Chair Shots With Killem Faulkner: House Of The Dragon Dynamite

You all remember Game of Thrones, right? Super successful HBO show, ran for a long time, definitely good all the way to the end with no major letdowns or controversy? Well, there’s a new spinoff that HBO wanted to make sure all you Thrones-heads know about and get excited for called House of the Dragon. And thanks to a sponsorship deal with AEW, this week’s show made sure you wouldn’t forget to be excited for the debut of that new show that you definitely were already excited about that will premiere this Sunday! Which I’m sure you already knew about, you Thrones-head you! Tony Khan flipped through his rolodex for any wrestler associated with dragons and booked them for the show. Dragon Lee? You bet. The American Dragon Bryan Danielson? Naturally. Ricky “the Dragon” Steamboat? Of course, you silly goose! I already told you he got every dragon-adjacent wrestler you could hope for! As long as you were only hoping for those three because otherwise you’d be out of luck. Oh, and I guess amidst all this dragon stuff there was also the mystery of who would be the Young Bucks’ trios partner, but I can’t imagine anyone was too interested in that – you were obviously here for the dragons, right? Well, let’s take a look at all the best and worst dragon-related content from this week’s show…and I guess any non-dragon-related stuff too if we’ve got time.

Best Match of the Night

Reader, I must confess that I have a bit of a dilemma here. There is a match that probably deserves to be in both the match and moment of the night discussion, but if I put it here, it will spoil the moment for later. Plus, I’ve tried not to give match and moment honors to the same segment, which is a rule that I could easily ignore because as we’ve well established by now, I’m the only one making rules around here and I can easily ignore that jerk’s rules whenever I feel like it. However, for the sake of making a choice as to whether it was a better match or better moment, I will leave it out here and talk about it later. Just know that it was a fairly good match as well even though I won’t be talking about it here.

Unfortunately, though, that leaves us without an honorable mention this week – the Gunn Club beating the Varsity Blonds in about five seconds was more segment than match, and Toni Storm vs. KiLynn King was decent but an absolutely foregone conclusion. So I guess I begrudgingly have to give match of the night honors by default to the 2-out-of-3 falls match between Bryan Danielson and Daniel Garcia. I mean, it was sort of good, I guess. If you like technical wrestling by two absolute masters of the craft. Or, in keeping with the theme of the show, if you like dragons – we had the American Dragon, the Dragon Slayer, and Ricky “the Dragon” all jammed into a single segment. That’s a high DPM (dragons per minute) which I’m sure is an important metric to someone out there. The only complaint I had with this match is something I’ve mentioned before – AEW does far too many submission finishes where the loser passes out rather than tapping out. I understand that the first fall involved Danielson being dumped on his injured head/neck with a piledriver before the dragon sleeper (which also contributed to that all important DPM metric) so it is at least somewhat understandable, but if there’s ever a time where tapping out for purely self-preservation reasons would make sense, the first fall of a 2-out-of-3 match would be exactly that time. The third fall repeating that “pass out rather than tap out” spot made some sense as well, given that it was at the end of a long, grueling match. I’m just saying that overusing that spot has made it mean less, and using it twice in the same match is the very definition of overuse. Still, that’s a fairly minor complaint in the grand scheme of things, and the quality of the match was so high that it’s hard to find fault with it otherwise. I also enjoyed the dueling storylines of Daniel Garcia trying to prove his victory over the former Yes Man last month wasn’t a fluke while Danielson was not only trying to avenge that loss but also sow doubt in Garcia’s mind about his choice to join the Jericho Appreciation Society over the Blackpool Combat Club. That latter point played out post-match as Danielson extended a hand to his fallen opponent as a show of respect while Chris Jericho took the opportunity to cheap shot the winner. Garcia standing up to his mentor while the crowd chanted “you’re a wrestler” was a great moment for his character and bears watching as we go forward – will Lord William Regal look to add a fifth member of the BCC? Could this be a ploy by the JAS to catch Danielson & co. off guard? Might Garcia choose to go his own way and feud with Jericho directly or try to recruit his old 2point0 buddies Matt Menard and Angelo Parker to splinter off from Jericho and Jake Hager? Lots of possibilities in play here, but just about any of them would be a good option to continue building up Garcia as one of the rising stars in the company.

Best Moment of the Night

Jungle Boy calling out Christian Cage was a good promo and a great segment as this feud continues to build. Luchasaurus was nowhere to be found, having been suspended for headbutting an AEW official as Jurassic Express tried to get their hands on Christian backstage, but JB stood his ground despite knowing he had no backup, calling his former mentor a coward and challenging him to a match at All Out to finally settle the issues between them. Cage disingenuously suggested that Jungle Boy was the source of the problem, taking the loss of the tag team titles too hard and making things personal between them when they shouldn’t have been, while promising to take Jurassic Express to new heights if they can reconcile. That tactic had no effect on Jungle Jack, of course, but I wonder if it was meant to influence Luchasaurus who was undoubtedly watching from home. We’ve seen some hints that the masked dinosaur man may genuinely be considering a heel turn and alliance with Christian despite apparently siding with Jungle Boy upon his return following Cage’s heinous con-chair-to assault. Jungle Boy may have inadvertently reinforced Christian’s message by attacking him rather than agreeing to talk it out – sure, you could argue that Christian has yet to really get what’s coming to him, but it does seem like Jungle Boy is the aggressor now rather than Cage, who has expressed his regret for the initial attack. Of course, it is more likely that Christian strikes back at some point and they will end up having the match at All Out despite his protestations to the contrary this week, but at least for the moment things seem to be playing into his manipulative hands.

For the second week in a row, CM Punk gets the runner-up for moment of the week as he addressed his upcoming title unification match with the interim champ Jon Moxley. I’m sure some will take his tone in this promo as a bit more heelish since he was taking shots at the fan-favorite Moxley, but Punk has rarely if ever in his career been a squeaky clean, “gosh I’m just happy to be here guys golly gee whillickers” kind of babyface so I wouldn’t be inclined to take it as any sort of shift in his character unless he overtly starts trying to injure a beloved member of the roster or something. About the only truly heelish remark I noted was when Mox claimed to be “the heart and soul” of AEW, to which Punk retorted that he would be “the dollars and cents” instead. For a company that is all about the “fighting spirit” that Mox referenced, talking about money is never going to go over well with that audience. I did find it odd that Punk called out the former champ Adam Page first, though it seemed like he knew Hangman wasn’t going to make an appearance for whatever reason as Punk stated he wanted to get it out of the way before getting into what he really wanted to talk about. I wonder if we might get some sort of three-way for the title at All Out, given a development later in the show that I’ll talk about in a moment, or if Page will rekindle his feud with the champ at some point after the pay-per-view. It seems odd that the former champ has basically no direction at the moment, but it is possible that some other storyline developments just need to play out before he can be plugged in somewhere. I did like that Punk took Mox to task for being “the third best guy in his group and that seems to be a recurring theme in his career” – a sly reference to his time in the Shield, an idea Punk himself reportedly pitched. I also got a good chuckle out of his reference to Eddie Kingston being “the third-best Eddie I’ve shared a ring with” and “the second-best Kingston I’ve shared a locker room with” (though I’m still trying to puzzle out who the other Eddie is besides Kingston and Guerrero) and his feigned concern that if he lays a finger on Mox he’ll just end up bleeding all over the place. Mox got in a few good lines of his own, accusing Punk of only coming to work for AEW “because you ran out of money” and questioning whether he can back up his “pipe bombs” with his actions as the interim champ has over the past few months. At the end of the day, the conflict between the champion who never lost and the champion who has beaten everyone except the man who holds the official belt pretty much sells itself, but the verbal and physical interactions between them did add to the interest in that eventual matchup.

Moment of the night honors ultimately couldn’t have gone to anything else but the return of Kenny Omega as the Young Bucks’ mystery partner in the main event trios match against La Faccion Ingovernable. Yes, he’s clearly still rusty and probably not 100%, as evidenced by the compression shirt and shoulder brace he sported in this match, not to mention one or two missteps and the obvious effort not to overexpose him in his first match back, but given the laundry list of injury issues that Don Callis helpfully reminded us of on commentary, that was probably to be expected. Just seeing him back in AEW (and actually wrestling, no less) was an incredible moment that the live crowd appropriately lost their collective mind over, despite him being the most obvious choice for the Bucks’ mystery partner just because nobody was sure if Omega would be medically cleared in time. The Best Bout Machine may not have looked up to that moniker just yet, but he and the Bucks are immediately the obvious favorites to win the trios tournament as he figures to only get better and better as it goes along. It will be interesting to see also how he and Adam Page interact and what that interaction is like when it happens, not to mention what will happen when he and Adam Cole come face-to-face. Long-term, of course, it would be a real shame if we never got to see him and CM Punk main event a pay-per-view, and there are plenty of other solo feuds for him to dig into once he’s free of any other obligations. For the moment, however, it’s just good to have the Cleaner back in the fold after so much time away.

Worst Matches/Moments of the Night

Nothing major here, but I was genuinely confused by Jon Moxley coming back out after the opening segment, taking out Tony Nese and Mark Sterling for good measure before calling out CM Punk. I felt like their first interaction was good enough without any need for a sequel, especially that soon afterwards, and I don’t feel like anything was added that the first segment didn’t already accomplish. It wasn’t like Nese and Sterling had been advertised for anything in advance either, so their involvement was confusing as well. I am willing to give the benefit of the doubt to having the unification match on free TV rather than at the pay-per-view, but if next week’s match ends inconclusively or leads to a rematch at All Out anyway, I think that would be an obvious signal that this whole “we couldn’t keep these two separated for three more weeks” thing will be revealed to have been nonsense all along. Here’s my pitch for how AEW could provide a satisfying alternative for All Out after giving away Moxley/Punk on a regular episode of Dynamite: Punk wins to unify the titles, only to be immediately attacked by a returning MJF, who grabs a mic and says, “Tony Khan, you can only keep me silent for so long. The only hope in hell you have of keeping me around is to give me exactly what I want, and what I want is to murder CM Punk in front of his hometown fans and take the AEW World Championship from his cold, lifeless corpse, so that’s exactly what you’re going to give me at All Out.” It would still feel a bit underwhelming to have Mox written out of the storyline, but at least presumably we would get a barnburner of a match first before reigniting what promised to be the hottest storyline in AEW that has gone oddly cold in recent months. Otherwise, I don’t know why you wouldn’t just build out the feud between Punk and Moxley until All Out and save the escalating violence for the weeks to come. This wasn’t a super long pull-apart segment, but it still could have been used for another short match or a backstage segment to build up another storyline heading into All Out.

Parting Shots

• I appreciated the continuity of Ricky Steamboat and Chris Jericho not liking each other after they faced off at WrestleMania 25 and Backlash 2009 – I always like when AEW gives its audience credit for remembering things that happened more than a week or two ago.
• AEW could not deny the power of “Scissor me, Daddy Ass” any longer, though I will say a prolonged feud between the Gunn Club and the Acclaimed is not what anybody should be hoping for especially after their dumpster match last week.
• Nobody should have been surprised to see Dragon Lee kicked out of La Faccion Ingovernable immediately after joining – I was very skeptical of him joining the heel faction after fighting his brother Rush at Death Before Dishonor, as there was no display of unity between them to suggest that they were going to be aligned going forward. Not surprisingly, they are right back to not being on the same page again.

That’ll do it for another week – pretty good show, I would say, with some pretty exciting developments for the buildup to All Out in less than a month’s time. As I expected, it seems like things are starting to pick up as we get closer to what’s become one of the most significant shows on the AEW schedule. Thanks for joining me once again, and I hope to see you all back here next week for more Chair Shots!