Chair Shots With Killem Faulkner: Championship Unification Dynamite
Based on the promotion, you would have thought this week’s episode would be a one-match show, but to be fair, that one match promised to be an absolute belter between two of the best wrestlers around. With that said, there were some less-hyped matches that figured to steal some of that spotlight with a trios tournament match, a bitter father-son showdown, and plenty of buildup ahead of September 4th’s All Out spectacular. Which matches and moments delivered the goods from this week’s episode of Dynamite from Cleveland, OH? Let’s take a look at the best, worst, and everything in between.
Best Match of the Night
As I mentioned in the intro, there was only one match on this night’s card that really had a lot of speculation and excitement going in – Jon Moxley vs. CM Punk for the unified AEW World Championship. There was plenty of skepticism also, as many questioned why this match wasn’t saved for All Out in CM Punk’s hometown of Chicago, but there was still reason for excitement as the announcers hyped it up as arguably the biggest match in Dynamite history, not to mention one of the most consequential in all of AEW. Sadly, it turned out the skeptics were right, and I won’t be talking about that match in this segment. Well, I am technically talking about it in this segment right now. But it’s not an official contender for match of the night. I just figured I’d get that out of the way early because people would be wondering about it if I didn’t. Don’t worry, though – I’ll get to it in due time. But in the meantime, let’s talk about matches that not only delivered up to expectations but may in fact have exceeded them.
I won’t lie, it’s a bummer that neither the Ring of Honor tag championships nor the TNT Championship will be defended at All Out, but if Dax Harwood vs. Jay Lethal was anything to go by, we should still get a great trios match even if it feels a bit unworthy of the talent involved. Tag specialist Harwood continues to make his case for wrestler of the year as he turned in another excellent singles performance, while Lethal continued to rebuild his credibility following a high-profile loss to Samoa Joe at Ring of Honor’s Death Before Dishonor. For most of the match, it was Sharpshooter vs. Figure Four as both men tried to use a submission hold borrowed from their respective idols Bret Hart and Ric Flair to gain the upper hand. There was also the obligatory back-and-forth chop-fest as both men looked to blister their opponent’s chest with knife edges and palm strikes. And let’s not forget about the expert counters as both men showed their intelligence as well as their physical prowess. The reversed rollup with a token tights grab was a bit of a letdown finish, but Lethal needed the win to sell the idea that his team has any shot against a trio of champions at All Out, and the cheating (as perfunctory as it seemed) protected Harwood in defeat. The announcement after the match that Lethal will be joined by the legendary Motor City Machine Guns, Alex Shelley and Chris Sabin, for their trios match at All Out was also a great moment that (spoiler alert) just missed the cut for a mention on my best moments list. I was ready to point out the oddness of Sonjay Dutt volunteering for another trios match after he expressed some reluctance to join Lethal and Satnam Singh against Best Friends at last month’s Fight for the Fallen, so it was nice to see him pull the bait and switch even if it seems like AEW is intentionally pumping the brakes on the Satnam Singh experiment after debuting him in a high-profile spot. I don’t think that’s a bad choice, per se, but it felt like finding a singles wrestler to replace Dutt would have made more sense. With that said, I can’t complain about getting to see Shelley and Sabin debut in AEW, and their inclusion immediately elevates the six-man match at All Out significantly. Why we couldn’t just have a tag match between FTR and the Machine Guns is anybody’s guess, but I suppose AEW would have to find an actual contender for Wardlow’s TNT Championship and it doesn’t seem like they’re particularly interested in doing that at the moment for whatever reason.
Once it was announced that the AEW title unification match was not going to be the main event, the question that immediately sprang to mind was whether the match that took its spot would justify closing the show, but thankfully that match was United Empire vs. Death Triangle and the answer was a resounding yes. As I’ve mentioned before, Will Ospreay is as talented as he is despicable, almost like Jay Lethal from the opening match, and I just love having to put both of those guys in my best matches of the night on the same night. Good thing Darby Allin wasn’t booked for the show or else we might have hit the #SpeakingOut trifecta. But hey, there were five other guys in the match, so I suppose I don’t have to dwell on him too much. Honestly, I’m not sure Death Triangle is really capable of having a bad match, and all three men shone in plenty of spots here – Rey Fenix got things off to a hot start for his team with a number of athletic spots that highlighted his agility, PAC hit an assisted deadlift German and a crazy avalanche brainbuster, and Penta busted out a crucifix bomb and Canadian (Mexican?) destroyer. Aussie Open remains a somewhat underappreciated team as they’re often overshadowed by Ospreay’s high-flying antics, but they mesh incredibly well with agile luchadores like the Lucha Brothers. I also loved the payoff of PAC’s issues with Kip Sabian lurking under a cardboard box at ringside as he finally confronted his stealth tormentor…only to find that Sabian had disguised someone else and set them up in his usual spot to sucker in the All-Atlantic Champion and allow him to get a sneak attack from behind. I agree with Jim Ross on commentary – I really expected Death Triangle to advance here, so it was a big upset when United Empire combined to hit an Os-Cutter on Fenix to win. It wasn’t an unwelcome upset, however, just a surprise because there figured to be more of a story involved with Death Triangle advancing to face the Young Bucks and Kenny Omega (a follow-up to the Lucha Brothers’ match of the year contender from last year’s All Out) and the potential for them to take on longtime rivals the House of Black in the finals. It also has to be said that United Empire figures to have little chance of winning the titles as they are under contract with New Japan, but at least they figure to put on a banger against the Bucks and Omega in the next round before presumably bowing out of the tournament. That’s about all you can really ask for from a dark horse team in a tournament like this – score a high-profile upset, put on a few good matches, and dip out before the real contenders emerge. AEW didn’t have much to choose from to main event the show, but they certainly picked the best match available to close out the night.
Best Moment of the Night
The opening segment featuring Daniel Garcia and Chris Jericho coming face to face after last week’s altercation following Garcia’s big match against Bryan Danielson was an excellent continuation of the simmering tension between the two and set up what figures to be a great pay-per-view match between Danielson and Jericho. Garcia put over his appreciation (pun intended) for Jericho while speaking of his reverence for Danielson, and he did a nice job of showing that the “you’re a wrestler” chants were starting to get to him. Jericho continued his run as one of the top heels in the company, pressuring his young charge to declare himself a sports entertainer and disavow the evils of professional wrestling. Danielson interrupted to defend the legitimacy of what they accomplished in a wrestling ring last week, but Garcia refused to choose between them as he made clear his issue with Jericho was only that he ruined the moment when Danielson offered him a post-match handshake, not that he was fully willing to turn his back on his mentor and commit to Danielson’s brand of wrestling purity. As Garcia made his exit (not before accidentally shoving Jericho to the mat, which drew a huge grin from the former Yes Man and a big cheer from the crowd) his two would-be mentors continued to argue with Jericho taking issue with Danielson being perceived as the best wrestler and Danielson questioning whether his idols Stu and Owen Hart would still think so highly of what Lionheart has become today. Unsurprisingly, this led both men to agree to a match at All Out, which should be a great addition to the card and carries the extra intrigue of whether Garcia will get involved on either side. Jake Hager returned to cheap shot Danielson afterwards and set up a match between them next week, and all in all this was a fairly efficient segment and a good way to kick off the show.
Another highlight of the night was the Ricky Starks promo on Powerhouse Hobbs – we haven’t seen a lot of in-ring work from the former FTW Champion since he lost the title, but this segment was a great reminder of the superstar quality that he possesses even when he doesn’t have a match. Starks put over his friendship with Hobbs that was thrown away when the big man attacked him from behind, hitting him in his injured neck which Starks highlighted as a particularly cruel twist of the knife from someone who had been there for him all throughout his recovery. His point about how people like Hobbs will help you when you’re down but don’t want to see you surpass them when you’re better really landed for me. His passion and intensity was genuinely affecting as he chronicled the rise of Team Taz, detailing how he always looked out for Hobbs along the way and made sure not to leave out his compatriot even when he achieved singles success. The entire promo worked exceptionally well and added some extra detail to what could otherwise have been just a generic “shocking heel turn” angle – by the end of his speech, you really believed that Starks had trusted Hobbs more than anyone and the manner of his betrayal was so personally hurtful that the big man has a CVS-sized receipt coming his way whenever they eventually lock horns in the ring.
Moment of the night, for me, has to go to Jon Moxley becoming the Undisputed AEW World Champion – as much as the match itself did not live up to the hype, it is impossible to deny that putting the title on Mox in such dominant fashion was a good call. The beauty of having co-champs like Punk and Mox is that there really wasn’t a wrong call either way, though the execution of the match itself did leave some significant open questions about where the company goes from here. I don’t have a problem with a worked shoot, but it feels like AEW has gone this route a bit too often lately – Kenny Omega “selling” ring rust last week, MJF “demanding” to be fired, etc. – and exposed what makes blending reality and fiction so hard to pull off in a satisfying way. You can argue that having Punk pull up injured generates intrigue, just as Omega and MJF did, but the problem is that viewers are left genuinely confused about how to feel about these developments. Punk’s pipebomb promo from years ago is often hailed as one of the best worked shoots in wrestling history, but it worked because either outcome was good – if it was a shoot, we had the prospect of Punk working in companies like NJPW and Ring of Honor after his contract expired; if it was a work, we would get a Punk world title run while playing the sort of anti-corporate rebel that Stone Cold played to such success in the Attitude Era. (Of course, WWE managed to screw that up by bringing Punk back too early and largely shifting the feud away from John Cena and onto guys like Alberto Del Rio and Kevin Nash, but my point still stands about the storyline’s potential.) The problem with what AEW is doing is that it only has a satisfying payoff if it ends up being a work – Kenny Omega gradually rounding back into the Best Bout Machine would be a great storyline…if he’s not genuinely hampered by injury. MJF holding up the company for what he feels he deserves would be the most compelling thing they’ve done in the company’s short history…unless he really is frustrated with Tony Khan and ends up leaving AEW for real. Moxley taking advantage of Punk being less than 100% to win the undisputed championship is an awesome moment…unless Punk really is in jeopardy of missing arguably the biggest pay-per-view of the year in his own hometown. Of course, the prevailing theory is that this match was booked as punishment for Punk’s apparently off-script shots at Hangman Page last week, and we may see Punk turn heel in response to pressure from TK and the fans to come back before his foot was fully healed, setting him up for humiliation. Again, that would be great…if that’s the way it plays out. Otherwise, one of the biggest stars in the industry just lost the top title in the company after the shortest reign in the championship’s history with only one successful title defense after a three-minute match. Not, uh, great. That said, I have faith in AEW to turn this into something great, given the company’s history of walking the tightrope with reality-blurring storylines like this, and as I said, it is undeniably great to have a fired-up monster like Moxley as the undisputed champion. Whatever you think of how we got to that result, it’s hard to argue with the outcome.
Worst Matches/Moments of the Night
Normally I consider “worst” to refer to execution – a match or moment that just didn’t work out as intended – but this week, the worst moment was actually well executed by the performers involved but still sucked – Thunder Rosa relinquishing the AEW Women’s World Championship due to injury. As AEW is wont to do, she will remain champion while an interim champion is crowned at All Out, which as usual I think is a good way to go. It establishes that for a champion to lose their title, they have to be beaten for it rather than padding out Vacant‘s championship resume. As we saw with Moxley being interim champ while Punk was out, there is every opportunity for someone to step up and claim the spotlight while the unbeaten champ recovers, and it automatically sets up for a highly anticipated unification match once they return. The most likely outcome is probably Toni Storm winning to set up a clash with her ThunderStorm partner, but I could see Britt Baker taking it if they want to revisit the feud between her and Rosa, or even Jamie Hayter winning her first title in the promotion as a surprise upset. Although I’m sure AEW will make the best of this situation, it’s still terrible timing for Thunder Rosa, whose championship reign had barely gotten off the ground, and it is another blow to the women’s division that certainly doesn’t need any more setbacks.
Parting Shots
- Even though Billy Gunn fighting his sons is not something I care even a little bit about, the “Who’s your daddy” chants that led to Daddy Ass pointing at himself was one of the funniest moments of the night for sure. With that said, please let this feud die or at least get moved off TV now, AEW. Also, I enjoy Swerve Strickland, Keith Lee, and the Acclaimed, but there had to be a better way of getting to a title match between them than having Caster and Bowens get beaten down by the Ass Boys so Swerve in our Glory would make the save and then be like “Oh hey, I guess you guys can challenge us for the titles if you want.”
- AEW needs to sign KiLynn King already. Her matches against Britt Baker and Toni Storm may not have been anything exceptional, but they were certainly better than they had to be considering they were barely more than squash matches, and her overall look and skillset are more than enough to allow her to carve out a spot for herself in the midcard of the women’s division, if nothing else.
- I just love how Cleveland is basically the only place Britt Baker can get booed reliably. Fans there are apparently jealous that her Steelers’ sexual abuser (now former) quarterback is actually likely to get into the hall of fame, unlike the Browns’. That or the fact that Roethlisberger was only suspended for 4 games and apparently Watson is going to miss 11. You’d think having an awful dude as the face of their franchise would help them bond but apparently similarity breeds contempt in this case.
That’s it for another week – kind of an uneven show that didn’t quite live up to its promise in my opinion, but there was plenty of good to offset the weird booking decisions and other disappointments. Thanks for joining me once again, and I hope you’ll come back next week for the go-home show before All Out and, of course, more Chair Shots!
