Chair Shots With Killem Faulkner: AEW Dynamite Holiday Bash

In honor of Christmas Eve Eve Eve (more commonly known as 3 days before Christmas) AEW promised a special Holiday Bash edition of its weekly flagship show, this time from the historic Greensboro Coliseum. The Icon Sting returned to where it all began, marking his first match in 27 years at the venue where he headlined the first ever Clash of the Champions against Ric Flair in 1988. Elsewhere on the card, we got one match closer to crowning the first ever TBS Champion, one half of the Varsity Blonds attempted to exact revenge for the unprompted attack on Julia Hart, and the Best Friends/Elite saga continued. With some big shows coming up in the new year including Dynamite‘s move to TBS on January 5th, AEW looked to finish the year strong and continue to build momentum heading into 2022. Would this holiday-themed episode be the equivalent of opening a shiny Turbo Man on Christmas day, or would it be more like a Red Ryder BB Gun – long sought after but ultimately disappointing? (Side note: that was the point of that movie, right? Like he finally gets his hands on it and ends up shooting himself with it and it’s supposed to be a lesson about how sometimes adults really do know what’s best for you? I dunno, they play that movie for 24 hours straight every single year and yet I can’t tell you whether I’ve seen it all the way through more than once.)

Best Match of the Night

Orange Cassidy vs. Adam Cole was a great stocking stuffer of a match – enjoyable in its own right without overshadowing what was to come. Cassidy’s laid-back but occasionally explosive offense meshes well with Cole’s arrogant but lethal in-ring approach. Not surprisingly, there were plenty of shenanigans involving the Young Bucks and Best Friends, not to mention some post-match developments we’ll get to later, but even from solely a bell-to-bell perspective, this was a perfectly enjoyable match between two fantastic wrestlers. Nyla Rose vs. Ruby Soho (Hoho – thanks to the sign in the crowd for the amazing topical joke) was another well-worked match in the TBS Championship tournament that has been full of good matches to this point. As the broadcast crew pointed out, Soho is the only wrestler still in the tourney without a first round bye, having bested Penelope Ford in the first round and outlasted Kris Statlander in the second, and she played the gutsy babyface trying to overcome the odds against her fresher opponent who would have a physical advantage even under the best of circumstances. In addition, Vickie Guerrero inserted herself at several points in the proceedings to give Rose an unfair advantage, even preventing referee Aubrey Edwards from seeing a potential submission at one point. Ultimately, Soho was able to persevere and advance to the finals to face either Jade Cargill or Thunder Rosa. Whatever the final matchup ends up being, it should be a fantastic match and promises to crown a deserving first-time champ.

The best match of the night, unsurprisingly, was the main event between MJFTR and Sting, Darby Allin, and CM Punk. The babyfaces had the power of friendship on their side, as each man sported face paint including Punk’s tribute to classic “surfer Sting” and Sting’s thunder fists-inspired getup. The match largely revolved around Maxwell Jacob Friedman ducking CM Punk, routinely tagging out to avoid facing the Second City Savior, even going so far as to flee through the crowd with Punk in hot pursuit. FTR were frequently left to suffer 3-on-1 attacks as a result of their partner’s cowardice, with one particular spot seeing Sting hitting a Stinger Splash, followed by a coffin splash from Darby Allin and a rising knee strike from CM Punk. Harwood and Wheeler were able to counter and keep each other out of trouble long enough to eventually hit the Big Rig on Punk, but Sting managed to wipe out all of the opposition with a dive off the top rope to the outside that brought a massive cheer from the Greensboro crowd. Ultimately, MJF found himself isolated in the ring against CM Punk, but Dax Harwood made the save by pushing him out of the ring, eating a GTS, Scorpion Death Drop, and Coffin Drop for the pin. FTR is obviously one of the best tag teams on the planet, so it’s hard to imagine them having a bad multi-man match, but their chemistry with MJF is particularly good, and it’s always enjoyable to see Punk, Allin, and Sting in action, especially as a team. Everyone got a chance to shine, and the finish sent the crowd home happy while still promising further developments to come in the CM Punk/MJF rivalry. Friedman jumped on commentary to complain about Punk refusing to face him, going so far as to call him a punk which…yeah, that tracks. It is right there in his name after all. This match was pretty well the yule log dessert of the evening: an indulgent bout that was ultimately not that important in the grand scheme of things but greatly enjoyable all the same.

Best Moment of the Night

Jim Ross is returning to commentary next week! It’s a Christmas miracle! Er, rather, a miracle of modern medical science! Serena Deeb promises that her feud with Hikaru Shida is far from over! 2022 is looking up already!

No surprise, the best moment of the night was the AEW debut of Kyle O’Reilly to re-form the Undeniable Generation or some such legally distinct knockoff with Bobby Fish and Adam Cole. I’m not sure what to make of the facial expressions from the Young Bucks and Adam Cole at the end of the segment – I thought last week Cole promised a great Christmas present for the Bucks, but he seemed to immediately feel uneasy about having them in the same ring as Fish and O’Reilly. You’d think he’d be more welcoming when the Bucks returned to the ring post-match, but it seemed obvious that they weren’t best pleased to see O’Reilly joining the fray. Regardless, it will be interesting to see if Fish and O’Reilly continue to cause tension among the Elite, especially in absence of Kenny Omega as their leader. It feels like Cole is already struggling to keep the group together, and the emergence of a second tag team may further drive a wedge between him and the Bucks, which should be an intriguing storyline going forward even if I can’t tell yet what exactly they’re going far in terms of tone.

Worst Moment of the Night

Story time: I come from a fairly large extended family, which makes it somewhat hard to buy presents since it’s easy to lose track of what everyone is into from one year to the next. To remedy this, we have a tradition where each person makes a list of presents they’d like to receive and shares it with everyone else in the family. Of course, with family members scattered across the country, it’s important to get your list made and sent out fairly early or else the aunts and uncles may not be able to buy, wrap, and ship everything in time for Christmas. Accordingly, our family developed another tradition of threatening anyone who takes too long to send out their list with the worst present imaginable: a lava lamp. I guess the logic goes that nobody would ask for a lava lamp for Christmas, and nobody really wants or needs one. I mention that story because Dan Lambert is essentially the lava lamp of AEW – I didn’t ask for him, and I don’t want or need to see him on my television.

I hate calling out production botches because live TV is incredibly complicated yet looks easy when everything goes smoothly but can so easily go wrong. I do have to point out, however, that there was a pretty big missed spot in the main event, as something obviously happened off-screen that drew a big reaction from the live crowd, but neither the announcers nor the audience at home had any idea what it was. There was a replay from a reverse angle after the match was over that showed Darby Allin wiping out MJF near the timekeeper’s table, but it was certainly confusing in the moment.

The worst moment of the night was undoubtedly the fan holding up the transphobic sign as Nyla Rose made her entrance. Fan signs have been one of the most fun parts of watching AEW, as it feels like a throwback to the Attitude Era when one of the highlights each week was reading the funny, clever, and often cringey in retrospect signs that people brought to the arena each week. It would really suck if a few bad actors caused AEW to re-think their policies on allowing signs, but this kind of bigoted attitude has no place in society, especially not in pro wrestling. It was gratifying to see that the fan in question was ultimately ejected from ringside, and hopefully he will be banned from attending any future AEW events as well – the immediate social media backlash from fans and wrestlers alike will hopefully be enough pressure to ensure the company does the right thing. It seems like the sign may have been made with a Sharpie after the fan had already entered the venue, so there might not have been anything security could have done other than eject him once they realized what his sign said. Still, it is an absolute disgrace that a performer had to deal with harassment like that, even if Rose handled it professionally like only she could and seemed to brush it off pretty easily. I’m not sure what the solution is exactly, but AEW needs to find a way to do better to protect its employees and fans alike from such hateful nonsense.

Parting Shots

• I enjoyed the irony of Bryan Danielson vowing not to wrestle again until he gets his rematch for the AEW World Championship before a commercial for Rampage featuring a clip him saying he’ll wrestle every week from back when he wanted people to like him like a month ago. It turns out when you’re as talented as Danielson, all you have to do to go from beloved babyface to despised heel is to deny people the pleasure of watching you compete.
• The Owen Hart Cup memorial tournaments sound like a great idea and should be an enjoyable ongoing story to carry us through next year’s Double or Nothing pay-per-view. It feels kind of odd announcing something like this about 5 months in advance when it likely won’t play into storylines for a while yet, but I imagine there will be plenty of promotion and jockeying for positions in the tourney in the meantime.
• The first shows of 2022 – the January 5th edition of Dynamite, which will be the show’s debut on TBS, and the January 8th special Battle of the Belts – promise to be absolutely stacked; not only will the first TBS champion be crowned but also we’ll be getting a huge AEW World Championship rematch between Bryan Danielson and Hangman Adam Page and an AEW Women’s World Championship match between Dr. Britt Baker DMD and Riho, who was the inaugural women’s champ and who the current champion has never beaten.

That’s it for another week – all in all, this week’s Dynamite was a solid pre-holiday entry without too much Christmas-related nonsense but enough of the spirit of the season to be fun. I hope everyone has a very safe and happy holiday season whatever you get up to, and hopefully I’ll see you all back here next week for more Chair Shots!