remember last week when I said Wheeler Yuta has been off AEW programming “for whatever reason”? Well, he returned this week from the Best of the Super Juniors tournament he’s been competing in for the last month! It’s almost as if I stupidly haven’t been paying attention to NJPW lately despite the fact that we’re less than a month away from a joint pay-per-view and so now would be an ideal time to familiarize oneself with the ongoing storylines from that company. But who needs that when you can be grossly unaware of anything to do with wrestling outside of North America?! Anyway, Wheeler Yuta’s return in the opening battle royal gets an honorable mention for best moment mainly because I’m an idiot who doesn’t know anything so I fully didn’t expect him to be on the show.

The Young Bucks vs. Jurassic Express vs. the Hardys faceoff backstage was another cool moment from this week’s show. It was kind of a bummer that the Hardys won at Double or Nothing, but I suppose it keeps them in the picture long enough to give us an exciting three-way title match next week. The Young Bucks have grown in confidence since their loss to FTR a couple of months ago nearly sent them into an existential spiral, and Christian Cage seems to be practically daring his boys to lose at this point. Jungle Boy clearly didn’t like being spontaneously booked to face two of the best tag teams in history, but he’s not ready to openly confront the nominal leader of the group just yet. The Hardy brothers were…just kind of there, as they have been for much of the time since they reunited in AEW, but they didn’t really need to do anything to make this proposed matchup any more exciting. Hopefully this match will be given a prominent spot on the show and plenty of time to deliver an instant classic.

Moment of the night has to go to the All-Atlantic Championship introduction and the announcement of the bracket to determine the first champ. Yes, I am a sucker for a wrestling tournament, but considering it’s basically two rounds with a four-way for the title at Forbidden Door, it hardly counts as a tournament. Basically it’s a series of qualifiers and a title match between the winners. Still, I think the title looks great, and the fact that someone else from the midcard will get a shiny new belt to carry around to make their matches feel just that little bit more important is not a terrible thing. You could argue it isn’t really necessary and just treads on the toes of the TNT Championship, but that title is pretty much only defended on Rampage and doesn’t have that distinctly international flair. I say this as an unabashed fan of the old European Championship from WWE – sure, like half the champs were from Canada or Mexico, but I loved that belt regardless. I’m optimistic that the AAC will find its niche in the company and as long as it continues to be used to highlight international stars, it should produce plenty of classic matches from wrestlers who might otherwise run the risk of getting lost in the shuffle.

Worst Matches/Moments of the Night

I genuinely do not enjoy regularly writing negative things about the AEW women’s division. I like most of what Jade Cargill has been doing since her debut in the company. Britt Baker, Hikaru Shida, and Kris Statlander have been stalwarts who can be counted on to deliver a quality match against virtually anyone. The recent additions of Ruby Soho, Toni Storm, and Athena are exciting and should provide some high-profile matches going forward. That said, the AEW Women’s World Champion Thunder Rosa vs. Marina Shafir was the worst match of the night. I’m sorry, but when Marina Shafir shows up on TV, I automatically know she’s about to lose, which is no way to build up a relatively unproven wrestler. Yes, she’s won fairly consistently on Dark and Elevation, but other than tapping out Skye Blue to make her seem like a threat to Jade Cargill (spoiler alert: she really wasn’t) she has only turned up to lose to the company’s champions when they needed a placeholder between more important matches. She has improved in AEW, but while this match was not terrible by any means, it is clear she is not at the point of being worthy to challenge for a title yet. Heck, by AEW’s own logic, she didn’t even earn a title shot – she was the 5th ranked woman coming into this week’s Dynamite and that was entirely off her record on the company’s YouTube shows. Thunder Rosa has reportedly been a bit miffed about her treatment since winning the title, and I cannot imagine a match like this is helping matters. At least Toni Storm came out to pick up the belt and hand it to the champ in a way that clearly indicated her intentions to challenge for the title in the not-too-distant future. That’s still not an excuse for having a pointless title match that does nothing for either woman involved.

Parting Shots

• I was genuinely sad that Trent Beretta didn’t have his best friends with him for National Best Friends Day. I didn’t even know that holiday existed but it was still a bummer.
• Speaking of that segment, I’m sure a lot of people were excited about the appearance of Will Ospreay and the rest of United Empire and might have been surprised that I didn’t list it as one of my best moments of the night, but although he’s not someone I give the side-eye to as much as Jay Lethal, for instance, he’s still on my list of people Speaking Out ruined for me. Y’all can forgive and forget if you want, but I’m not there.
• Adam Cole pointed out he still had some friends in Bullet Club while Adam Page does not, which gives me some hope that Cole will eventually lead some NJPW invaders in a multi-man match against Page and a contingent of AEW loyalists. More likely, we’ll just get another match between Cole and Page to determine who gets to face Kazuchika Okada for the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship. That’s…fine, I guess. Who needs an invasion storyline anyway?
• I know there’s a well-defined trope that babyfaces in wrestling are dumb, but Wardlow really fell into that trap hard this week. Not only did he offer a lame excuse for not being in the Casino Battle Royal (you’re turning down a guaranteed world title shot because you don’t want to win it unless it’s against the champ? But winning the interim title guarantees you a shot at CM Punk in a unification match at some point…) but he also turned down a TNT Championship match because Scorpio Sky isn’t “110%” at the moment. Here’s a cool idea: wrestle somebody, Wardlow. Nobody is requiring you to go after a title if your honor prevents you from doing so, even though that’s idiotic, but nothing is preventing you from just being like, “Hey X, get yo punk @$$ out here so we’s can fight!” Granted, he technically has only been a full member of the roster for like two weeks, so it’s understandable that he doesn’t quite get how this all works, but um…you don’t have to announce when you’re not going to wrestle, big guy.

So that’s it for another week! Decent show overall – there were enough highlights and not too many lowlights to consider it a modest success. Thanks for joining me once again, and be sure to come back next week for more Chair Shots!