Chair Shots With Killem Faulkner: Big Business Dynamite

Beantown played host to one of the biggest episodes of Dynamite yet as a special Big Business edition of the show promised to deliver a monumental debut the likes of which AEW hasn’t seen since Bryan Danielson, Adam Cole, and CM Punk in 2021. Or, y’know, since Kazuchika Okada last week. Either/or. Beyond that, the show promised a colossal world title clash, a significant trios match featuring the newest heel group on the roster, and a potential #1 contender’s match for the TBS Championship. Did AEW deliver a pay-per-view quality show as we’ve come to expect from these special named episodes of Dynamite, or was it more on the level of a regular weekly show?

Cheers

• Let’s get the biggest, most obvious cheer out of the way first – how about the tag team of LionHOOK? I think we can all agree that their match was NOT filler and they worked so well together as partners that we all can’t wait to see them in the ring together again.
• Okay, sarcasm aside, Mercedes Moné’s debut was great. They didn’t wait long either – there was a vehicle pulling up in the parking lot as the show went on the air (not a Mercedes but a Maybach with the Mercedes logo on the front, so close enough) and as soon as the camera switched back to the ring the CEO of AEW’s music was already playing to signify that the company’s newest signing would be kicking off the show. It was smart not to keep the audience waiting, as the Boston crowd greeted her with a hometown hero’s welcome, and it was obvious that she was genuinely emotional as she took to the mic for the first time in AEW. It was a fairly short promo, which was also smart – she wasn’t about to air her grievances with WWE or go into too much detail about what brought her to AEW, so she didn’t need to go on too long. She thanked the Boston crowd for supporting her, talked about wanting to work with the women’s roster, and promised that the women’s revolution would be global this time. There was even a bit of a tease that she and Willow Nightingale (who would be competing in the night’s main event against Riho) had some unfinished business after Moné lost the NJPW Women’s Strong Championship in an upset to Willow. Overall, an efficient and effective first appearance and foreshadowed her involvement after the main event, which was pretty good in its own right but I don’t have that much to say about other than Willow should be the next TBS Champion.
• The wrestling took a bit of a backseat to that debut, in my opinion – nothing was truly bad, but for such a momentous event, nothing really seemed to live up to its billing. In part, I suspect that was due to the fact that the card had to be put together in a weird way due to the women’s match going on last. So Samoa Joe had to defend his world title against Wardlow in the opener, and the pointless, hastily thrown-together well-established tag team of Chris Jericho and Hook went on in the bathroom break semi-main slot. Probably the best match of the night was the trios match between the Elite (Matthew and Nicholas Jackson with their newest oldest buddy Kazuchika Okada) and Eddie Kingston with his newest oldest buddies Death Triangle. Well, Penta and PAC anyway, which you’ll notice does not seem to be a triangle of any sort. The main story of this match was Okada taking his opportunities to one-up Kingston while minimizing his time in the ring, allowing the Bucks to sort of act as human shields for him. Since they’re clearly building toward an Okada/Kingston Continental Crown match, having the match revolve around that rivalry without giving it a conclusive finish made a lot of sense. Everybody else in the match got their stuff in throughout the match, of course, but in the end Nicholas Jackson hit a low blow on Eddie behind the referee’s back, Okada hit the Rainmaker, and the heels won. Penta hasn’t done anything of note in a while, PAC literally just returned, and Eddie has more gold than anybody in the company, so they’ll be fine losing to the hottest heel act that just fully came together last week.
• Jay White vs. Darby Allin was also good from an in-ring perspective, as you’d probably have guessed based on who was involved. Darby was clearly still banged up from his tag match at Revolution and he already gave away the fact that he would be written off the show soon to climb Mount Everest, so it shouldn’t have been surprising that Jay White picked up the win and there were some shenanigans afterwards. What people may not have been expecting (at least not so soon) was the breakup of the Bang Bang Scissor Gang as Billy Gunn and the Acclaimed came out to prevent White and the Gunns from doing further damage to Darby only for Switchblade to crack Billy across the back and the Gunns to lay out Caster and Bowens. Bullet Club Gold then proceeded to take out Darby’s leg with a chair and baseball bat just to prove they’re still dangerous, I guess. The match itself was good – Darby took a sick bump on the apron off a failed Coffin Drop, and White attempted a Stinger Splash that Darby avoided. White won on a Bladerunner after Darby narrowly avoided a countout, restoring some of his legitimacy as a wrestler before restoring his heelish edge in the post-match beatdown.
• Will Ospreay vs. Bryan Danielson will be a great match, and Ospreay’s promo this week was good if a little longwinded. He brought up the match against Kenny Omega that he won at Forbidden Door last year, which garnered controversy from some commentators for the use of the Tiger Driver ’91. Among those naysayers was Danielson, who questioned if it was worth it, to which Ospreay stated it unequivocally was. He told Danielson that his willingness to drop another person straight on their head in order to win a match reflects his approach to wrestling that it’s either him or his opponent, and he’s going to do whatever is necessary to survive. This rivalry is obviously just beginning, so there is plenty of time to build toward their match at Dynasty, the brand-new pay-per-view AEW is rolling out in April, but it’s already one of the most anticipated matches on that show. This promo did what it needed to do to further the feud between Ospreay and Danielson while still leaving room for further development over the next month.

Boos

• I’m not going to say Samoa Joe vs. Wardlow was bad – it wasn’t – but it seemed overly short for a world title match, especially given the stakes for Wardlow, who seemingly needed to prove his value to Adam Cole as the only member of the Undisputed Kingdom without any real history with the other members. It was a competitive enough match, but it felt like Wardlow lost too easily to be a serious threat to Joe’s title. Also, I know this is my “old man yells at cloud” opinion, but the “wrestler is too tough to tap out so he passes out instead” finish is way overdone. The storyline probably isn’t over, even though Swerve will probably get another shot at the title next, so there’s still a possibility that Wardlow will take this somewhat humiliating loss as motivation to come back stronger. I just don’t know how you do that without putting him in more squash matches, and if there’s one thing we don’t need in 2024, it’s more Wardlow squash matches. I feel like a stronger performance, even in inevitable defeat, would have served Wardlow better here, and it’s a shame he was so easily dispatched regardless of how strong Joe has been booked as champion.

Parting Shots

• Most of this past week’s Collision was fairly forgettable – it was nice to see the House of Black get a win, even if it was against a team of one babyface (Mark Briscoe) and two heels (Jay Lethal and Jeff Jarrett), but otherwise there was very little of note on this show outside of a fantastic opener between Bryan Danielson and Shane Taylor. Seriously, if you don’t want to watch the entire episode, just watch that match. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – Danielson handpicking his opponents as he winds down his career as a full-time wrestler has been a blast and produced a lot of really excellent matches. I won’t be too disappointed if AEW never puts a title on him, but I certainly wouldn’t mind if they did (maybe the International Championship) to give his matches a little more oomph – although there was still a storyline against Taylor, who is faction-mates with Lee Moriarty, whose head Danielson tried to cave in when they faced off two years ago. Taylor had receipts for Danielson here, even though of course the American Dragon pulled off the win.
• Deonna Purrazzo will apparently be bringing some backup to face Toni Storm and Mariah May on next week’s Dynamite from Toronto, which will continue to fuel speculation about Britt Baker’s status in the company and whether she might be the Virtuosa’s mystery partner. Of course, if it’s not Baker but they do want to use this opportunity to bring someone back, Jamie Hayter might fit the bill, or if they just want to use someone already on the roster, Thunder Rosa or Red Velvet might be logical choices. My money is on Taya Valkyrie, who is from Victoria, Canada and has crossed paths with Purrazzo a couple of times in her career. Assuming Storm and May will likely pick up the win in underhanded fashion, Taya seems like the kind of wrestler who would be okay with eating a pin, since she’s only sporadically used on TV.

That’s it for another week – solid show overall, though the quality of the in-ring work wasn’t quite up to my expectations for a special episode like Big Business. Considering we got the debut of Mercedes Moné, though, it probably won’t matter if there weren’t any match of the year candidates on the show. Thanks for joining me once again, and I hope you’ll all come back next week for more Chair Shots!