Chair Shots With Killem Faulkner: Winnipeg’s Jets Dynamite

Greetings, local sports fans! AEW would like to pander to you based on your appreciation for wrestlers who happen to come from the same place you do! Canadian and especially Winnipegians (Winnipegites? Winnipeggos?) found their way into nearly every match on the card, and three of those matches had titles on the line so that the live crowd would go “ooh, one of us could win that shiny belt there!” (Spoiler alert: none of them did.) Which of these Canadian-ish matches and segments worked well, and which fell short like the local hockey team’s probable failure to win the Stanley Cup this year? (See, I totally know local sports!)

Best Match of the Night

Let it never be said that I can’t put my personal biases aside and give credit where it’s due: Jeff Jarrett‘s match against Orange Cassidy for the International Championship was better than I expected. I am very glad they got the finish right, however, because you better believe if AEW put one of its titles on Double J it absolutely would have ended up on my “worst of” list. I guess I shouldn’t get that much credit for putting aside my biases after all. Granted, Jarrett has never been a terrible wrestler, even at 55, but I was concerned there would be too much schtick and not enough wrestling, as there tends to be whenever the Impact Makers or whatever Jarrett, Sonjay Dutt, and Jay Lethal call themselves are involved. (Totally Natural Athletes? Globally Ferocious Workers? Needs workshopping, but you get the idea.) And yes, there was some sports entertainment nonsense with Jay Lethal wearing a sling during the entrance but re-emerging later on with the stolen Golden Globe (does anyone remember them stealing it from Paul Walter Hauser, or does everyone just think it’s some weird gold foreign object that they use in addition to Jarrett’s guitar for no good reason?) to interfere on JJ’s behalf, along with the other members of the apparently unnamed faction getting involved at various points. I will admit that although I found the strutting early in the match excessive, I did laugh when Jarrett did his mock version of Cassidy’s Kicks of Doom. I was a little surprised Danhausen and Best Friends didn’t get involved more – Trent Beretta ran out to neutralize Lethal, but that’s it – though I suppose there may not be a plan to have these two factions feud beyond this, so that’s okay by me. The match was already a bit overbooked, so it didn’t need more people involved. This felt like the classic fun opening Dynamite match, but with a segment opening the show rather than a match, this got moved to the middle of the card where it also worked out just fine.

I must admit, I really wanted to put Jon Silver and Alex Reynolds vs. Jon Moxley and Claudio Castagnoli on my best matches list last week, but I felt like it was a little short and had just an okay finish. This week, however, I didn’t have to be a Dark Order mark to admit Evil Uno, Stu Grayson, and Adam Page vs. Blackpool Combat Club was undeniably one of the better matches of the night. Grayson returning in his home nation of Canada was awesome, and he put in a good shift for his team even if he’s not coming back full time. I feel like Evil Uno has really shined in this recent feud with Moxley and Castagnoli, and this match was no exception. On the other side, it’s kind of incredible how heelish Yuta has become in spite of the popularity he has gained over the past year or so. I wonder how he and Claudio are being booked in Ring of Honor, considering they’re two of the company’s top champions, but AEW fans have really embraced booing them even though they are still fairly popular. Mox has always pushed the group to new levels of violence, so now that the group’s chill vegan dad is out of the picture, it’s not surprising that the kiddos are running wild. Grayson kicked out after two spike piledrivers, and the former Super Smash Bros busted out their Fatality double-team for a near fall. Page was taken out by a shot from the ring bell, which left him on the floor for what seemed like a fairly long time but at least it was understandable why he was not able to break up the submission that Moxley used to win the match. I’m somewhat nonplussed about Moxley and Page continuing their feud beyond the natural conclusion of their Texas deathmatch, but at least the more overtly heel antics of the BCC should give this chapter of their rivalry a bit of a different flavor. (Especially if The Elite get involved somehow, which was teased after the backstage brawl erupted into the ringside area following the main event.) Hopefully Uno isn’t legitimately injured and they just needed an excuse to write him and Grayson out so it would be 3-on-3 when they squared off backstage.

Best match of the night goes to The Elite vs. House of Black vs. Jericho Appreciation Society in the main event. About the only thing that didn’t work in this match was the somewhat flat finish – I understand Kenny Omega and Chris Jericho are Winnipeg’s favorite sons – the Jets of professional wrestling, if you will (y’know, because that’s what their hockey team is called? pander pander pander), but I was surprised how little the Canada Life Centre crowd seemed to care for the House of Black. Regardless, the champs looked good for the most part, though this was obviously a pretty competitive match against two of the more star-studded trios in the company. The big selling point, of course, was the faceoff between Jericho and Omega, which got the biggest reaction of the night. We’ll probably get a singles match between them at some point if The Elite and Dark Order team up against the BCC and JAS, but their interactions here were good enough as an appetizer. You’d normally worry about having too many people involved in a match like this, but they were given enough time for all nine men to get some time in the spotlight. In particular, Brody King continues to be booked as an absolute monster, and Sammy Guevara followed up his strong work in the opener (more on that in a moment) with a solid performance in this match. I also appreciated that the remaining members of the JAS mainly stayed out of things until after the match was over – Danny Garcia introduced Floyd the bat at one point, but otherwise there weren’t any outside shenanigans that I can recall, so the focus remained on the in-ring action. I wouldn’t mind seeing the challengers move on to other things after this match to allow the House of Black to continue looking dominant against less-established teams until their next serious contenders emerge. A feud with either faction has the potential to be good, of course, but I feel like HoB should be booked to be as unbeatable as possible for a while to make up for their lackluster initial run in the company. This match continued their strong start as champions, and the crowd was hot throughout, so it more than justified its main event spot.

Best Moment of the Night

It wasn’t ideal that the two women’s segments of the night were an unnecessary promo segment from The Outcasts (after Ruby Soho explained her motivations last week, did we really need more talking from her, Toni Storm, and Saraya?) and a squash match from TBS Champion Jade Cargill, but at least we got Taya Valkyrie‘s debut to challenge the champ. The Canadian crowd seemed excited to see her, and the segment worked to set up a feud between the two without giving away too much in their initial confrontation. Valkyrie hitting Jade’s own finisher on Leila Grey was a nice bit of mind games from the newcomer, and although I am not sure she is the ideal candidate to dethrone Jade as TBS champ, there is room to build her into a legit contender given the success of this segment. Jade needs more long/medium-term rivalries rather than one-and-done title defenses, so she should benefit from this program as well.

There was one obvious choice for the best segment of the night, however, and it was MJF‘s Re-Bar Mitzvah in the opening segment of the show. Friedman started off the segment by riling up the pro-Canada crowd with some remarks about Bret Hart that I, of course, 100% agree with. (He was a great wrestler, for sure, but he had the charisma of a sink full of dirty dishwater. Sorry, it has to be said.) Unsurprisingly, the ceremony was interrupted – surely nobody expected Max to gloat, eat cake, and leave, right? – but the extent of the interruption may have been surprising as Jungle Boy Jack Perry, Sammy Guevara, and Darby Allin each emerged in turn to say why they should receive a shot at the title. Another surprise was that although Darby was the most over of the non-MJF pillars in this segment, he also delivered the weakest of the promos. I’ll grant you that he’s never been the best promo in the world and he arguably has the weakest claim to a title shot of the three, but considering he was saved until last you’d expect him to bring a bit more fire. It was good enough, don’t get me wrong, but not the strongest. Jack Perry has the strongest claim to a title match, having definitively beaten Christian Cage at Revolution, and his promo was a bit better than Darby’s, playing up how he had worked his way up while MJF was handed opportunities that other wrestlers weren’t by constantly getting time on Dynamite rather than toiling away on the less prestigious shows like the rest of the roster. Sammy actually had the strongest promo, though it was oddly face-ish and seemingly cast aside his association with Chris Jericho despite teaming with the Ocho later in the evening. Sammy claimed that there was a ceiling placed on him from the beginning, supposedly being the jobber of the Inner Circle and the workrate guy for the Jericho Appreciation Society, but he was able in both cases to outshine his position on the card to win the TNT Championship three times, which he figures puts him in a strong position to become world champ. MJF pushed back on all of them by pointing out they each had a more experienced mentor (Christian Cage, Chris Jericho, and Sting) to help them along, while he only had himself to rely on. We also got a brief scuffle to finish the segment which, of course, culminated in MJF going face-first into the cake at ringside. It was a silly end to a good segment, and the crowd was very receptive to the idea of all three men getting a title shot. Most likely, we’ll get a Four Pillars four-way for the championship at Double or Nothing, which would be one heck of a main event for one of AEW’s biggest shows of the year.

Worst Matches/Moments of the Night

I mentioned last week that I couldn’t care less about a continued relationship between QT Marshall and Powerhouse Hobbs, so the QTV segment really wasn’t for me. Marshall and his cronies revealed that the apparently legitimate car break-in that Wardlow suffered was actually staged as part of this angle which…okay. I’m not sure which is worse, whether they took an actual criminal event and doctored it into part of a storyline or it was staged and Wardlow put it on social media as if it was legit. Either way, this segment was mainly pointless and did nothing to make the audience any more excited for the eventual rematch between Hobbs and Wardlow, though if we’re going to get a pivot to calling “Powerhouse” Hobbs by his actual first name Will – he said “welcome to Will’s World” to close the segment – then I at least approve of that development. Acting like “Powerhouse” is his actual name rather than just a nickname has always been silly, but I suppose there is also a wrestler just named “Big Bill” on the roster. And although they have mostly been used as a tag team, I still say it’s weird to have guys named Santana and Ortiz as if that’s sufficient to designate a specific person and not just, y’know, half a name. So count me in for Will “Powerhouse” Hobbs as the new “Jungle Boy” Jack Perry, but count me out for more QTV segments.

Parting Shots

• Shockmaster lives! Or just someone in the crowd had a sparkly stormtrooper helmet and got on camera briefly. One of those things.
• Juice Robinson vs. Ricky Starks could be an intriguing feud, but it’s not there yet as far as I’m concerned. Starks’ response to Juice attacking him last week and calling him out this week was good, as are most of the Absolute One’s promos, and raising the possibility of Juice brining along some Bullet Club guys is exciting especially with Forbidden Door II coming up. (Was that show just confirmed this week, or did I just miss it previously?) It remains to be seen if Ricky will recruit some other AEW guys or bring in some babyfaces from New Japan, but there’s plenty of time for that storyline to develop.
• The Acclaimed like the fans and the fans like the Acclaimed. That’s pretty much all I took away from their latest music video. Please don’t get me wrong, I will take a Max Caster rap about nothing rather than no Max Caster rap at all. I’m just saying they seem quite directionless at the moment despite being very, very over.

That’s it for another week – solid show with some very good matches and a couple of intriguing developments. Thanks for joining me once again, and I hope to see you in two weeks (I’m going to a Fozzy concert next week to sing “Judas” live!) for more Chair Shots!