Chair Shots With Killem Faulkner: Dynamite All Access Bay-Bay

St. Louis, MO played host to this week’s Dynamite with two promised title matches, a huge return ahead of AEW’s new behind-the-scenes show, and plenty of developments in ongoing feuds ahead of May’s Double or Nothing pay-per-view. Did the show bring the excitement or did it turn out like being a fan of the city’s baseball team?

Best Match of the Night

It was a decent night for wrestling but only two matches really stood out in my opinion. With all due respect to Matt Hardy vs. Jungle Boy Jack Perry, Orange Cassidy vs. The Butcher, and Willow Nightingale vs. Ruby Soho, of course. I will say that the main event between Daniel Garcia and the returning Adam Cole was good if not great – a nice showing for Cole, who has missed nearly 9 months due to concussion issues, and another high-profile match for Garcia. Cole may not have seemed rusty at all during this match, but it makes sense that he didn’t try to go 100% in his first match back after such a long layoff. Garcia focused the majority of his offense on his opponent’s injured head with German suplexes, piledrivers, and elbows, which set up Cole to fight back and prove that he’s healthy enough to withstand such attacks. He did, escaped the Dragonslayer, and pulled off the win with a Panama Sunrise and the Boom knee strike. It wasn’t a 7-star classic, but it didn’t have to be – it may have been a little short for a main event match, but given the significance of Cole’s return it earned its spot on the card at least and delivered a satisfying conclusion to the show overall. Chris Jericho emerged to help Garcia to the back and tease a feud with Cole, which I guess makes sense considering they could both use a legit feud heading into Double or Nothing and the top of the card is a bit crowded at the moment. Jericho is over enough to suffice as a rival for the time being, though hopefully their feud won’t overstay its welcome like some of the Ocho’s feuds have tended to lately.

Best match of the night, for the second week in a row, goes to Kenny Omega even though I didn’t review last week’s show so it’s unofficial. If you missed both shows and only want to watch one Omega match (for whatever inexplicable reason) you’re definitely better off watching his match against El Hijo de Vikingo, but his IWGP U.S. Championship match against Jeff Cobb this week was just a notch below last week’s “best Dynamite match of all time” candidate. But, y’know, watch both of them, you absolute weirdo. Kenny Omega is a great wrestler, which is breaking news here in 2010, and Jeff Cobb is basically always solid when given an opportunity. Omega tried to use snapdragon suplexes and V-triggers to soften his opponent up while struggling to finally get him up for the One-Winged Angel, while Cobb punished his smaller opponent at every turn and even went for Omega’s own signature moves in one of the better spots of the night. If Cobb had hit the One-Winged Angel after hitting an impressive V-Trigger, the St. Louis crowd would have lost its mind. I know I would’ve and I wasn’t even there in person. Omega did finally hit his finisher to retain after a good back-and-forth match, and although the post-match developments (more on those in a moment) may have threatened to overshadow it, the match itself overdelivered for its position on the card.

Best Moments of the Night

Again, just two entries here – I don’t want to give the impression that this was a bad show, but there was a decent amount of average or slightly above with only a few real standout moments. Hey, did you know MJF is good at promos? You definitely did unless you’ve never watched AEW somehow, in which case how did you end up here reading this? Jack Perry did a decent job in his role in this segment also, justifying his inclusion in the presumed four-way title match in the works for Double or Nothing. MJF asked why Jack worked so hard when he himself barely wrestles or does any more than he absolutely has to and yet he’s the world champion that the company basically revolves around. JBJP responded by saying that if doing things his way meant he had to wait longer to make it to the top, he’d rather be patient and do things the right way rather than selling out his values to get ahead and end up hating himself like MJF. The champ retorted by making a gross reference to Anna Jay, which led to physicality between them and the champ running for the hills as he customarily does when things get physical. The segment overall was pretty good, though I wouldn’t be surprised if we get something similar with Darby Allin and Sammy Guevara in future weeks, and the teased Four Pillars match at the next pay-per-view remains a mouthwatering prospect.

The best moment of the night occurred right after the best match of the night, so…yeah, that’s a first, I think. The Blackpool Combat Club had been running wild throughout the show, turning their planned match against Dalton Castle & the Boys into a squash beatdown and laying out Adam Page and Don Callis backstage before Kenny Omega’s title defense. So it was no surprise when Jon Moxley, Wheeler Yuta, and Claudio Castagnoli emerged post-match to square off with Omega. What was a surprise, however, was the return of Bryan Danielson to stop his over-aggressive compatriots from beating down the Best Bout Machine…only to reveal that he wanted to do that himself with a running knee and a LeBell Lock. It feels odd to have Danielson turn heel so soon after his run as a top babyface against MJF, but it does make a lot of sense – if he continued on as a babyface, everyone would be wondering why he wasn’t challenging the world champion who cheated to win their ironman match at Revolution, but with him as a heel, his priorities have obviously shifted enough that nobody will really question why he’s out of the title picture. I would expect Omega to recruit some backup to combat the BCC at Double or Nothing – depending on whether the Young Bucks are actually injured, he’ll most likely bring Adam Page back into the fold, and potentially the Dark Order could back them up if needed. Again, since MJF has moved on to other challengers, it makes sense to keep top stars like Danielson and Omega busy with an exciting program like this one that will keep them just outside of the main event scene.

Worst Matches/Moments of the Night

I mentioned it above, but the trios match between the Blackpool Combat Club and Dalton Castle & the Boys basically didn’t happen, though Claudio did technically pin one of the Boys for some reason. You don’t just deny us a Dalton Castle match, BCC. You have made a powerful enemy this day.

But like seriously, there wasn’t anything that bad on this week’s episode.

Parting Shots

• I’m not sure how to feel about the AEW career-threatening FTR vs. the Gunns match being on free TV rather than pay-per-view. On the one hand, if FTR really are leaving the company and they’re going to lose this match as a way of writing them out, I suppose having that happen on regular TV would be less disappointing than saving it until May. That gives the company time to build up a new challenger for the tag titles ahead of the pay-per-view while also giving FTR their chance to bow out around the time when their contracts were originally supposed to expire. On the other hand, having FTR win the tag titles on free TV, which would obviously be exciting as it would signal that they have re-signed with AEW, seems less than ideal especially if their feud with the Gunns is going to continue – having your babyfaces chase the title rather than a team nobody wanted to see with the gold in the first place would make a lot more sense. I’d rather see Cash Wheeler and Dax Harwood stick around, of course, but it’ll be interesting to see if AEW can justify the decision to stick such a monumental stipulation on a regular Dynamite episode.
• The Jericho Appreciation Society are apparently recruiting The Acclaimed now? Did I miss something, or did that storyline just materialize out of nowhere this week?
• Not to hammer away on the BCC vs. The Elite feud that is apparently pending, but I will be interested in seeing what role Don Callis ends up playing in all this. At first it seemed like he was trying to isolate Kenny from his friends so they could return to his Belt Collector phase with the Invisible Hand as his only ally, but with the BCC guys attacking both Kenny and Don this week, it seems like Kenny is being pushed into a feud with them that will require him to recruit allies, the opposite of what it seemed Callis was trying to accomplish previously. Nobody should be surprised when the attack on Callis turns out to be a red herring, of course, but it remains to be seen whether he’s been pulling the strings or just a pawn in someone else’s game.
• I did not stick around after the show for the premiere of All Access – if there’s something important that I’m missing by not watching that show, please let me know. Otherwise I will continue to assume that I do not need to know more about my favorite AEW wrestlers than what I can find on TV and social media.

That’s it for another week – decent show overall with no major negatives (except a distinct lack of Dalton Castle) and a few intriguing developments to propel the narrative forward. Thanks for joining me once again, and I hope to see you back here next week for more Chair Shots!