Chair Shots With Killem Faulkner: 3rd Anniversary Dynamite

Hey, did you know Dynamite has been on the air for 3 years now? Don’t worry if you didn’t, as AEW mostly forgot to promote it or even make a huge deal of it on the broadcast itself, but it’s true! There were more important things than anniversaries to worry about, though, as two semifinal matches in the Owen Hart Foundation Tournament and the finishing touches on the build to Double or Nothing required more of the show’s focus. With virtually all of the matches at the pay-per-view already set, much of this week’s card focused on amping up the anticipation for already-established rivalries, but how well did the show actually pull off its final push to get eyes on the product ahead of its Las Vegas special?

Best Match of the Night

I’m going to come right out and say it: not one of the matches on the card this week was great from start to finish, but we’re talking about one of the final shows before one of the biggest shows of the year, so it’s not surprising AEW held back a bit from an in-ring standpoint. With more satisfying conclusions on the horizon, it was a little more acceptable to have non-finishes and quicker matches than usual. That said, there were a few standouts among the flawed bunch. You could argue FTR vs. Roppongi Vice was a strong enough match to overcome the non-finish, but considering the Ring of Honor champions have nothing scheduled for Double or Nothing, it feels like the post-match run-in from New Japan’s United Empire could have come after a clean victory for the champs.

For my money, however, Ricky Starks vs. Jungle Boy vs. Swerve Strickland was more successful at delivering a satisfying match with an actual conclusion. Having the faster, more agile members of their respective teams face off ahead of the pay-per-view was a smart choice, and these three showed good chemistry throughout, pulling off intricate spots that involved all three men rather than over-relying on two guys fighting while the third recovered on the outside. Starks continues to stand out with his style, walking the ropes as only he can, using a delayed vertical suplex to show off his dance moves, and selling the Snare Trap about as well as anyone ever has after nearly winning the match with Rochambeau. Strickland, as the relative newcomer among the three, turned in an impressive performance in his own right and pulled off a significant win with a stomp from the top rope. Jungle Boy is…well, he’s one of the pillars of AEW for a reason, so of course he carried the match for significant stretches. The super heavyweights joined their partners for a post-match showdown to further hype their clash for the tag titles at Double or Nothing, and everything worked just fine from this segment overall. It may not feel like either of the challengers have the necessary momentum to dethrone the champs, and there are other teams waiting in the wings that feel more likely to seriously challenge for the titles, but all indications are that the three-way title match featuring these teams will be an energetic, entertaining slice of midcard fare.

The cage match between Wardlow and Shawn Spears may have been predictable – the Chairman can call himself Giant Killer all he wants but he was never going to win this match and deny us Wardlow vs. MJF at Double or Nothing – but it was a fun ride while it lasted and hit all the highlights you’d expect from a match like this. We got MJF being the crooked ref refusing to count for Wardlow and fast counting in favor of Spears, Wardlow ripping the handcuffs in half when MJF refused to unlock them, and of course the replacement ref coming down to count the pin in favor of Wardlow because of course MJF was never going to do that. There was a cool callback to Revolution when Wardlow pretended to be unable to find the Dynamite Diamond ring and left MJF high and dry – this time it was MJF pretending to be unable to find the handcuff key. The one thing I will say felt unnecessary was the unprotected chair shot to the head MJF took to lay him out for the finish – AEW has done this before and it drew a fair amount of criticism, so I’m not sure why they thought it was okay to do again, other than the fact than I guess it’s been a few years so maybe they thought we’d all gotten over that whole CTE thing? I dunno, it doesn’t make sense to me, and AEW can make it up to us all by not doing it anymore, but otherwise this match was good fun if fairly slight from a wrestling standpoint. Oh, and my favorite part: Shawn Spears opened the cage door, walked out of the ring, DIDN’T WIN THE MATCH, retrieved a chair, and walked back in the ring. Yes, you read that right: escaping via the convenient door on the side of the cage was not enough to win the match. As it shouldn’t be. A cage match should only end by escaping over the top or by pinfall or submission. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

Best match of the night honors have to go to the main event between Kyle O’Reilly and Samoa Joe for the final spot in the Owen Hart Foundation Tournament finale at Double or Nothing. Once again, this match was fairly predictable, as there was very little chance of Kyle O’Reilly vs. Adam Cole happening at this point, and it was odd that this was the main event of the last Dynamite before Double or Nothing, but that didn’t stop it from delivering from an in-ring standpoint. Unsurprisingly, Samoa Joe’s left arm was a focal point in this match after it was softened up by Satnam Singh, Jay Lethal, and Sonjay Dutt with a steel pipe last week. (Hey, how do you soften up your arm meat? With a lead pipe? Amateur.) O’Reilly did branch out by targeting Joe’s leg as well, but the majority of his offense in this match was either an armbar of some kind (as one of his AEW colleagues pointed out a few years back, that’s basically all you need anyway) or something to set up for an armbar of some kind. It was effective enough as Joe was unable to hit the Muscle Buster, but somehow O’Reilly failed to account for the fact that his opponent is something of a submission specialist himself, so he was ultimately able to lock in the Coquina Clutch for the win. Good thing that submission requires *checks notes* no arm strength whatsoever. Okay fine, of course Joe was going to have to suck it up and use his worn out arms to win the match so there was no real way to maintain that continuity all the way through unless he was going to win via superkick and Great Khali pin. Whatever. This was a good TV match and a pretty good main event at that. It may have felt like a bit of a letdown to end the go-home show before a big pay-per-view, but that doesn’t diminish what Joe and O’Reilly were able to accomplish here.

Best Moment of the Night

I’m not going to lie, there weren’t a ton of highlight segments on this night either. Thunder Rosa’s promo on Serena Deeb was fine, ditto the Hardy Boys’ promo on the Young Bucks, and there was even a pretty good Red Velvet/Ruby Soho backstage segment. But none of them really rose to the level of “best moment” material. There were really only two standout bits that I could think of by the end of the night: Chris Jericho hitting some random dude backstage with a fireball, and of course CM Punk and Adam Page finally having a face to face confrontation. On the one hand, we had the final showdown between two of the company’s top stars ahead of their main event clash on pay-per-view. On the other hand, we had a fireball being thrown in some random dude’s face. Punk and Page laid out their motivations for facing off over the AEW World Championship, with Punk asserting it’s nothing personal and he intends to walk in as challenger and “very respectfully” walk out as champ, while Page claimed he needed to defend AEW against Punk whose claims to value good in-ring work haven’t been backed up by his actions since joining the company. But then again, Jericho targeting some poor unsuspecting nobody just because he was wearing a Jon Moxley shirt was kind of hilarious. So…it was a real tossup for moment of the night, if you couldn’t tell. One segment was the culmination of a feud over the company’s top title between two of the best mic workers in the company. The other segment was a stagehand getting a fireball to the face from a literal wizard.

Yeah, okay, Punk vs. Page gets moment of the night. But still. Wizards. Fireballs. Entertainment.

Worst Matches/Moments of the Night

Nothing terrible this week, but I kind of expected better from a go-home show, if I haven’t made that clear yet. Let me just say, the semifinals definitely should have been last week so this week could build literally anything other than the Owen Hart Foundation Tournament finals. I understand that it’s the first time this tournament has been held, so the company likely wanted to make a big deal of it by putting it in the main event slot on a regular basis, but it really felt like everything else has taken a serious backseat to the tournament. Granted, Adam Cole vs. Samoa Joe will be a first-time matchup, so it’s significant enough to justify the buildup and should garner a primo spot on the Double or Nothing card. It’s just that there are, y’know, four titles being defended on the show also. Maybe a little extra hype for those matches on the go-home show would have been appreciated.

Parting Shots

• I thought it was odd that MJF wasn’t wearing some sort of ref-inspired scarf this week until I realized his ref shirt had plaid stripes, so I guess he did understand the assignment after all.
• Anna Jay vs. Jade Cargill for the TBS Championship seems like it would be a good feud if given time to develop – it seems kind of slapped together at the last minute for now, but it could build to something bigger and better down the road if this is just the first encounter between the two.
• Bobby Cruise serving as ring announcer for Ring of Honor matches will never get old. Plus, we got a bonus Caprice Coleman commentary appearance! As a bonus! Bonus!
• Apparently Scorpio Sky is getting a custom TNT Championship belt made. 10-1 odds that it doesn’t spin.
• Toni Storm vs. Dr. Britt Baker DMD was surprisingly clunky, and it featured the second semi-botched finish in two matches for Storm. Hopefully she can rebound quickly because her debut in the company has yet to really deliver on its promise.
• Okay, time for my official Double or Nothing predictions:
  • Hookhausen defeat Tony Nese and “Smart” Mark Sterling in clearly the best match of the night
  • Adam Cole defeats Samoa Joe to win the men’s Owen Hart Foundation Tournament
  • Dr. Britt Baker DMD defeats Ruby Soho to win the women’s Owen Hart Foundation Tournament
  • House of Black defeat Death Triangle
  • Jade Cargill retains the TBS Championship against Anna Jay
  • Team Taz defeats Jurassic Express and Keith Lee/Swerve Strickland to become the new AEW Tag Team Champions
  • Jericho Appreciation Society defeats Blackpool Combat Club and Eddie Kingston/Santana/Ortiz in an Anarchy in the Arena match…which is definitely not the same as a Stadium Stampede match
  • Thunder Rosa retains the AEW Women’s World Championship against Serena Deeb
  • The Young Bucks defeat the Hardy Brothers
  • CM Punk defeats Adam Page for the AEW World Championship…and possibly turns heel in the process

So that’s it for another week. AEW has a bit of a bad habit of putting on underwhelming go-home shows lately, but taken as a regular weekly TV episode it was still pretty good. I hope you all have a great Memorial Day weekend (or regular weekend with an AEW pay-per-view if you live anywhere else in the world besides the U.S.) and I hope you’ll all come back next week for more Chair Shots!