Chair Shots With Killem Faulkner: Body Of Work Dynamite

AEW rolled into Colorado Springs with a relatively clean slate and a lot to accomplish with several marquee events coming up in the next few months. Two championships were defended on the night, and several feuds were advanced between the other matches and segments on the card. The world champ called out the Colorado crowd for being drug addicts, but the more important issue was whether the show would leave viewers feeling high as a kite, or did the show’s most important matches and angles go up in smoke?

Best Match of the Night

I mentioned in the intro that most of the rivalries that headlined Double or Nothing have been put to rest, but one that appears to be continuing (and rightly so) is the Blackpool Combat Club against The Elite. With Kenny Omega off the show, Bryan Danielson’s boys sought to send a message via a proxy war against Chaos, whose former leader Kazuchika Okada is scheduled to face the American Dragon at Forbidden Door. (I almost wrote that he “will face” Danielson, but with all the card shuffling that happened at last year’s NJPW crossover show, I feel like it’s safer to say that the match is scheduled for now.) The result was a fairly standard but entertaining trios match that Chuck Taylor, Trent Beretta, and Rocky Romero never really threatened to win but served its purpose as both a reminder of the BCC’s dominance as a trio and a message to both The Elite and Okada that the group is not to be taken lightly. After the match, Adam Page and the Young Bucks challenged the trio to a match next week, which Danielson accepted from the commentary desk, so we didn’t have to wait long to see the impact this match would have on the ongoing storyline. Claudio Castagnoli hit a couple of impressive European uppercuts during the match including one as a unique moonsault counter, and Jon Moxley picked up the win for his team with a bulldog choke on Romero while Wheeler Yuta hammered away with elbows to Taylor’s head to prevent him from breaking up the submission on the legal man. Again, the result was never in question, but all six men are talented enough that it didn’t really matter, and with the company having multiple plates spinning at the moment with both Forbidden Door and All In looming, this was an efficient segment that served two different storylines at once.

The main event saw Ricky Starks face off against Jay White to continue a rivalry that has seemed pretty one-sided with Starks owning a singles victory against his associate Juice Robinson as well as eliminating both men from the Blackjack Battle Royale at Double or Nothing. (Yes, White has technically beaten him via DQ and Bullet Club Gold did defeat Starks and Shawn Spears in a tag match, but they don’t have a single pinfall victory against Absolute by himself.) I suppose it shouldn’t have been surprising, then, that White cheated to win here in order to justify possibly keeping the rivalry alive until Forbidden Door. It will be interesting to see if Austin and Colten Gunn officially join BCG or if they have some other motive for getting involved – commentary didn’t really offer an explanation as to why they interfered on White’s behalf, but they also didn’t seem to speculate too hard about it either. Before that, however, White and Starks had a heck of a match befitting two guys with their in-ring skill. I particularly enjoyed Pretty Ricky taking a short break from his attack on Switchblade to kiss the hand of a woman at ringside – what can I say, the man lives and breathes his character. The match picked up in intensity as it went on, with Starks nearly scoring the victory on a couple of occasions. It became clear in my mind after a certain point that something was going to happen to cheat Ricky out of a win, however, and sure enough there was a ref bump late in the match that rendered Paul Turner unable to count the pinfall off Rochambeau, which opened the door for the aforementioned Gunn interference. While White and Robinson have a full dance card coming up (more on that later) maybe Ricky will recruit a partner to get his revenge on the Backside Brothers in the meantime. I don’t really have a problem with a heel cheating to win, but it does knock the overall quality of the segment down a little in my mind. Starks is protected in defeat, and White is prevented from taking a loss for a while longer, but it will be interesting to see exactly what the endgame is here with seemingly no immediate plans to pull the trigger on a high-profile singles match between Absolute and Switchblade. Might this rivalry be prolonged until All In?

Best match of the night, as it so often is when Orange Cassidy is put in the opener, was his International Championship match against Swerve Strickland. After their interaction to close the Blackjack Battle Royale, this was a logical match to have and, in all honesty, a great option for a longer-term feud for the champ who has mainly bounced from match to match without any lasting rivalries over the past few months. Things between Swerve and Keith Lee don’t seem to be settled either, but I’m guessing that feud will be put on the back burner if not entirely abandoned should the company see more potential in a rivalry with OC. Apparently Lee and Strickland will be on opposing sides of an 8-man tag next week, so I guess there is some hope of continuity there. Just as a side note, let me say how much I love that OC has a single firework as part of his lackadaisical entrance/overall presentation. It’s the most hilariously (and intentionally) underwhelming entrance pyro in an industry that is generally known for its excess in that regard. Once again, the story of this match was the mounting list of injuries hampering the champ and his increasingly desperate means of retaining the title in spite of them. In that regard, the finish to this match worked well despite a rollup with a handful of tights generally not being the most interesting match conclusion. Cassidy even appeared to lose his grip a bit on the Beach Break that led to probably the closest nearfall of the match, selling the fact that he’s basically held together with nothing but athletic tape and laziness at this point. Oh, and a desire to be champion, I guess. Whatever. The match that proceeded that finish was as excellent as you’d expect from two athletic workers like Cassidy and Strickland. The Death Valley Driver on the apron was a particularly wicked spot, and of course the Swerve Stomp from the top rope looked like it just might finish off the beleaguered champ once and for all. It’s unusual for a babyface to be booked in such a way that the crowd is basically watching in anticipation of him finally losing the title, not that such an outcome would be received positively in this case, but it fits the perpetual underdog character that Cassidy has established for himself. Fans tune in each week to see if he can find a way to escape with the belt or if this is finally the time that his challenger will be too much to overcome, and that’s a compelling storyline to keep people invested especially when it is so often featured in the opening match of the night.

Best Moment of the Night

I’ll get to my two choices for best moment in a second, but I do want to address a couple of moments that were significant but don’t count in my opinion – the confirmation that Bryan Danielson will face Kazuchika Okada and Kenny Omega will face Will Ospreay at Forbidden Door. Each one had a video package on this week’s show, but they were both confirmed beforehand so it doesn’t really count as a new occurrence on this show. For fans who only watch AEW and don’t read the dirt sheets or keep up with the online wrestling discourse, these announcements may have been news, but most of us already knew what was up. Still, both matches should be awesome and will certainly help get the buyrate up for Forbidden Door.

There weren’t a ton of great segments to choose from this week, but I will give an honorable mention to Christian Cage and Luchasaurus taking out Brock Anderson backstage. This segment was shot well with Alex Marvez waiting outside of Cage’s locker room and the sounds of a scuffle inside being audible as Captain Charisma emerged to call out Arn Anderson for costing him the TNT Championship at Double or Nothing. He then told Arn that his son got him a nice Father’s Day present as Luchasaurus exited the room and the camera caught Brock writhing in pain on the floor as Marvez called for help. This was a pretty simple segment, but it was effective and completely in character for the despicable heels, preying on a defenseless man who is only tangentially related to their ongoing feud in order to send a message.

Best moment of the night goes to the MJF vs. Adam Cole promo – after Cole beat Chris Jericho and MJF retained his title at Double or Nothing, this seemed like the most logical feud going forward, so it is nice to see AEW giving the fans what they want. MJF’s portion of the promo went a little long in my opinion – I don’t know if we really needed such a thorough recap of Cole’s career – but I understand that he was trying to draw parallels between his own accomplishments and Cole’s before pivoting to how divergent their paths have been lately, with Friedman himself becoming the AEW World Champion while the former Panama City Playboy has let himself go with Twitch streaming and reality television. Of course, not everything he said was accurate (at one point he referred to Cole with “jet-black hair” – when was that?) and the challenger was quick to point out how lazy the references to his physique are while ignoring his “body of work” to dismiss him as a serious threat. Rather than falling prey to the champ’s usual refusal to face up to a challenge, Cole attacked MJF’s lack of respect among the locker room and said that if he wants to change that perception all he has to do is tell him to shut up and fight, which he won’t do because he’s a coward. MJF responded that he would fight Cole anytime, to which the challenger stated that they will have to have a match to see if that’s true. I get that MJF’s use of insider terms and references to backstage rumors may not be for everyone, but it really elevated this segment for him to talk about the perception in WWE that Cole wasn’t a main event guy, something that he obviously wanted to change by joining AEW, as well as the references to his NXT promo running down Karrion Kross and the rumor that Vince McMahon wanted him to manage Keith Lee. Cole was also able to get a few shots in at his critics by noting the similar rhetoric used by online trolls who have questioned his look and presentation since joining the company. All in all, this was a great segment that set up what should be an outstanding feud for the title to last us throughout the summer.

Worst Matches/Moments of the Night

Nothing really bad this week. There is one moment that I could put here, but I won’t because it just feels like piling on at this point, so I’m putting it in the next section instead.

Parting Shots

• Tony Khan, stop announcing things. You just spent a month telling us stuff we already knew or strongly suspected about Collision. Now you want to get into detail about the main event of the first show, which will be CM Punk and FTR against Samoa Joe and Bullet Club Gold. Cool, but I’m pretty sure you’ve already sold as many tickets as you were going to, and everyone already knew Punk was going to be there, which is the most important thing to publicize if you want to sell out the United Center in Chicago. I love the guy, but knowing a 44-year-old coming off an injury is going to be in a multi-man match that could easily be used to limit his participation on his first night back doesn’t make me any more excited than I already was for this show – I would not have been disappointed at all if he had just cut a promo to open the show like he did when he debuted on Rampage. Sure, there may not have been an efficient, logical way of bringing these six men together on the night of the show, but I would have been fine if they had Excalibur announce this match on the Dynamite before, or even just announce it the night of the show.
• Watch Rampage from last Friday. Just do it. Trust me. At the risk of sounding like an NPC from GM mode in one of the WWE 2K games, the show had a good variety and each match was different from all the others. I liked it! (Okay, maybe I was trying to sound like one of those NPCs a little bit at the end there.)
• Is a tornado tag match not a thing? Otherwise, why were they calling Preston Vance and Dralistico vs. JungleHOOK a “Texas Tornado” match…in Colorado? I know they just had a Texas Deathmatch in Las Vegas, but like…why?

That’s it for another week – good show in my opinion with some of the pieces starting to fall into place for Forbidden Door and beyond. I did enjoy last year’s AEW x NJPW show but I always worry that too many New Japan stars being introduced on AEW programming will derail some of the company’s own storylines. It seems like at least for the time being we’re getting a good helping of AEW-centric booking with a little NJPW stuff sprinkled in, which I think is a good mix. Thanks for joining me again and I hope to see you all back here next week for more Chair Shots!