Chair Shots With Killem Faulkner: MJF Ya Dingus Dynamite

The build to Double or Nothing continued this week as Dynamite rolled onto the UW-Milwaukee campus with a stacked card and a few significant surprises planned. The world champion and one of his top contenders were scheduled to appear, as well as one of the top secondary champions and some of the top stars of the women’s division. While last week’s episode and its Battle of the Belts special loaded up on the title matches to ratchet up the stakes, this week’s relatively subdued schedule (from a championship perspective) still provided plenty of opportunities for some of the company’s top stars to shine. But did they deliver on that promise? Let’s look at the best and worst moments from this week’s show.

Best Match of the Night

I’ll give an honorable mention to Riho & Skye Blue vs. Ruby Soho & Toni Storm – I don’t know if I just secretly like Riho more than I realized or if it’s just a coincidence, but this is the second week in a row she’s been in one of the best matches of the night. I’ve mentioned before that Skye Blue is really growing as a performer, and that continued development was on display here as she mixed it up with two of the most veteran performers in the women’s division. Ruby and Toni make a decent team, which makes sense considering Saraya is mainly a mouthpiece who wrestles occasionally. As is often the case with the women’s division, too much of this match was eaten up by commercials, but what we got around that break was generally good. I’m not saying this was the best women’s tag match ever, or anything close to that, but it was definitely above the standard for an ordinary women’s match. Toni and Ruby were the clear focus, as they are part of the main storyline in the division, but their opponents got a few moments in the spotlight as well to keep it from being one-sided. It was a weird decision to have Jamie Hayter and Dr. Britt Baker DMD run in separately after the match – I understand Baker has been sidelined a bit recently so her return was more unexpected and got a bigger reaction, but it kind of felt like the women’s champ was being sent out without any backup for no discernible reason. Willow Nightingale might have been a better choice to run out first with Baker and Hayter making the ultimate save. None of that has any bearing on the match itself, though, but it did bring down the segment as a whole just a bit.

The opening match between Darby Allin and Swerve Strickland was another excellent match that deserves a mention here. Swerve hasn’t been used a lot since his split with Keith Lee (who presumably has been doing great since that split and I certainly won’t be contradicting myself on this point shortly) but he does have the Mogul Affiliates backing him up and now they’ve apparently merged with The Embassy in a bid to make both groups slightly more relevant. That merger apparently put Allin in the group’s crosshairs, and this match was the result. Darby, of course, is building up to a four-way for the AEW World Championship along with his fellow pillars of the company, so he may as well knock off someone below him in the pecking order while he’s at it. I also liked that commentary called out their history together, with Swerve holding a lifetime 4-3 record against Allin, which also explained the resulting quality of the match. Their wrestling styles meshed well here, as both are capable of delivering crowd-popping spots like Swerve’s stomp from the apron to the floor and Allin’s poison rana from the apron to the floor. There were also presumably some impressive moments that didn’t take place from the apron to the floor. Oh, like when Darby hit a Coffin Drop but Prince Nana (who is aligned with Strickland due to the Mogul Embassy agreement) put Swerve’s foot on the rope to break up the pin, and when Swerve hit his flying stomp from the top rope but due to a foot injury suffered during the match was unable to cover his opponent quickly enough to get the win. Darby was able to persevere and put Swerve away with a convoluted pinning maneuver after a Code Red. Allin looked good in the win against a severely underrated competitor while the finish prevents Swerve from looking weak, so the match delivered what both men needed in a fairly efficient package. Prince Nana and Brian Cage were involved especially toward the end, but it wasn’t excessive and didn’t overshadow the finish, which played off the narrative built up over the course of the match. It looked like either man could win at several points in the match, with the more established star ultimately picking up the win by exploiting his opponent’s injured limb to score the pin.

The International Championship match between Orange Cassidy and Buddy Matthews was the best match of the night and almost certainly should have been the main event. As the only title match on the card (unless the Will Hobbs squash match over Wisconsin native Silas Young was technically for his TNT Championship – I’m genuinely not sure) and the actual main event not involving anyone involved in a title program, that would seem to have been an obvious choice even before knowing how much better the actual match would be. (Look, I love Keith Lee and Chris Jericho, but their match was an overbooked mess that did nothing for anyone. Just let Jericho feud openly with Adam Cole already.) But regardless of its place on the card, Cassidy vs. Matthews absolutely slapped. Like this was probably my favorite Dynamite match in about a month (since Kenny Omega vs. El Hijo de Vikingo) and that’s saying something considering the end result was absolutely a foregone conclusion. As incomprehensible as it may have seemed beforehand, Matthews looked like he was on the verge of winning the match (and the title) at a few points throughout. Cassidy sold a hand injury suffered when Matthews blocked the Orange Punch with his trios title belt a couple of weeks back on Rampage. That gave Matthews an opening to deliver punishment, stomping on the injured hand while the ringside doctor stopped the match to check on it and delivering a devastating knee strike when OC stuck his hand in his pocket to prevent further damage being done to it. The injured hand ultimately prevented the champ from using his finisher to win the match, as each time he delivered the punch it did too much damage to himself to capitalize with a pin, but he was able to pick up the crafty win using the mousetrap pin. I could list off all the incredible spots and especially the near-falls that brought the crowd to the edge of their seats, but I would instead urge you to just watch the match if you haven’t already. Like I said, the match was laid out in such a way that actually made you believe that Buddy Matthews, the least serious threat in the House of Black (which admittedly is not that bad considering how seriously threatening the other two men are) might actually win the International Championship. For anyone who says a match without a significant build is always going to be bad, this match is the perfect counter-example as the entire story of the match was built in the ring by two performers at the top of their game, and it kept the live crowd absolutely enthralled for the entire runtime.

Best Moment of the Night

I mentioned this last week, but I really do not care about Matt Hardy and Private Party’s feud with Ethan Page and The Firm. That really hasn’t changed, but Jeff Hardy returning was still a cool moment that deserves a mention here. I will say that my enthusiasm for the younger Hardy brother’s continued presence on AEW television has dimmed significantly, but I am hopeful that he has gotten things sorted out to the point that he won’t be a liability for the company in the future. He may not have a lot left in the tank, but ideally he would get a chance to end his career on his own terms rather than being subsumed by his considerable (well-documented) demons. Maybe one final run with the tag championships could be in the cards, and it would be great if they put over Private Party on the way out since Big Money Matt’s association with them really has not done anything for their standing in the company. Once Marq Quen heals up, it would be great to see a babyface vs. babyface match against the Hardys to get them back on track. Anyway, Brother Nero’s return was a cool moment even though the storyline it played into has not really moved the needle to this point, and I hope Jeff can keep himself on the straight and narrow.

I’ve mentioned before that I hate to give best match and best moment honors to the same segment, but for one of my runner-up matches this week, the post-match developments managed to exceed its quality and earned my top pick for moment of the night. I’m talking about the MJF vs. Darby Allin & Sting segment following Allin’s win against Swerve Strickland. I’m on record as not being the biggest Darby Allin fan due to the allegations of mental, physical, and sexual abuse that have been levied against him in the past, and while his promo here didn’t alleviate all my concerns about AEW building its roster around him as one of its four pillars, it did give me some indication that he has turned things around in his personal life in recent years. He talked about the fact that he has been going to therapy and seeking to make amends with people close to him including buying his mom a house and helping his real dad (not Sting) to retire. Allin further asserted that he wouldn’t let his pursuit of glory and prestige in wrestling change who he’s trying to be, unlike MJF who remains miserable despite his in-ring success. MJF retorted that he was above the other three pillars for that reason exactly – he’s willing to put his legacy above his own happiness and sacrifice everything else in his life for the championship. He questioned whether Darby would be remembered apart from his association with Sting, which brought out the Icon himself. I feel like Sting’s portion of the promo was probably the weakest simply because he doesn’t have a prominent role in this feud (and the other two were great, to be fair) but he did drive home two main points: his time in wrestling may be almost over but Darby’s time is just beginning, and he intends to support the young star the same way people like Ric Flair, Scott Hall, and Kevin Nash supported him throughout his career while MJF has no one to do the same for him now that Cody Rhodes is gone from the company. The entire segment was very good and accomplished more in less time than last week’s overwrought “MJF Day” segment, and while there was nothing new content-wise in their respective promos, all three men contributed to a standout moment on this week’s show.

Worst Matches/Moments of the Night

Two squash matches on the same episode is not ideal. Otherwise, nothing so terrible that it deserves a mention here.

Parting Shots

• Milwaukee fans were on their game tonight with the signs – during the first promo segment, a fan at ringside had a sign that said “Shut up MJF ya dingus” which was very funny to me for some reason. During the International Championship match, cameras caught a plain white posterboard with black lettering that said “this is an Orange Cassidy sign” that was also very funny to me. Finally, during the Powerhouse Hobbs squash match and post-match brawl with Wardlow, there were two signs (possibly held by the same person) that said “stop trying to make QT happen” and “QTV is a stupid idea from bad creative” which I appreciated for the Chris Jericho reference more so than I agree with the criticism of AEW creative. I mean, QTV is dumb and should go away, but I don’t feel like AEW has terrible creative overall. QT Marshall is undeniably valuable to the company as a whole, but he doesn’t need to be on TV anymore. Anyway, congrats on the great signage, Milwaukee. Way to bring it.
• I don’t want to harp on it too much, but why are babyfaces such idiots most of the time? Swerve Strickland lost his match, went backstage and declared he had “unfinished business” that he wanted to address later in the evening, and Keith Lee didn’t put two and two together? He was effectively like “huh, wonder who Swerve was talking about” and thought nothing further of it? Adam Cole came out after the main event to help the Limitless One to the back, so he presumably would have been willing to have Lee’s back during the match, but Lee simply didn’t think to ask him and paid for it.
• Poor Brandon Cutler and Michael Nakazawa. Not only did they lose to the Blackpool Combat Club, not only did they get busted open, but they did so for absolutely no reason. The operating assumption was that the Young Bucks were out injured and Kenny Omega was not in attendance, since he had a pre-recorded promo earlier in the evening, so their stooges were the last line of defense remaining, but that wasn’t true as The Elite emerged post-match to beat down the BCC guys and send them running. Cool, great, except why let your guys lose the match in such decisive fashion before getting involved? If the match was just a ruse to lure the Blackpool boys out and lull them into a false sense of security, why not just jump them as soon as the customary pre-match brawl started? I like Kenny and the Bucks, but it really seems like they left their guys out to dry here instead of having their backs like loyal friends would. For shame, I say.

That’s it for another week – really good show overall with a predictably flat finish due to an ill-chosen main event. Again, all due respect to Keith Lee and Chris Jericho, but this was always going to be a screwy finish that didn’t do anything exceptionally interesting to justify its position on the card. Still, I absolutely loved Orange Cassidy vs. Buddy Matthews, and everything else on the card worked for what it was. Thanks for joining me once again, and I hope to see you all back here next week for more Chair Shots!