Chair Shots With Killem Faulkner: Blood And Guts Dynamite

Following up its Forbidden Door pay-per-view that massively overdelivered despite a spate of injuries to AEW and NJPW stars alike was never going to be easy, but this week’s special Blood and Guts episode of Dynamite figured to be up to the task. Besides the titular 12-man match, we were promised a follow-up to one of Sunday’s biggest highlights as well as a title match and a trios match featuring two mystery partners. Which matches and segments delivered on their promise, and which fell short? Let’s take a look at all the best and worst of this week’s show from Detroit Rock City.

Best Match of the Night

With all due respect to Orange Cassidy vs. Ethan Page and the trios match pitting Danhausen and FTR against Max Caster and the Gunn Club, there was clearly only one match that would attain match of the night honors. It was a one-match show in a way that few AEW shows are. I mean, they devoted an entire hour of a two-hour show to a single match. The name of the match was in the title of the episode. That said, whatever you expected from a match titled Blood and Guts, this match probably delivered it. And it may not have been the kind of 60-minute showcase of professional wrestling excellence that Bryan Danielson vs. Adam Page was last year, but this match was basically the equivalent for anyone who grew up on car crashes like TLC II or just about anything ECW did in its heyday. The very nature of this match type lends itself to a gradual escalation of violence, and this match delivered exactly that – newly crowned interim AEW champ Jon Moxley introduced quite a bit of the weaponry himself, entering the ring with a chair, pulling out a fork and bamboo skewers to tenderize Matt Menard’s forehead, and introducing several black bags of nastiness, the first of which included shards of broken glass for him to piledrive Angelo Parker onto and the latter of which he and Wheeler Yuta used to spread a frankly absurd amount of thumbtacks across the mat of the rightmost ring. Matt Menard introduced another chair, Santana brought in a table and barbed-wire bat, Chris Jericho wielded his signature baseball bat Floyd, and Eddie Kingston used a kendo stick as an equalizer as he looked to take out his nemesis Jericho and anyone foolish enough to stand between them. Kingston also brought along a bottle of rubbing alcohol for some reason, but it was never actually used in the match as far as I could tell. It’s possible Jericho was supposed to do something with it, as Tay Conti tried to pass it back to him after it fell out of the ring (which may have been an accident) but it seems like a lot of it got spilled as they tried to squeeze it through the links in the cage. Anyway, there was enough violent nonsense that no additional ingredients were needed, whatever the original plan was. Claudio Castagnoli followed up his standout performance from Forbidden Door with another excellent showing here, and he was given the win in a nice bit of booking – as Kingston finally locked in a submission on Jericho, looking to make him submit in a final act of revenge to culminate their long, bitter feud, the Swiss Superman instead made Menard tap to the Sharpshooter for the win. Whether Kingston and Castagnoli have a feud going forward or this just allows Kingston and the Blackpool Combat Club to go their separate ways, the finish was a nice nod to their supposed real-life heat from their CHIKARA days. Kingston did get the honor of the most insane spot of the match, throwing Sammy Guevara off the top of the cage through the timekeeper’s table, so his evening wasn’t a total loss. He actually seemed quite pleased with himself after throwing a man to his apparent death, though I doubt that would have stopped him from trying to set Jericho ablaze again if it wasn’t such a hassle to lug a gas can up the side of a steel cage. I’m saying the man is a dangerous lunatic, if you hadn’t picked up on that by now. Anyway, the match was gratuitously long and violent, as such matches are liable to be, although technically the match didn’t start until the Mad King entered the ring so I guess I should say the preamble to the match was gratuitously long and violent and the match itself was actually rather concise if no less brutal. Everybody except Jericho bled, some more than others, and virtually everyone got some thumbtacks stuck in them at one point or another, some more than others on that count as well. As weird as it was for AEW to build up Blood and Guts at the same time as they were building to Forbidden Door, this was sort of the perfect cool-down from the pay-per-view as it allowed 12 guys to take up half the episode with a single match to blow off a feud that needed one final violent encounter before everyone moves on and next week’s show can focus on entirely new storylines as a result. Oh, and presumably everyone involved in this match will have, at most, a talking segment next week because seriously there was an excessive amount of ultra violence on display here and I sincerely hope everyone involved is okay. Especially Angelo Parker, who at one point somehow or other got his legs hung up in the steel girders on the outside of the ring and hung upside down with an open head wound for what must have been an exceptionally unpleasant period of time. There is something seriously wrong with professional wrestlers who willingly subject themselves to this kind of thing not to mention those of us who enjoy watching it, but uh…well it’s time for the next segment of this review so no time to finish that thought.

Best Moment of the Night

For the second week in a row, Christian Cage‘s promo gets an honorable mention for moment of the night despite being very good and perfectly in keeping with his character. This promo was shorter and largely doubled down on the sentiment he expressed last week, so it didn’t feel as necessary, but so he’s great in this new (old) persona that it didn’t really matter. Obviously he’ll need to move on at some point and not just repeat the same insults about Jungle Boy and his family, but at least for now it hasn’t lost its impact. Christian continuing to hit on JB’s mom while running down the rest of the family is still darkly hilarious for how slimy and disgusting it is. For a company with so many cool heels, Christian’s new persona works perfectly as it’s easy to appreciate the quality of his performance in the role while still wanting to boo him for everything he’s saying, and the audience just wants to see Jungle Boy come back and utterly destroy him in the ring.

Orange Cassidy followed up his match of the year candidate from Forbidden Door with a decent but somewhat unremarkable match with Ethan page, but OC spitting OJ into Dan Lambert’s dumb boomer face was definitely a highlight. Lambert brought a bottle of juice with him to the ring for reasons known only to him and teased that he was going to pour it on Cassidy at one point early in the match, but otherwise it was a pointless prop until Lambert tried to get involved late in the match. Cassidy snatched the bottle out of his hand, took a swig, hit the Orange Punch on Page, and sprayed Lambert before hitting a body slam for the win in an homage to Hulk Hogan using the move to beat Andre the Giant in the Pontiac Silverdome at WrestleMania III. As I’ve said before, I just want to see Dan Lambert get beaten up and humiliated, never hear him talk, and eventually fade away and leave the company. That’s it. It ain’t that deep.

I’m going to give best moment of the night to the post-match developments in the Danhausen/FTR vs. Max Caster/Gunn Club match. Anthony Bowens rising from his wheelchair, revealing he’s no longer injured, was a great moment for a lot of reasons, not least of which because it means we’ll likely see the Acclaimed turn face and feud with the Ass Boys. In addition, Billy Gunn shoving aside his own sons in favor of the Acclaimed was an interesting development – we’ve known for a while that he is disappointed in his sons and prefers Caster and Bowens, but having the upcoming feud between the Booty Boys and the Scissor Sidekicks be about winning the approval of Daddy Ass would be a nice added layer. Maybe Gunn ultimately sides with his sons and turns heel again, but for now it’s just hilarious to see a guy blatantly turn his back on his imbecile kids because he recognizes the other guys are so much better.

Worst Moments/Matches of the Night

Hey, did Dan Lambert talk this week? He did, huh? Then I think you know that it’s going to land on a worst moments list. I do have to point out I personally didn’t understand his line about how Michigan’s athletic board actually enforces its rules unlike an election – I assume this was a reference to alt-right election conspiracies because it wouldn’t shock me at all if Lambert was that casual about outing himself in that way, but I don’t actually care if that’s not what he meant and there’s some kind of hidden meaning there that I just don’t understand. Dude has go away heat with me as soon as he opens his mouth.

Parting Shots

• I hope Santana is okay – he went down early in the Blood and Guts match and wasn’t really seen after that. He was notable by his absence in the post-match celebration on top of the cage, though if he was injured somehow I fully understand not wanting to risk it climbing up. Heck, I wouldn’t have gone up there fully healthy with guys getting hucked off and swung around like ragdolls and all that madness. No thanks.
• I’m willing to give the new dark Luchasaurus a chance – I don’t feel like I understand why he turned to the dark side yet, and it seems like if this was the direction this storyline was going in all along there should have been some hints along the way that Christian was trying to corrupt the big dinosaur man, but it could still turn out to be better than it seems on first impression. I also wonder if Luchasaurus is only pretending to break bad until his partner returns to make Christian think he’s won and leave him vulnerable to his sudden but inevitable betrayal. If that ends up being the case, I’ll ultimately be fine with him beating up Serpentico – let’s be real here, the Chaos Project doesn’t have a win-loss record where you’d care about one more squash defeat.
• This should come as no surprise, but I’m sad that Alan “V” Angels is apparently leaving AEW and the Dark Order behind. I know, he hasn’t been used much lately like the rest of the Order, and he’s young enough that he can go wherever he wants and find success. I’m just extra bummed about my purple and black boys with Stu Grayson already gone, Colt Cabana MIA, and now Vlan Vngels heading off for pastures new. I remain glad that AEW has largely honored its contracts and allowed people to leave only when they are unable to reach a deal on an extension. That doesn’t make it any less of a shame when the person leaving is someone whose work I genuinely enjoyed, though, but there’s nothing to do but wish Double A the best and hope the door is still open to a return somewhere down the line.

That’s it for another week – decent show considering half of it was taken up with a single match and it felt like the overall purpose of the episode was to turn the page from Forbidden Door more so than to start anything new just yet. It feels a little odd not to have a pay-per-view coming up for a while yet after having three in the last four months, but I’m sure we’ll settle into the normal routine soon enough. Long-term booking is the name of the game, so I’m more than willing to be patient and see how things pay out over the next few weeks before making up my mind about how I feel about the direction things are heading in. Thanks again for joining me and I hope you’ll come back next week for more Chair Shots!