Chair Shots With Killem Faulkner: AEW WrestleDream 2024
Wow, it’s been an entire month since the last AEW pay-per-view, huh? Like the last two shows were so close together that we didn’t really get a proper break between reviews. But this time felt a little more normal. It’s going to be weird when we have nothing between Worlds End in December and Revolution in March, though I guess I’ll be doing my end-of-year/beginning-of-year video game stuff at that point so I guess y’all might not even notice. Anyway, it’s pay-per-view time once again, this time the second-youngest annual show WrestleDream. With the show taking place in Tacoma, WA where world champion Bryan Danielson is from and with the established stipulation that Danielson would be forced to retire upon losing that title, anticipation for this show was relatively high despite the other matches on the show being relatively underdeveloped from a storyline perspective. Still, it’s an AEW pay-per-view and they almost always deliver, so let’s take a look at how the show turned out!
Cheers
As always, check out my Threads if you want to see my match ratings for everything that happened on this show. I’m going to focus on a few specific moments that I really liked from this show rather than entire matches, but I do want to highlight that Mariah May vs. Willow Nightingale, Jay White vs. Adam Page, and the triple threat between Ricochet, Will Ospreay, and Konosuke Takeshita were all fantastic matches in particular.
One moment I particularly enjoyed was the pre-match vignette featuring Amazing Red (who trained Marq Quen and Zay Kassidy, a fact that I literally forgot until tonight) talking about the preparations Private Party has made ahead of this title match against the Young Bucks. I’m on record saying that Quen and Zay as number one contenders felt like it came out of nowhere and didn’t really do anything for me, and that was true…right up to the point this vignette played, at which point I said to myself, “huh, maybe they ARE going to put the belts on Private Party. That would be cool.” Now, I didn’t expect that coronation to happen tonight, and of course it didn’t, but I thought this was a great step towards their eventual victory over the Bucks. If AEW spends the next month building them up, playing off the obvious disappointment Zay expressed after the match as well as the disrespect from the Bucks who did everything besides call them “B+ players” to make them feel more like lovable underdogs, the payoff when they win the titles at Full Gear should be massive. If the company does choose to go that route, and I don’t see why they wouldn’t, I think the seemingly underwhelming build to this match will retroactively be redeemed.
Speaking of redeeming an underwhelming build, TNT Champion Jack Perry vs. Katsuyori Shibata was a pretty good match that was almost entirely overshadowed by the post-match developments that, while somewhat convoluted, set up a pair of storylines going forward that should be excellent. As Perry was going after a defeated Shibata after a controversial finish in which Shibata’s shoulders were counted down while he had Perry locked in a submission hold, Daniel Garcia hit the ring to run off the champion and seemingly set him up as the next challenger to the title. Then, as Garcia soaked in the appreciation from the Tacoma crowd, MJF’s music hit, with the former world champion returning to the company to seemingly continue his recent feud with the Red Death. Only it was Perry who landed the most significant shot, returning to the ring to crack his custom title belt across the back of Garcia’s head to allow MJF some promo time running down his former rival and promising to use his newly recovered Dynamite diamond ring to inflict further damage. Before he could continue his attack, however, Adam Cole’s music hit, and he ran down the ramp to the ring (not jumping off this time to avoid any risk of another ankle injury) to run off his former brochacho to a massively positive response from the Washington crowd. Yes, Cole was most recently revealed to be the Devil behind MJF’s string of misfortunes, setting him up to be the company’s biggest heel, but hey, MJF has turned heel since then and it was great to see Cole healthy again and…well, MJF did kick Cole in the nuts the last time they crossed paths so…let’s let bygones be bygones, eh? Cole is definitely the good guy, MJF is definitely the bad guy, and Garcia is going to challenge the Scapegoat for the TNT Championship, okay? We good here? That’s what I thought.
Boos
Swerve Strickland’s return segment was great overall. I don’t want to give the impression that it was bad overall by including it in this section because Swerve declaring that he’s medically cleared despite still having some shooting pains from his neck (“karma is a mug, huh?” in reference to his attacks on Bryan Danielson’s injured neck during their feud) and embracing Prince Nana as “family” in rebuking MVP and Shelton Benjamin were both awesome moments. But it’s impossible to watch this segment and not feel like it just sort of…fizzled out. Maybe because of the aforementioned returns of MJF and Adam Cole, the expected debut of Bobby Lashley didn’t happen here, which the crowd was very obviously expecting and hoping for. So as referees and backstage officials arrived to separate Benjamin and Strickland, everyone was just waiting for some unfamiliar music to hit or someone in a hoodie to run in from out of the crowd to lay out the former world champ. And that never happened. The segment just ended. Now don’t get me wrong, a match between Swerve and Shelton sounds like a great continuation of this storyline, but that hardly seems like a worthwhile use of pay-per-view time. Like I said, it was nothing outright terrible – Swerve was obviously going to appear on this show since he’s a Washington native, and the crowd erupted when he made it clear he was sticking with Nana – but it felt like everyone was expecting something more from this segment and it was underwhelming as a result.
Only one truly bad thing happened on this show, and I’m going to mention it despite the fact that everyone involved had their heart in the right place. Ahead of the final match of the pre-show, Tony Khan appeared onstage with Antonio Inoki’s grandsons to pay honor to the man who inspired the show. (Yes, this show was originally supposed to be a sort of Japan-centric Forbidden Door-lite, and I suspect Shibata’s inclusion on this show was sort of nod to that origin even though that aspect of the show has basically been dropped at this point.) And…look, I love Tony Khan and his goofy wrestling dork energy. He appears in this part of my reviews far too often because he gets so excited to appear on television that he always ends up overpromising and underdelivering. I feel kind of bad for giving him crap because I genuinely think he’s a good booker overall and I love how obviously passionate he is about professional wrestling. But him trying to lead the crowd in Inoki’s traditional chant of “Ichi Ni San Da” came across as pure unmitigated cringe. The graphics team did him no favors by showing the words onscreen for all of about 2 seconds (including a slight delay on the “Da” that threw everybody off) and apparently not planning on showing the graphic a second time to allow the crowd to actually participate in the chant, but this whole segment was so poorly executed and lame that everyone involved probably wished it just hadn’t happened. And in fact I would so much prefer not to relive it any further that I’m going to stop talking about it now.
Parting Shots
Okay, so we’re going to have to talk about the main event between Bryan Danielson and Jon Moxley. It was the only story that really seemed like it was fully developed ahead of the show – in fact, if you had called WrestleDream a one-match card in the leadup to the show, I wouldn’t have disagreed with you. So it’s unavoidable, we’ve got to address it. And let me preface this by saying that if your ultimate takeaway is that I’m just too much of a Danielson mark to appreciate the ending and it was actually really great, that’s perfectly fine. I’m not trying to suggest that it was objectively bad or even that they got the finish wrong. This is in the Parting Shots rather than Boos for that exact reason. But as a way of ending a man’s (full-time) career, the match finish fell flat for me even if the post-match angle redeemed it somewhat. First off, the match itself felt kind of short for a wrestler like Danielson who is known for his epic performances. I didn’t need a 60-minute ironman match or anything like that, but it felt like this match could have gone on another 5-10 minutes at least. Also, I’m not saying Moxley was the wrong person to end Bryan’s career – I actually think he was a great choice. But his matches do tend to have these meh endings sometimes. By virtue of the fact that the Bulldog Choke is one of his main finishers, there are just going to be times when the finish is by referee stoppage rather than pinfall or submission. But this needed to not be a standard Moxley finish – it felt like the referee’s turmoil over ending the match should have been more pronounced because if Danielson loses, HIS CAREER IS OVER. As a referee, you should want to be completely sure he’s not capable of coming back. I know it’s kind of a carny spot, but lift his arm up and have it fall three times to signify it’s really over. Or, throw in a hope spot where Danielson grabs the ref and prevents him from stopping the match, fights out of the submission, and the match continues for a few minutes before Mox finally chokes him out. Instead, Mox locks on the choke, brings Danielson down to the mat, referee calls for the bell, it’s over. Then, to add insult to injury, Wheeler Yuta makes a heel turn post-match, which was expected but played no role in the outcome and the first strike was against Darby Allin rather than Danielson himself – which makes sense if Darby is the next challenger for Moxley’s title, but again, what a way to undersell Danielson’s retirement. Even as Wheeler is choking Danielson out with a plastic bag, the focus is squarely on Darby duct taped to the corner. And then Claudio decides to Pillmanize Danielson’s neck so that the crowd gets to chant “thank you Bryan” as he’s being stretchered out of the arena. Again, not exactly the most satisfying ending to A MAN’S WRESTLING CAREER. Now sure, we could be setting up for Bryan to mentor Darby and help him get to the point where he can beat Moxley, but that doesn’t mean we couldn’t have had a more satisfying finish to the match itself. Even if the entire story isn’t over, that doesn’t mean this chapter doesn’t deserve a conclusive ending. The post-match beatdown made me feel sad and angry, which it was supposed to, while the match just made me feel… nothing. It was just “the referee is stopping the match and handing the title to Moxley, what just happened?” It wasn’t Luke Skywalker getting his hand chopped off, losing his lightsaber, and falling down a ventilation shaft in Empire Strikes Back, it was Llewellyn Moss getting killed offscreen in No Country For Old Men. Again, I don’t think it ruined the match or the show overall, but it just felt like it sucked all the air out of the building without anything of real significance to fill that void.
As I noted on Threads (cheap plug #2), I didn’t exactly watch the pre-show very closely with my alma mater locked in a tight battle against Purdue that ended up going to overtime, but I did love the reference Nigel McGuinness made to Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out for a Hero” during the unadvertised Zero Hour main event between the Conglomerrunners and the Premier Order. (That’s the Outrunners and Conglomeration against the Premier Athletes and Dark Order for those who aren’t into the whole brevity thing.) It was such a slick reference to a campy ’80s song that so perfectly fit the Outrunner’s vibe deployed just as Turbo Floyd was about to power up and get the momentum back in his team’s favor that I couldn’t help but chuckle at McGuinness’ skill and timing.
Kyle Fletcher turning on Will Ospreay was unsurprising, but man was it a bummer on a show that really didn’t need more depressing moments. I will say the hoodie that was supposed to conceal his identity was probably a size too small because it did not hang over his face nearly enough to obscure who it was, to the point that even commentary had to be like “is that Kyle Fletcher? I can’t be sure –oh yep that’s definitely him.” Oh, and just for the record, Ospreay had to stay down way too long after the screwdriver attack and knee strike from Takeshita before the ref could be revived to count the pin. I docked the match a quarter of a star in my Threads review (cheap plug #3) for just how wonky that finish was, though it obviously didn’t ruin the match’s overall quality.
There was a weird backstage segment where Jerry Lynn (?!) put over Orange Cassidy, saying that if he really tried, he could be the face of AEW. And then Hook showed up for some reason to be like “yeah, what he said” before leaving. Weirdness aside, I actually agree that OC would be a great option to eventually dethrone Jon Moxley for his newly-won world title. Granted, we don’t know exactly where that story is going (Moxley’s ominous references to something or someone coming may take the story in a very different direction than we can even anticipate at this point) and it obviously seems like Darby Allin has a more compelling argument for a title shot in the short term, but considering how well-received Cassidy’s run as All-Atlantic/International Champion was, I think it would make a ton of sense for him to shed his “Sloth Style” image and show that he is capable of more impassioned matches and promos than what we’ve seen so far. No offense to Darby, but his matches tend to follow the same formula – his opponent wears him down physically only for him to hit some insane high-risk move to turn the tide back in his favor and (usually) win. OC seems to be capable of more dynamic matches that don’t necessarily have to adhere to a particular script, which would arguably make him a more interesting champion. Then again, Darby is definitely over with fans and was screwed out of a title match on the way to Moxley becoming champ, so I wouldn’t be overly disappointed if he gets the nod and Freshly Squeezed has to wait a while longer.
That’s it for this show – I thought WrestleDream was great overall with some odd moments and finishes here and there. We’ll see where things go from here after that odd ending to the show and what the company cooks up for Full Gear. And on a personal note, I just want to say how grateful I am that I got to see Bryan Danielson in person on the Dynamite episode right after he won the championship. That was a special moment I’ll never forget, even if the end came way sooner than I hoped it would after that. And hey, maybe his part-time schedule will allow me to see him wrestle in person again before he hangs them up for good, but even if it doesn’t, at least I’ll always have that memory of how happy I was to chant and cheer for one of my all-time favorites one last time. Thanks for reading as always and I’ll see you next time for more Chair Shots!
