Chair Shots With Killem Faulkner: Blood And Guts Dynamite

Boston’s TD Garden played host to one of the most brutal of AEW’s annual special editions of Dynamite, Blood and Guts. Beyond the titular dual-ring steel cage match, we were promised a title match between two of the company’s young stars and the finale to the tag eliminator tournament to crown the new #1 contenders for the tag titles. Was AEW able to put on more than a one-match show, and did that match deliver up to expectations?

Best Match of the Night

Let’s not beat around the bush here – while Hook vs. Jack Perry (Jungle Boy no more, if his entrance video is to be believed) and Adam Cole & MJF vs. Daniel Garcia & Sammy Guevara were decent enough matches, there was really only one match that delivered up to or even above expectations on this night, the Blood and Guts match that pitted the Blackpool Combat Club, Konosuke Takeshita, & PAC against The Golden Elite. I know this match might not be for everyone, in which case I would say this was a very skippable episode overall if you are not a fan of such extreme violence, but the match isn’t called Rest Holds and Selling, it’s Blood and Guts for a reason. You can hardly call it false advertising. Rather than give a spot-by-spot breakdown of the match, I’m going to give some general impressions to hopefully explain why it was such a good match that everything else necessarily fell by the wayside.

• You can argue all you want about how AEW has treated certain ex-WWE guys, but the fact that Claudio Castagnoli started this match off with a five-minute mini-match against Kenny Omega tells you everything you need to know about how the former Antonio Cesaro is perceived. I absolutely loved how the hardcore cage match element of this bout didn’t even really start until Jon Moxley entered at #5 and introduced all sorts of foreign objects to the proceedings. The first 10 minutes or so were basically a standard wrestling match with the advantage shifting back and forth between the two teams, which really suits the Ring of Honor champ and that company’s focus on pure professional wrestling.
• It was odd how long it took anybody to start bleeding – Moxley came in and jabbed people with forks left and right, yet he was the one left wearing the most significant crimson match by the end of the night. I was actually fine with that – the match was hard hitting and involved some spots like the slams onto the thumbtacks and nail bed that looked incredibly painful, but I don’t feel like this match always has to be a total bloodbath despite its name – but repeated shots to the forehead with a sharp piece of metal really should produce some visible effect on the victim.
• Speaking of weapons, I’m okay with broken glass as a thumbtack alternative, but it really needs to be used sparingly. We’ve all seen enough broken glass in movies and TV shows to know how easy it is to make fake glass that looks decent but isn’t dangerous. The nail bed was a relatively innovative addition to the match, however. You hardly ever see something like that outside of Japan, so it still has a certain mystique of danger and brutality. Matt Jackson making it rain thumbtacks from the top of the cage was also a unique idea and creative way of introducing them into the match.
• This may not have been the ideal introduction for Kota Ibushi, as the chaotic nature of the match didn’t give him a ton of spotlight to work with and show off his moveset to a new fanbase, but the crowd in Boston was hot for his entrance. I have no doubt that if he sticks around AEW, we’ll get plenty of opportunities to see what he’s capable of in singles/tag/trios action. His standing moonsault onto Moxley who was lying on the nail bed was a particularly brutal spot.
• PAC’s double stomp from the roof of the cage to put Matt Jackson through a table was incredible. That spot could so easily go wrong in so many ways but he made it look easy.
• I’m sure there are those who will argue that the finish, which saw Jon Moxley verbally submitting for his team while handcuffed to the bottom rope because the Golden Elite had a metal chain wrapped around Wheeler Yuta’s throat, was fairly weak and didn’t actually make the babyfaces look all that good, but I think it actually made a ton of sense for the match to end that way. The Golden Elite showed that they are fully unified and willing to go to the same extremes as the BCC, while the heels fell apart without Bryan Danielson there to lead them. Takeshita is a Don Callis guy and was never even offered a spot in the BCC as far as I’m aware, and while PAC had bad blood with Omega he isn’t exactly friends with Moxley or Claudio, so it made sense for them to take off when things got heated. Maybe the babyfaces could have won in a more cathartic way, but this felt like a satisfying conclusion to the long-running feud between these two factions.

Best Moment of the Night

I’ve said all along that the tag eliminator tournament hasn’t produced a lot of great matches, but it has been a fun way to kill time ahead of the inevitable feud between AEW World Champion Maxwell Jacob Friedman and Adam Cole, and this week’s match/segment was no exception, though the in-ring portion of it was more successful than the pre-taped bit where the guys got drunk together and bonded over spicy food. MJF’s excitement over their matching gear and mashup entrance music was great, as was the crowd’s excitement for him to do his first tope suicida and for the long-teased Double Clothesline(tm) that closed the match. I could have done without Cole dancing even worse than all three other men involved in the match, but it was funny that MJF was able to setup an in-ring dance-off with a single press of a button on the control pad at the timekeeper’s table. I don’t know if the teased dissention post-match needed to be so overt – MJF may not watch the show, but Adam Cole presumably does, so he should absolutely see the champ staring daggers into his back after Cole allowed his gaze to…linger a bit too long on the Triple B (that’s the Big Burberry Belt to you and me). So of course he’ll definitely see it coming when MJF tries to stab him in the back during (after?) their tag title match against FTR, right? Oh right, he’s a babyface which automatically makes him dumb so he definitely won’t see it coming. Feel free to prove me wrong, AEW!

Worst Matches/Moments of the Night

With a single match eating up nearly half the show’s runtime, everything else had to be compressed way down to fit in the remaining hour. That said, did we need a blink-and-you’ll-miss it squash match featuring Dr. Britt Baker DMD? I mean, I know exactly why this match existed – AEW’s women’s division has been the subject of a significant amount of criticism since the company’s inception, so I’m sure they felt like not putting a women’s match on the card at all would have resulted in outrage online – but if you’ve truly got nothing else for the entire division, that’s a bigger problem than a single token match can solve. It’s like that meme about a guy slapping glorified duct tape over a giant leaky vat of water. You know the one. Stop trying to paper over it and fix the underlying problem, AEW. We’re waiting.

Parting Shots

• If you aren’t watching Collision at this point, I’m not sure what to say, but if you’re at least open to the idea of watching a show that airs on Saturday (but y’know, DVR exists) that features CM Punk (but he’s basically a heel so you’d be justified in booing him if you so desire), I highly recommend watching this past week’s show. The finals of both Owen Hart Foundation Tournaments and the incredible two-out-of-three falls match between FTR and Bullet Club Gold are absolutely worth watching.
• Jack Perry essentially buried his old gimmick, with video showing him dragging an anonymous body wearing his old gear into a grave in the middle of the desert and filling in the hole before hopping in a limo. He also replaced his entrance music, “Tarzan Boy” by Balitmora, with a fairly straightforward version of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, which I guess is okay but I’m a little surprised they went with something so classy and not befitting of his edgy new “I have sex and don’t care what you think” persona. I suppose there’s a possibility that he gets some sort of nu metal remix in the coming weeks which…might be worse, now that I type it out in words. So okay, classical music it is.
• Don Callis and Chris Jericho continued to tease an alliance this week, but yet again there was no definitive resolution. It’s looking more and more like Jericho’s Appreciation Society is not going to be there waiting for him even if he decides not to side with his old friend, as Daniel Garcia and Sammy Guevara walked right past him following their loss to MJF and Adam Cole. This might be for the best – I’m not sure what more the faction could hope to accomplish at this point, and both Garcia and Guevara have grown as characters to the point that they no longer need their mentor – but it will be interesting to see where that leaves the group’s leader, who has at times flirted with a face turn recently despite Callis’s overtures to the contrary.

That’s it for another week – despite being basically a one-match show, this week’s episode was a fairly strong one as long as you don’t mind the excessiveness of the Blood and Guts format. Thanks for joining me once again, and I hope you’ll all return next week for more Chair Shots!