Chair Shots With Killem Faulkner: The Ohio State Dynamite

This week, AEW broadcast its weekly Dynamite program live from the campus of The Ohio State University in Columbus, OH. The show promised the highly-anticipated return of a major faction, a rarely-used stipulation match, and a #1 contender’s match to determine the next challenger for Jon Moxley’s interim AEW World Championship. Did the show live up to its billing in the home of the Best Damn Band in the Land? Let’s take a look at all the best and worst of this week’s Dynamite.

Best Match of the Night

I’m going to level with you here: I felt like this was an extremely average episode. There were plenty of matches that I wanted to like more than I did; in particular, Christian Cage vs. Matt Hardy, The Acclaimed vs. the Gunn Club, Wheeler Yuta vs. Chris Jericho. Sure, I could single out one of those matches and give it an honorable mention, which I would probably do ordinarily, but for some reason this week I felt like talking about these matches together instead to examine why I was a bit underwhelmed. Sure, we’ve seen better matches from Matt Hardy and Christian Cage, and the issues between them are secondary to Cage’s feud with Jungle Boy so it was clear this match was a setup for the post-match showdown between them. A dumpster match is not much more than a brawl in which both sides try to huck the other into a dumpster and shut the lid, and that’s exactly what we got with a few notable exceptions that we’ll talk about later. Wheeler Yuta is capable of great things in the ring, but Chris Jericho slowed him down and forced him to wrestle a style that favored the veteran. Also, there was virtually no chance Yuta was going to win and face his Blackpool Combat Club teammate next week for the title, so it seemed like a pointless match from the beginning, especially since Jericho outright challenged Moxley last week and implied that they would be facing off at Quake by the Lake without any such qualifying match. Broadly speaking, none of these matches were bad – in fact, they were fairly good – but they were all hampered by a setup that didn’t really benefit the participants – Hardy and Cage would have benefited from a gimmick that played on their shared history, while The Acclaimed and Gunn Club would have been better off with a more straightforward wrestling match to put over the acumen of the newly babyface Caster and Bowens. Having the Yuta-Jericho match as a midcard warmup for the promised title match next week would have made it feel more competitive and interesting than having it main event the show to determine who would advance to face the interim champ when we already knew exactly who that would be. This might be viewed as nitpicking, but it just felt to me that AEW kind of got in its own way with the way these matches were presented, and that held them back from consideration for match of the night in my view.

Okay, so there were a bunch of mediocre matches this week. Were there any good ones, you ask? Oh, you didn’t ask. Or maybe you did, but I certainly couldn’t hear you because I’m a guy on the internet and not someone standing in the same room as you while you’re reading this. Or am I? Did you look behind you? Oops, nobody there, huh? Maybe I was never there, or maybe I just have impeccable timing to conceal myself before you turned around. Life sure is full of unknowable mysteries. Let’s move on from that weird tangent and talk about ThunderStorm vs. Dr. Britt Baker DMD & Jamie Hayter, why not? This was a great match between four women who all deserve to be involved in the women’s title scene and won by the only one of the four who hasn’t been champion or challenger yet. That’s a good thing, by the way – it’s a textbook example of how to build up a wrestler’s credibility. Baker has taken a bit of a backseat in the division recently, but she’s done a good job overall of bringing Hayter along and lending some of her legitimacy to her protegee who seems poised to surpass her in the not-too-distant future. Storm and Rosa still seem like a pointless tag team for a division with no tag titles, but they do play well off each other and it allows them to be challenged as a unit to allow both of them to be on television more often. I particularly like the adopted Texan Thunder Rosa integrating a stunner into her arsenal and Baker using the air raid crash both from the top turnbuckle and from a regular standing position on the match. Storm’s hip attack rampage is also an impressive sight to see as she really launches herself into the move in a way that looks legitimately impactful, though it did lead to her team’s loss as Baker pulled Rosa in the way of her final attack and allowed Hayter to hit her finisher for the win. I will point out once again that a short-arm clothesline is not the greatest finisher, and I hope that if AEW plans on pushing Hayter further up the ladder that she will be given a better-looking finisher, but again I think this was the right result because it builds up her ability to put away opponents with that move. I suspect we’ll see some degree of friction between Hayter and Baker going forward, even though they were a cohesive unit here, and whether Baker will stand in the way of her partner trying to step into the world title picture. Somebody needs to challenge Thunder Rosa going forward, presumably culminating in a title match at All Out. Will that be Britt Baker, Jamie Hayter, or Toni Storm? This match seems to indicate Hayter overcoming the other two would be the logical route to take in order to deliver a first time ever match rather than something we’ve seen before, regardless of how good those previous title matches may have been.

Match of the night honors this week go to the opening match, Jay Lethal vs. Orange Cassidy, continuing a heck of a run for OC despite the (spoiler alert) loss he ended up suffering here. It sure would be nice if his opponents weren’t so often people it’s so hard to support! Yeah, Lethal is a good wrestler, as is Will Ospreay, who had a match of the year contender against Cassidy at Forbidden Door, so of course the result was a good match. He’s not a great dude, though, so let’s not dwell too much on his contributions to the match and instead focus on how great Orange Cassidy is despite, y’know, losing and not ultimately being the focus of the post-match developments with TNT Champion Wardlow. The term “babyface in peril” certainly describes Cassidy to a T, as his inherent lack of seriousness when it comes to wrestling makes him seem like an underdog even though he’s actually more than capable from a pure in-ring perspective. His ability to sell a leg injury throughout gave the match a sense of drama as to whether he would finally overcome to deliver the Orange Punch or succumb to the Figure Four, which has apparently been passed on to Lethal despite him being one of Ric Flair’s opponents in his definitely final match ever for real this time. Cassidy managed to evade and counter for a good while, delivering Stundog Millionaire and Beach Break despite failing to bust out his finisher, and the Best Friends provided some enjoyable shenanigans as usual, pulling out the classic “two dudes in a trenchcoat” bit to counter the size of Satnam Singh. It was so delightful that it just missed out on being on the best moment list because Trent and Chuckie T didn’t actually interact with the giant in any significant way. I’m also not sure why Danhausen wasn’t there to neutralize Sonjay Dutt, but I would just like to see Danhausen get involved as much as possible. Those gripes aside, we’ll probably still see Wardlow and OC together in some capacity going forward, and it doesn’t hurt Freshly Squeezed to take a random loss on regular television, so it wasn’t a total waste of his star power. We’ll see where he goes from here, but there are worse roles to slot into than “guy who has impressive opening matches on a consistent basis.”

Best Moment of the Night

As okay as the matches were this week, the non-wrestling segments weren’t that much better. We got a couple of good promos from Jon Moxley and Miro that fit their respective characters perfectly. Moxley’s insistence that he has no respect for anyone once the bell rings and that he’s going to fight until somebody ends up in the hospital at least gave some credence to the possibility that Yuta could defeat Jericho in the main event, while Miro’s claim that everyone reveals their true selves eventually further hinted at a dark turn, probably an alliance with the House of Black.

The Acclaimed‘s dumpster match may not have been as great as one might have hoped, but Max Caster’s mic drop elbow off the entrance tunnel through a table was a thing of beauty. Also, even though it took a minute to set up, Caster and Bowens tossing the Gunn Club off the stage in the dumpster after winning the match was a wonderfully bonkers moment that will hopefully serve as the end to the feud and allow the new babyfaces to move on to bigger and better things.

I will give moment of the night to the breakup of the Undisputed Elite even though I will give it the slight asterisk that it felt a little less grand and impactful than it could have. Adam Cole and reDRagon have been off TV for so long that it would have been easy to forget that they’ve been building towards a heel turn (well, an ultra-heel turn since they were already heels to begin with) for a good while now, even though the Young Bucks have been a lot more face-ish recently. It’s also unclear whether Cole and O’Reilly are still out of commission as they claimed or if they were just giving the Bucks a false sense of security, so whether there will be any immediate follow-up to this dastardly attack is still up in the air, but assuming AEW does have a long-term plan, this should be just the first step in a much bigger narrative that will, hopefully, lead to a full-on reconciliation between “Hangman” Adam Page and the Young Bucks as well as, if it’s not too much to ask, maybe Kenny Omega. Like soon. It’s been too long since we’ve seen “The Cleaner” but it’s hard to argue that he hasn’t earned this time off. Page and the Jackson brothers should be plenty to enjoy in the meantime, though, and the upcoming trios championship tournament immediately gets a boost if they do decide to team up to stick it to the man…er, Adam Cole, who directly told them not to.

Worst Matches/Moments of the Night

I almost never have anything to complain about here, though I did talk about what an underwhelming episode this was overall so that was sort of negative I guess. This is a minor point, but I will point out that Excalibur didn’t start off the episode with “It’s Wednesday, you know what that means” as a tribute to the late great Brodie Lee, which was…weird. I’m not sure if there was a reason to retire that line or if he just forgot because JR has been using it more lately and he wasn’t out there at the beginning of the show. There’s probably a tweet addressing exactly this by the time this article gets published, but it was too noticeable for me not to comment on it. Excalibur is still one of the best announcers in the game, so I’ll give him a pass, but just remember that DARK ORDER IS FOREVER.

Parting Shots

• I’m glad to see Tony Khan is delegating some of his responsibilities to hopefully reduce some of the communication issues that have apparently dogged the company in recent times. Bringing in Madison Rayne to work with the women’s division also seems like a very sensible decision, as her experience should be a huge benefit to the overall in-ring quality of the product.
• I will forever love how Tony Schiavone holds a grudge against Adam Cole. Excalibur was needling him, of course, about how excited people are to see Adam Cole back in the company, but his “Boom, my @$$” line was delivered so perfectly that it nearly derailed the entire commentary desk for the rest of the segment.
• I also really enjoyed Eddie Kingston interrupting a pre-recorded video from Sammy Guevara and Tay Conti just to say “nobody cares” about their wedding. His disdain is so powerful that it apparently overrides the production of the show.
• I don’t think Ethan Page’s association with Stokely Hathaway will ultimately amount to all that much – I would not mind being wrong whatsoever, for the record – but it is important because it means his association with American Top Team is apparently over! Less Dan Lambert! Hooray!

That’s it for another week! Not the best show we’ve ever seen, but they can’t all be instant classics, and it was a serviceable weekly TV episode. Thanks for joining me once again, and I hope to see you back here next week for more Chair Shots!