Chair Shots With Killem Faulkner: A New Foundation Dynamite

After the somewhat mixed bag Double or Nothing pay-per-view, AEW sought to establish a new direction for the company going forward as Forbidden Door, All In, and All Out loom in the next three-ish months. With two new champions and a number of feuds fairly well wrapped up, it felt like this week’s Dynamite from San Diego was a relatively clean slate with only a couple of loose ends to tie up. One of the more disappointing matches from Sunday’s show got a shot at redemption, one of the new champs put her title on the line for the first time, and one of the most shocking developments was addressed in one of Tony Schiavone’s signature in-ring interviews. What were the most promising developments from this week’s show, and which segments and matches fell short of the mark?

Best Match of the Night

As I said in the intro, I feel like Double or Nothing was a decent show that varied in quality from great (the Four Pillars Match) to good (Anarchy in the Arena II, Wardlow vs. Christian Cage) to decent (everything else). If you had plans on Sunday night and didn’t catch the show, I wouldn’t recommend spending 50 bucks or whatever to rewatch it. This week’s Dynamite, maybe because the stakes were so much lower, was actually pretty fun overall and felt like a good way to reset coming out of a pay-per-view that didn’t exactly set the world on fire. I’ll give credit to the almost completely random Trent Beretta vs. Swerve Strickland vs. Big Bill match for being way better than it had any right to be. If Swerve vs. Orange Cassidy had been its own match instead of just a mini-match after the other 19 competitors were eliminated in the Blackjack Battle Royale, it would have been one of the better matches of Double or Nothing. He carried the momentum from that match into this one, and although it shouldn’t be a surprise that someone as talented as Swerve put on two quality performances in a row, it was nice to see him get the opportunity to do so when he hasn’t had that very often during his AEW career outside of a relatively short-lived team with Keith Lee. Trent and his Best Friend Chuck Taylor basically spent the entire battle royale saving Orange Cassidy from getting eliminated whether they meant to or not, and he was once again mainly here just to get thrown around. He and Swerve did double-team the big man to deliver a superplex in one of the more impressive spots of the match. Big Bill was there to kick people and throw them around while being large (which, don’t forget, you can’t teach) and angry. Like, there really isn’t that much else to say about this match. It was good and a guy who deserves a chance to rise up the ranks a bit won, so that’s all good in my book.

Next runner-up is the Blackpool Combat Club vs. Lucha Brothers and Bandido match that opened the show. It felt like Tony Khan scanned the locker room and saw Bandido as another masked wrestler to work with Penta and Rey Fenix, which…okay, there’s flimsier premises for a trios match. I guess they were all in the battle royale on Sunday too, so that’s fine. He delivered an absurdly long stalling suplex on Wheeler Yuta, which more than justified his participation in my opinion. Bryan Danielson was on commentary to point out what a monumental victory it was for Yuta to get the pin on Kenny Omega in the Anarchy in the Arena match Sunday, and he was once again the winner here as he pinned Bandido following a series of Danielson-esque elbow strikes to the head. Danielson also pointed out that the victory here was revenge for the Ring of Honor World Tag Team Championship match last week, which the Lucha Bros won with some help from the Young Bucks. This was an energetic, fun, action-packed match to kick off the show, with maybe the only downside being how obvious the result was.

I’m giving best match of the night honors to an even more random match than either of the honorable mentions: Orange Cassidy and Darby Allin vs. Gates of Agony. I’ll admit to my great shame that I’m not that familiar with Bishop Kaun and Toa Liona’s work – I remember some of Kaun’s work with Shane Taylor Promotions back before I dropped off watching (pre-reboot) Ring of Honor, but I don’t know much about them as a tag team and even less about Liona himself. They were great here, though, and I suspect many in the live crowd who were as unfamiliar with them as I was came away as impressed with them as I was. The first half of the match was basically them throwing Allin and Cassidy around the ring, and about the only offense their smaller opponents were able to muster was using their aggression against them, sidestepping an attack so they collided with each other or into the turnbuckles. Sure, that was partly down to the physical toll Cassidy and Allin suffered on Sunday, but Toa Liona basically no-sold everything he was hit with for the majority of the match, which is nothing surprising for a Samoan of his size, and while Kaun is a bit smaller and sold a bit more than his partner, he still displayed an impressive amount of power and resilience. Darby and OC managed to rally late and get some of their own offense in, with the International Champion hitting Stundog Millionaire and the skateboarding daredevil hitting a Coffin Drop to seal the win for his team. For a match with basically no expectations going in sandwiched dead in the middle of the show, all four men should be commended for delivering up to the level of quality they did. Sting returned post-match to prevent the Mogul Embassy from attacking the winners, so we’ll see if there’s any follow-up to any of that going forward – I’d like to see Swerve vs. OC for the title for sure, or even Brian Cage vs. Darby Allin just for fun. Regardless, this match overdelivered for what it was.

Best Moment of the Night

Hey, Tony Khan finally gave us a legitimately exciting announcement – CM Punk will be returning on the June 17th debut of AEW Collision! Granted, we probably could have guessed that would happen, but considering AEW sold out the United Center based solely on rumors that Punk would end his 7-year absence from pro wrestling on Rampage and Collision has definitely not sold out that same arena at the time of writing, I don’t think it hurts to make it official now. It’s just too bad it took TK a full month to actually deliver something of substance.

Another great moment on this show was the Acclaimed addressing their intention to challenge for the trios titles once again despite their unsuccessful challenge at Double or Nothing. I really liked how Max Caster effectively eliminated the distinction between himself and Anthony Bowens as a tag team and their trio with Billy Gunn – he referred to them collectively as “The Acclaimed” so I wouldn’t be surprised to see that name being used as opposed to “The Acclaimed and Daddy Ass” as they have been previously. That feels like a genuinely nice gesture on their part – the name of the team refers to them as a trio now rather than isolating Gunn from them – and it ties in nicely with the content of the promo, in which Caster reassured Gunn that they weren’t disappointed in him for losing the match on Sunday. He spoke of wanting to give the Attitude Era star one last run with championship gold, and although I don’t think they really should defeat the House of Black, at least not anytime soon, it does establish a clear motive for them to continue pursuing the trios titles.

Best moment of the night goes to Don Callis delivering a blistering promo in the face of a tidal wave of boos from the live crowd. I don’t think the actual content of the promo was anything earth-shaking, as we pretty much knew that Callis wanted to take credit for everything Kenny Omega achieved in his career and recruited Konosuke Takeshita to be his new protégé because he’s tired of Omega getting all the glory instead of himself. It sounded like the Invisible Hand intends to build a bizarro-Elite to battle Kenny and the Bucks, which would make sense given that Omega is apparently recruiting some backup according to a backstage promo from Adam Page that was also one of the highlights of the night. When asked if Kenny was back in Canada, Hangman revealed that he is out of the country but not in his home country, which seems like a clear implication that he went to Japan to find new allies ahead of Forbidden Door. (Callis bragged that Takeshita is better than Okada, for instance, but I feel like a lot of wrestling fans are really hoping Omega brings back Kota Ibushi, for obvious reasons.) Callis was able to draw nuclear levels of heat without even saying a word, and the boos somehow intensified once he began speaking. Somewhat surprisingly, that heat even transferred to Takeshita, who I was concerned would struggle in a heel role given the natural connection he had forged with the audience before his out-of-nowhere turn at Double or Nothing. I worried that it would sort of be like the pairing of Paul Heyman and Cesaro back in the day – the crowd was more than willing to boo the manager but didn’t want to boo the wrestler, so there was a weird disconnect between them – but that doesn’t appear to be the case here. Takeshita is suddenly one of the most despised heels on the roster after selling out Omega and aligning with Callis, and this promo segment further solidified that impression in the minds of everyone who saw it.

Worst Matches/Moments of the Night

There really wasn’t anything bad on this show, so let me give an honorary “worst moment” to the decision to have an unsanctioned match end in a referee stoppage at Double or Nothing. Now, I don’t think this finish was the worst conclusion imaginable – it’s not on the level of a Hell in a Cell match ending in disqualification, for instance – but considering Adam Cole threatened to break all of Chris Jericho’s limbs in the build to this match, it feels somewhat weak to have the ref call off the match just because Cole was raining down punches on Jericho’s head. I get that in a real fight this would be worthy of a referee stoppage – unprotected shots to the head are incredibly dangerous – but it felt like the match being stopped for any reason goes against the “unsanctioned” aspect of the match. They literally signed contracts to say AEW couldn’t be held liable for anything that might happen in the match, so what justification is there for an AEW referee to decide not to allow it to continue?

Parting Shots

• Speaking of Chris Jericho and Adam Cole, their mixed tag with Saraya and Dr. Britt Baker DMD was a decent match, but I completely lost track of time and did not realize it was the main event until Excalibur was signing off. I guess this would be a decent way to write off the feud between both partners – Cole and Jericho seemed to have settled things, for better or worse, at Double or Nothing, and with Jamie Hayter injured there isn’t much point in Baker continuing to feud with the Outcasts for the time being. We’ll see if AEW can successfully pivot Baker to something else while keeping the women’s title from feeling less important without her.
• Kris Statlander using American Sign Language before and after her matches is an incredibly cool addition to her character – I’m not sure if she has ever used that before, but I really like having another layer of accessibility from her as the new TBS Champion. Her match against Nyla Rose was pretty good and just missed an honorable mention this week, and the response for her return at Double or Nothing was incredible, so I hope her reign as champion will be booked well to maintain that momentum.
• GOOD LORD Bullet Club Gold is such a better choice than Jay Lethal and Jeff Jarrett as FTR’s next rivals. As soon as Jay White and Juice Robinson started talking about FTR having Ricky Starks’ back, I breathed a huge sigh of relief that the Jayrett boys will be left in the rearview mirror of the tag title scene.
• I got my two least confident predictions from Double or Nothing wrong, and I even laid out the reasoning behind why I wasn’t fully confident in my Elite over the BCC prediction, so I consider that a pretty successful showing if I do say so myself.

That’s it for another week – really fun if somewhat inconsequential episode this week, which is all it needed to be coming off a major pay-per-view on Sunday. I’m excited about a number of feuds and angles hinted at on this show and I look forward to seeing how they’ll play out. Thank you all for joining me, and I hope to see you all back here next week for more Chair Shots!