Chair Shots With Killem Faulkner: Oops! All Suspensions Dynamite

After a controversial ending cast a pall over a packed weekend of wrestling, this week’s Dynamite felt like a hard reset. Four of the company’s biggest stars were gone, and two of the three titles that changed hands at All Out were vacated, promising a major shakeup to the top of the card going forward. That vacuum of top-level talent left room for other champions and rising stars to take on larger roles, but there was a looming shadow over this week’s program that would be hard to dispel.

Look, normally I’d ask a rhetorical question here like “was the show able to overcome a shaky start to deliver a quality wrestling program?” but I’m honestly just exhausted from the backstage drama, which I have very little tolerance for. I’ll address that in due course, but I honestly found it very difficult to invest in this week’s show because of all the rumors and innuendo swirling around the product. As I write this, I’m not sure how long this review is going to be, but I’m guessing this is going to be one of the shortest I’ve ever written. Let’s get this over with.

Best Match of the Night

Look, my own distaste for professional wrestling after the All Out fallout (which would have been the subtitle of this week’s review if it had just been a normal pay-per-view and nothing more) aside, this was actually a pretty good week from an in-ring perspective. Best Friends and Orange Cassidy vs. Death Triangle for the vacant AEW World Trios Championships kicked off the in-ring portion of the show, and it was an unsurprisingly excellent match between two of the top trios remaining in the company. (Dark Order was out because Hangman Page was occupied elsewhere on the card, United Empire has gone back to New Japan, and Malakai Black is reportedly taking some time off, if not leaving the company entirely, so it’s not like there were a ton of other choices anyway.) As a fresh matchup among the runners-up from the initial tournament, this was a good pairing to determine the new champs with their in-ring styles meshing well as you might expect. I won’t say the company made the wrong choice in crowning Death Triangle as the new champs with All-Atlantic Champion PAC delivering the Black Arrow for the win, but considering neither Best Friends nor Orange Cassidy have held gold in the company and they advanced further in the tournament than the eventual winners, it was a bit of a bummer that they weren’t chosen to carry the gold. Death Triangle is certainly a safe choice, and they’ll put on some great matches with whoever is paired up with them in the future, but it would have been great to see a triple hug draped in gold for the first time.

The main event between Wheeler Yuta and Daniel Garcia for the Ring of Honor Pure Championship was another great match, though in a completely different style than the high-octane opener. No Canadian destroyers here – about the closest thing to a high spot in this match was the sequence of German suplexes that these two technically gifted grapplers traded back and forth at one point. As soon as this match was announced for Garcia’s hometown of Buffalo, it was fairly predictable that he was going to win, but Yuta has been established strongly enough as champion that it was never going to be an easy task for the crowd favorite. Pure rules matches may not be for everyone, but this wasn’t so bogged down in the minutia of limited rope breaks and whatnot that it felt drastically different from a standard technical wrestling match. In fact, calling attention to the fact that Yuta could get himself disqualified by using a closed fist to strike his opponent only seemed to rile up the live crowd even further. Garcia fought back and won by submission, followed by a show of respect from the former champ and an unofficial coronation bestowed by Bryan Danielson, which seemed genuine but also was an obvious attempt to rile up Chris Jericho. Why would Danielson still want to play mind games with Jericho after they just faced off at All Out? Well…

Best match of the night honors go to Bryan Danielson vs. Adam Page in the first round of the Tournament of Champions for the vacant AEW World Championship. Danielson won, and he’ll face Chris Jericho in the next round, which is what I was alluding to with the ellipses from the previous paragraph. Anyway, now that I’ve spoiled the finish, let’s talk about the match itself. Danielson and Page have good in-ring chemistry so it’s no wonder they pulled off the best match of the night together, though I will say that their previous encounters were probably better. They definitely weren’t originally scheduled to face off just three days after both men were involved in physically taxing matches at All Out, but they were still able to pull off a reasonable facsimile of what they are capable of together at full strength. Danielson winning by surprise rollup was about the only negative here – I can understand not wanting to bury Page as he’ll probably be needed to fill the void at the top, and it emphasized how closely matched the two competitors are, but it’s still a suboptimal ending to an otherwise well-worked match. Danielson is the only competitor in the tournament who hasn’t been a champion in AEW specifically, so it would be great if the company took this opportunity to put gold on him for the first time, but having him and fellow Blackpool Combat Club member Jon Moxley face off in the finals would be ideal even if Mox ends up claiming the title instead. Which he probably will given that…

Best Moment of the Night

I’m only going to talk about two moments this week, though they’re sort of two halves of the same moment. I am, of course, referring to MJF‘s return promo and Jon Moxley‘s fiery rebuttal. This is obviously going to be the matchup after Grand Slam, so the tournament is pretty much a foregone conclusion even if it should give us some fun matchups along the way. MJF’s obnoxiously fake “face turn” was hilarious as he hit the ring wearing a Josh Allen jersey and talking up how much he totally loves AEW and never wants to leave. Moxley called him out on his obvious BS, at which point he dropped the façade and told the crowd what he really thought of them and threatened to take the title to “a real company” so he can work for Nick Khan and Triple H and pal around with his best buddy Cody Rhodes, all of which drew thunderous boos from the live audience. Moxley ran him out of the ring and basically declared himself the protector of all that is decent and good in AEW in contrast to the despicable MJF. Given all the drama (which I promise I will get to soon) plenty of people will likely claim that the company never should have taken the title off Mox in the first place, but establishing him as a serious contender again is the right call, especially when he can cut a promo like this when called upon to do so. He may not be the top promo guy in the company, but he speaks from the heart and owns his character like few performers do, which counts for a lot in modern wrestling.

Worst Matches/Moments of the Night

Let’s not mince words here: nothing could have been worse on this night than the announcement that the AEW World Championship and AEW World Trios Championships had to be vacated due to the fallout from the post-All Out media scrum. I’m as big a fan of CM Punk as there is, but I’ve made no secret of the fact that I think he’s been incredibly unprofessional recently, calling out Hangman Page in an unscripted moment a few weeks ago and making a point to single out a fan who was attempting to start a “Colt Cabana” chant last week. Continuing to be so incredibly thin-skinned about his former friend, with whom he had a falling out nearly a decade ago at this point, does not serve Punk well at all, and if he ever does return to the company (which seems increasingly unlikely at this point) you have to figure there will be a vocal portion of the fanbase who will not allow him to sweep this incident under the rug, and I only hope that he will spend a good amount of time while he’s away mentally preparing himself to handle those chants better than he has recently. My biggest issue in this case is his timing – you’d think winning the world title and becoming the company’s top guy would be enough for him to just let any petty grievances go, especially since nobody in the media was looking to hound him about Cabana until he brought up the subject. Instead, he took what should have been his biggest triumph since joining the company and turned it into arguably the biggest fiasco of his career. Worse yet, by involving Kenny Omega and the Young Bucks – and I’m not letting them off the hook either, though their response would not have been as severe if Punk had held his tongue or if a leader like Tony Khan had intervened sooner – the company is now down four of its biggest stars at a time it can least afford to lose anyone else. Thunder Rosa, Kris Statlander, Kyle O’Reilly, Adam Cole, Santana, and now Christian Cage are all injured; as I mentioned above Malakai Black is reportedly going to be out for a while at least, and nobody knows when or if Jeff Hardy may return. That’s a huge chunk of the roster out of action, and although there are a few stars remaining who can keep the show from feeling too JV, the company will have to start building up lesser-utilized wrestlers to take their spots. Yes, that should be the goal anyway, but it would be a lot easier to do more gradually with already established names to pair them with. AEW now runs the risk of overusing its few remaining stars or pressing people into spots they aren’t ready for and possibly harming their long-term growth. Either way, a roster that was looking fairly stacked just a short time ago suddenly feels remarkably thin, and all because its former champ couldn’t check his ego at an absolutely crucial time.

Parting Shots

• I know they haven’t been used much lately, but it was a real shame Buffalo’s own Butcher and Blade couldn’t have been used on this show. The main event was a fitting tribute to a hometown hero, but it would have been nice to give them an appearance.
• Wardlow cut a surprisingly good promo to help rebuild some of his momentum that has seemingly been lost since winning the TNT Championship. He was an afterthought at All Out, but he has an opening now to become one of the bigger babyfaces on the roster like it seemed he would be after breaking away from MJF earlier this year.
• Swerve Strickland continues to get heelish reactions from the crowd, but it was good that they kept Keith Lee out of the fray this week. I’m not sure if I can ever fully forgive Chicago for booing him at All Out, no matter how popular Max Caster and Anthony Bowens are.
• Nah, this sucks, I’m done. Hopefully next week will feel better to be an AEW fan.