Chair Shots With Killem Faulkner: Revolution Go-Home Dynamite

AEW had one final opportunity to convince fans to plonk down their hard-earned cash for the Revolution pay-per-view on Sunday, so expectations were high as Dynamite aired from the famed Cow Palace in San Francisco, CA. One title was on the line while a new #1 contender would be crowned for another championship, as well as the final spot in a four-way title match at Revolution being determined. Elsewhere, the world champion came face to face with his challenger one final time before their epic ironman match, and a heated non-title rivalry threatened to boil over ahead of a stipulation match that figures to be as intense and bloody as the feud that led up to it. Let’s take a look at all the best and worst moments of this week’s show.

Best Match of the Night

I feel like the build to Revolution has been somewhat mediocre overall, so unsurprisingly the go-home show was similarly mediocre from an in-ring standpoint. I will give Toni Storm vs. Riho credit – the finish was not great, but the rest of the match was quite good. Riho isn’t featured on TV with any sort of regularity at this point despite being the first ever AEW Women’s World Champion, but it was good to see her get a win despite basically being just a prop for the larger storyline featuring Storm and Dr Britt Baker DMD as proxies for Saraya and Jamie Hayter. Storm turned in a good shift for her part, and Riho sold her offense well as she generally does. It wasn’t anything Revolutionary (get it, because the pay-per-view’s coming on Sunday and neither of these women figure to be on the show?) but if AEW is going to insist on only giving its women’s division one match per Dynamite, we may as well give credit where credit is due when that match delivers up to our hopes and expectations.

The opener between Orange Cassidy and Big Bill for the All-Atlantic Championship was also a good match held back just slightly from unreservedly recommendable. The opening section of the match dragged far too long as the champ ran from his massive challenger for just a bit too long, and although I enjoy Danhausen’s nonsense, there was a bit too much outside interference for my liking. (I blame Stokely Hathaway for this problem because he was arguably more involved and I know he won’t curse me.) Oh, and Big Bill 100% should have been disqualified for putting Orange Cassidy through a table. Those quibbles aside, however, this match was a great showcase for Orange Cassidy in particular, both in his selling for a larger opponent and his gutsy babyface counters and comebacks. It’s a bit of a bummer knowing OC won’t be defending his All-Atlantic Championship at Revolution, but at least he has been getting regular defenses on TV.

Best match of the night very obviously had to go to the Face of the Revolution Ladder Match, which should have been at Revolution but because there’s a single match eating up an entire hour of that show, it made sense to shift the ladder match to this show instead. About the only negative thing here was the fact that there were maybe three legit contenders – Powerhouse Hobbs, Konosuke Takeshita, and maybe Sammy Guevara – with the eventual winner being the most obvious. Still, this was exactly the kind of car crash spotfest that it needed to be – newcomer Komander dominated the highlight reel for the most part, running the ropes to deliver a moonsault and taking a ridiculous Blue Thunder Bomb from Takeshita off the ladder. Action Andretti was involved in two of the most legitimately painful-looking spots, hitting a Falcon Arrow on Sammy that left his own leg hung up in a ladder bridge and being put through a ladder propped up on the outside by Guevara’s Jeff Hardy tribute dive. Hobbs and Takeshita seemed to mainly be there to catch the high flyers for the most part, as the two biggest guys in the match, but each managed to deliver their own highlights ahead of their climactic showdown on the ladder that Hobbs got the better of to win the match. This certainly won’t be remembered as the best ladder match in company history, but it was a nice showcase of some guys who don’t always get an opportunity to shine.

Best Moment of the Night

Jon Moxley deserves credit for the quality of his promo recorded last week after Dynamite went off the air, but Adam Page‘s promo seemed to actually be recorded during the show this week, so it gets a slight nod as far as I’m concerned. Page and Moxley have done great work in this feud even though it has felt a little drawn out – I get that AEW only has a pay-per-view every few months so there really hasn’t been an opportunity to blow off this program, but the pacing has suffered a little considering their first faceoff in which Page suffered a scary concussion was all the way back in October. At least the heat has been turned up recently, with Hangman making more of a point about needing to knock Mox off the top of the mountain in AEW. As the violent rhetoric has escalated, so too have expectations for their Texas death match risen with each week.

I did say last week that I wanted, at minimum, a faceoff between the House of Black and The Elite this week, and having the lights go out as Kenny Omega and the Young Bucks were making their entrance (for…something, presumably – they weren’t scheduled for a match ahead of time, so this seemed like an obvious setup from the get-go) only for them to come up again with Malakai Black, Buddy Matthews, Brody King, and Julia Hardy standing over the fallen trios champs did fulfill the bare minimum of what I asked for. Okay, there was also a pre-recorded promo from Malakai and co. that did a little more to sell the audience on this match. Still, this has been a story told mainly through little hints and clues here and there so I didn’t expect (or need) that much to build excitement for them to face off at Revolution. Just give us a hot match with the right result (more on that shortly) and the build will have been irrelevant, especially with so much else going on already.

Best moment of the night once again has to go to Bryan Danielson‘s promo – AEW has absolutely gone all in on this match and rivalry, with incredibly successful results. Danielson cut a fiery, defiant promo here that basically cemented the champ’s need for some sort of ace up his sleeve to deny the American Dragon’s quest to become champion. (Again, more on that shortly.) Especially impactful, in my opinion, was the reference to the fact that Danielson would have had a cushy job for life in WWE, but he left for AEW because he wanted to push himself to be the best and continue fighting rather than becoming complacent. Given how little time he had to deliver this promo, I’m not surprised the final line warning Max to bring everything he has on Sunday or he’s going to “get [his] f*cking head kicked in” served as both a mic drop moment for the challenger and a line that the champ just could not formulate a response to – much like the promo itself, that line packs a surprising amount of punch in such a limited time. With the war of words we’ve already seen in this feud, it was the exact right move to punctuate the build to Revolution with a short, straight to the point promo from one of the best in the game.

Worst Matches/Moments of the Night

I generally try to focus on moments from the specific episode I’m reviewing rather than larger trends (please don’t look for examples of times I’ve done exactly that in the past) but I have to give worst moment of the night honors to FTR not being in the Casino Battle Royale. By itself, their omission from the match wasn’t the biggest deal in the world, but as a representation of their standing in the company, it spoke volumes. Dax Harwood and Cash Wheeler are arguably the best tag team in the world right now, and the fact that they aren’t featured on TV nearly enough is one of AEW’s biggest sins at this point in the company’s history. I understand their contracts are reportedly up in April, and I’m sure they’d love to return to WWE under Triple H’s creative control, considering their best matches of recent years mainly came under the NXT umbrella when he was in charge, but I doubt they would be looking to leave if they were in meaningful matches and feuds on a regular basis. Tony Khan had a huge advantage recruiting tag teams when Vince McMahon was still in charge because it’s well known Vinny Mac has never really cared for the tag division, often using it as a holding place for singles stars who need time away from the main event scene or just using tag team specialists for bad comedy fodder. With Triple H in charge, however, Khan has lost that advantage, and FTR leaving may be the first in a line of tag teams who may feel the grass could be greener on the other side.

Parting Shots

• You know what time it is – Revolution predictions!
  • In my opinion, there are only two must-wins on this card – Ricky Starks must defeat Chris Jericho, and Jungle Boy Jack Perry must defeat Christian Cage. I’m still a little concerned the stipulation for Starks vs. Jericho being switched in match graphics from “everyone is banned from ringside” to “the JAS is banned from ringside” might open the door for the Ocho to bring in someone else to give him an underhanded win, but wouldn’t it be great if the babyface truly outsmarted the heel for once and it was actually Starks who brought in some backup to ensure his victory?
  • The Gunn Club will retain the AEW World Tag Team Championships (probably by pinning Danhausen in revenge for popularizing the “Ass Boys” chant)
  • Jon Moxley will defeat Adam Page, maybe with a full heel turn for the BCC (apart from Danielson, of course) – Claudio Castagnoli and Wheeler Yuta have been working heel for a while too, so having them get involved to test whether Hangman actually does have any friends left and opening the door for Moxley to do something underhanded to win would make a ton of sense here.
  • Jamie Hayter will retain the AEW Women’s World Championship against Saraya and Ruby Soho (though I could see Soho turning heel to win and aligning herself with Saraya and Toni Storm – that just isn’t the most interesting outcome, in my opinion, and it would hurt Hayter too much to lose her title this soon)
  • House of Black will defeat The Elite for the AEW Trios Championships – this isn’t quite a must-win, but very nearly so. The Elite in chase mode would be way more interesting than they currently are as champs, and as I’ve said before, I really want to see an extended feud between these two factions even if it ends with Kenny and the Bucks winning the titles back. Plus, with so many other titles likely to be retained on this night, we need at least a couple of title changes to spice things up.
  • Wardlow will defeat Samoa Joe to win the TNT Championship – with Ring of Honor’s weekly programming returning to Honor Club online, Joe needs to be written off AEW programming so he can focus on his RoH TV title. Plus Powerhouse Hobbs vs. Wardlow makes way more sense as a feud than going heel vs. heel between Hobbs and Joe.
  • MJF will retain the AEW World Championship against Bryan Danielson. I know this is very unlikely to happen at this point, but my ideal scenario here would be for CM Punk to return and cost Danielson the match, turning heel and aligning himself with MJF in the process. From there, the promos practically write themselves – Punk can claim MJF showed him something during their feud last year that he’s never seen from Danielson, and he couldn’t sit idly by and watch the former Yes Man take advantage of a stipulation that clearly favored him to steal the title. Once that program is done, the feud between Punk, MJF, and The Elite also practically writes itself – maybe the heels recruit a third to challenge for the trios titles (which, in my mind, Kenny and the Bucks could have recovered from HoB by the time this feud kicks off) and/or we get Punk and a partner of his choosing against the Bucks while Kenny and MJF feud over the world title. Even without this particular scenario, however, I still see MJF retaining his title through some nefarious means, as it’s way too early for him to drop the belt no matter how excellent a Danielson world title run would be.

That’s it for another week – as I said, the entire build to Revolution has been a little lackluster in my opinion, and this show didn’t do enough to shake that feeling either. Revolution still figures to be a great show, but with so many rematches and only two marquee feuds (Page vs. Mox, Danielson vs. MJF) with heat worthy of pay-per-view, I wouldn’t be surprised if this show undersells compared to expectations. I hope Tony Khan has some surprises in store (like the one involving CM Punk that I pitched above) to elevate this show and get momentum going in the right direction heading out of Revolution. Thanks again for joining me, I hope you all enjoy Revolution as much as I’m sure I will, and I’ll see you all back here next week for more Chair Shots!