Chair Shots With Killem Faulkner: Forbidden Door Go-Home Dynamite

With this year’s edition of the NJPW crossover show Forbidden Door on Sunday, AEW’s flagship show had just one episode left to convince anyone who might be on the fence about ordering the pay-per-view. One title match was announced in advance, as well as a tag match featuring singles champions from three different promotions, and three of AEW’s most popular wrestlers were scheduled to speak to the live Chicago crowd. Although hype for Forbidden Door is already fairly high, the biggest question for any go-home show is always how well it balanced the need to keep everyone healthy for the big show while still delivering a satisfying TV show. So how well did this edition of Dynamite deliver on that front? Let’s look at all the best and worst of this week’s show.

Best Match of the Night

I’ve mentioned WWE 2K’s GM Mode before, but if this week’s Dynamite had been booked in GM Mode, it definitely would have been criticized for the match order. Arguably the second worst match of the night – the Hardy Brothers vs. the Gunns – was the opener, and although the main event (not counting promos) was better, there was at least one match in the midcard that was better. (In case you were wondering, the worst match of the night, unsurprisingly, was the concession stand brawl between Mark Briscoe and Jeff Jarrett, but even that was mostly inoffensive except for the suggestion that Briscoe needed so much help to put down Double J, and although it was overbooked like few matches are anymore, I don’t really have anything too negative to say about a dumb fun match that ended up being dumb and kinda fun.) Let’s start with the midcard match that wasn’t better than the main event, a trios match that pitted Chris Jericho, Sammy Guevara, & Minoru Suzuki against Action Andretti, Darius Martin, & AR Fox. This match was fine for a standard trios bout, but the babyfaces may as well have had a big neon sign on the screen reading “WE’RE NOT GOING TO WIN” when they made their entrance. As I’ve said many times before, a predictable finish isn’t an inherently terrible thing in a weekly TV match, but it does hold the overall quality of the match back a little when it’s this obvious that one team has no chance. The losers in this match were specifically chosen because they’re good enough performers to put on a quality match and no real storyline that would interfere with what the heels have going on at the moment. That’s fine, I guess, but it does mean this segment only served to give Jericho, Guevara, and Suzuki a win and allow them to have a platform to speak about what they’re up to these days. That’s it. Not the most efficient use of TV time, but sometimes that’s just what needs to happen to keep the show humming along. And like I said, Fox, Martin, and Andretti played their roles well and put on a good showing. Their high-flying offense contrasted well with the harder-hitting, more technical style of their opponents. Unsurprisingly, though, Jericho clamped the Liontamer onto Martin while Suzuki and Guevara held off his partners until he tapped. There was a minor tease of dissention between Jericho and Guevara, the latter of whom has effectively turned babyface despite his mentor’s wishes, as Sammy tagged in the murder grandpa instead of the slightly unhinged uncle whose society he is supposed to be loyal to. Otherwise, winning this match was mainly just a means to an end for the post-match callout of Sting, Darby Allin, and a partner (presumably from New Japan) to be named later. Fun while it lasted, but not much of substance.

Okay, let’s talk about the main event TBS Championship match between Kris Statlander and Taya Valkyrie. It may not have been the best match on the show, but it wasn’t undeserving of the spot it was put in. I appreciate the effort to make the TBS Championship more prestigious (especially with the TNT Championship being shifted to Collision) and Taya is a quality challenger on paper even if the storyline has mostly been her side-eyeing the new champ backstage and not much else. Most likely we won’t see Statlander at Forbidden Door, so this is probably the payoff for that mini-rivalry before she’ll start something new afterwards, and from that perspective this match was a success – it felt competitive and went on for a good amount of time with a definitive finish. It’s also nice to see signs that AEW is willing to devote time to a second women’s feud now that Collision has alleviated some of the congestion on the men’s side of the roster – no Outcasts, no Britt Baker, nothing related to the women’s world championship here. Statlander continues to look like the perfect choice to inherit the TBS mantle from Jade Cargill – I hope Tony Khan has something big planned for the former champ, but I think Statlander winning the belt feels like the start of a new era, and putting a title defense like this in the main event is just further evidence of AEW’s renewed commitment to making the secondary title in the women’s division matter.

Just because the TBS Championship match was deserving of the main event doesn’t necessarily mean it was the best match of the night, which in my opinion was Orange Cassidy & Katsuyori Shibata vs. Daniel Garcia & Zack Sabre Jr. Look, I get that this match was basically the usual AEW formula of putting four incredibly talented wrestlers into the ring and letting them do their thing, but there’s a reason that formula gets used so much – it works. As I suggested last week, this match did end up serving a larger purpose as it set up a four-way for Orange Cassidy’s International Championship at the pay-per-view, but even without that context, this was still a great pre-Forbidden Door crossover match. Sabre takes professional wrestling too seriously not to be offended by OC’s lackadaisical approach, so of course they had to find themselves in the ring together for the latter’s signature Kicks of Doom. Shibata, the Ring of Honor Pure Champion, found himself in a situation in which both of his opponents could hang with him hold for hold and arguably had to channel his partner’s less serious approach to the grappling arts to try to stay one step ahead. With how evenly matched the two teams appeared to be throughout the match, it was clear that only a small misstep was needed to determine the outcome, so it made perfect sense that an errant Orange Punch ended up costing his team and helped explain why Cassidy and Shibata will go from partners to opponents on Sunday night. It feels a little unfair that a match featuring three champions only requires one to put his belt on the line, but I suppose a winner-takes-all match would require a ton more coordination and planning than a single title match. This tag match was a good preview of that four-way without giving away or holding back too much – as I mentioned in the intro, a go-home show has to find just the right balance between those two things, so it is no surprise that the best match of the night was the one that most successfully threaded that particular needle.

Best Moment of the Night

The in-ring action this week was stronger in my opinion than the promo segments, which is odd because there were a lot of them and you’d figure the final show before a big pay-per-view would feature more talking than wrestling. The promo segment between Maxwell Jacob Friedman and Adam Cole was nothing groundbreaking, for instance, but there was a single moment within that segment that stood out to me. I mentioned last week that Cole losing last week’s eliminator match might lead to the overdone storyline of MJF forcing his challenger to jump through a bunch of hoops to kill time before their eventual pay-per-view faceoff, so although I don’t think the “how will they coexist” tag team pairing is generally a worthwhile trope in modern professional wrestling, I did like that it was different than what AEW often defaults to with its world champ. In particular, I loved the fact that both Friedman and Cole told Tony Schiavone to shut up (as both men have a pre-existing beef with the announcer) at the exact same moment before he could announce that they were randomly paired together for the blind eliminator tournament to determine the new #1 contenders for FTR’s tag gold. Yes, I think this tournament is a bad idea in general – nothing says “we’ve run out of ideas for our tag division” more than an entire tournament pitting randomly generated pairs of singles wrestlers against each other – but it gives us something fresh for the men’s championship scene if nothing else.

I’m going to lump two separate moments together for moment of the night since they were basically two parts of the same moment, but I will argue that the second part was stronger than the first and so should be considered separate moments with the former being the runner up and the latter being the actual moment of the night. Following the women’s match, Eddie Kingston paid off his earlier promise to pick the fifth member of his team with the Elite for their match against the Blackpool Combat Club and Shota Umino. Jon Moxley and the BCC emerged to confront him, and Kingston pointed out that he wasn’t choosing to side against his friend as Mox has been the one making the “us vs. them” distinction in this situation by siding with Kingston’s bitter enemy Claudio Castagnoli. Mox was hardly afforded the opportunity to respond, likely due to legitimate time constraints, before Kingston announced Tomohiro Ishiii would be his team’s fifth member and a brawl broke out between the BCC and their Forbidden Door opponents. In the midst of this glorious display of violence, our second moment occurred as Bryan Danielson called out and was confronted by Kazuchika Okada, his opponent at Forbidden Door. Danielson had claimed that Okada was nowhere to be found before the Rainmaker’s music hit, and we got a tantalizing preview of the match between two of the greatest wrestlers in the world. Danielson was able to escape his opponent’s finisher, leaving Wheeler Yuta to eat the Japanese star’s signature lariat as the show closed. It is fair to say both of these moments were a little rushed, but having a final showdown that highlighted two significant pay-per-view matches close the show was a smart idea even if they didn’t have enough time to really let it breathe. Having Okada and Danielson come face to face made more of an impact than Kingston and Ishii trying to hold their own despite being outnumbered, though Kingston’s promo was a bit better than Danielson’s callout, so feel free to call these moments co-winners if you like. I made my choice, but your Chair Shots head canon is your business.

Worst Matches/Moments of the Night

There was nothing particularly terrible this week, but I will say I was a bit disappointed by the confirmation we will not be getting CM Punk vs. KENTA at Forbidden Door. I know, I know, neither KENTA nor New Japan particularly want that match to happen, despite the obvious GTS vs. GTS setup, but AEW has largely lived up to its reputation for finding a way to deliver on the dream matches its fans most desperately want to see. So the announcement that Punk would be wrestling Satoshi Kojima at Forbidden Door in the first round of the Owen Hart tournament instead was still a disappointing but inevitable development.

Parting Shots

• I understand that AEW needed to get the brackets out for the Owen Hart tourney with several opening matches occurring this weekend between Rampage on Friday, Collision on Saturday, and Forbidden Door on Sunday, but what an anticlimactic announcement it was. I would have greatly preferred if they had only revealed the matches that will be happening this weekend and saved the full bracket for next week or, more appropriately, just don’t start the tournament until next week. I know Punk needed an opponent for Forbidden Door and it adds significance to Nyla Rose vs. Willow Nightingale, Anna Jay vs. Skye Blue, and Athena vs. Billie Starkz, but it’s really hard to care about that with Forbidden Door looming over everything. Once the pay-per-view is over, we’ll all be ready for something new, which makes next week’s Dynamite the ideal time to announce the tournament rather than shoehorning it into an episode that already had plenty to accomplish in just two hours.
• Apparently the Elite weren’t in attendance for this week’s show because Punk was planned to appear, which seems petty but I feel like they would have gotten booed by the Chicago fans anyway and that doesn’t serve their current storyline, so I don’t really care that they skipped out. Okada’s appearance in the closing segment did a decent enough job at covering up the fact that Kenny and the Bucks almost certainly wouldn’t want to leave their partners Ishii and Kingston to get beaten down ahead of their 10-man tag, so there really wasn’t anything they needed to be there in person for anyway.
• I’m going to continue the trend from last year’s edition of Forbidden Door and not make predictions – for one thing, there are a ton of matches that haven’t been given much if any screen time to indicate which way they might go, so my predictions would largely be nothing but barely informed guesses. In addition, the whole point of this mashup show is to enjoy the wrestling itself rather than worrying too much about the overall storyline implications or results of the event. Most if not all of the champions will likely retain, with probably one or two surprises thrown in that will be resolved by the time All In rolls around, but the show itself lives and dies on how many dream matches it can deliver rather than who wins or loses.

That’s it for another week – you could argue that last week’s show did more of the heavy lifting in terms of creating hype for the pay-per-view, but this show still largely succeeded at what it needed to do even if it didn’t provide any hugely significant revelations about what to expect at Forbidden Door. I am very excited for this show on Sunday, as I am for the second episode of Collision on Saturday, and it does feel like AEW is starting to rebuild some of the momentum it had lost over the past year. I hope you all have a great weekend, enjoy the pay-per-view if you’ll be watching it, and please do join me once again next week for more Chair Shots!