Chair Shots With Killem Faulkner: Grand Slam Dynamite 2023

Arthur Ashe Stadium once again played host to AEW’s annual special edition Grand Slam show, and the stacked card looked set to reflect the significance of the venue with four title matches scheduled ahead of time. With only a week and a half until the inaugural WrestleDream pay-per-view, did AEW deliver an exciting warm-up to its next big show?

Best Match of the Night

This show was pretty much wall-to-wall wrestling, which is great for this segment of the review and not so great for the next segment. (Spoiler alert.) Of the five matches, only two didn’t deliver up to my expectations for different reasons that I’ll discuss a little later. I will just say now that there are probably two matches that most people would have swapped, but I will hopefully defend my choices well enough that you can understand even if you disagree. I’ll start off with the first one that is probably not where you’d expect it to be – the women’s title match between Saraya and Toni Storm. First and foremost, I get it, there was too much outside interference and shenanigans. But I actually find those shenanigans entertaining so they enhanced the match rather than detracting from it in my opinion. From all indications, Saraya isn’t capable of having the kind of match in 2023 that she would have had back in, say, 2014, but given those limitations she and Storm put on a good showing. Plus Storm’s new character is so entertaining that she can keep the audience invested even if the match isn’t a mile-a-minute spotfest or a technical masterpiece. All she has to do is crawl under the ring, grab an odd number of shoes for…some reason, and go to town thwacking Ruby Soho with two of them before cracking the champ across the forehead with the other. Comedic wrestling gold. The match ended up being fairly competitive too, with some close nearfalls late in the match as the intensity rose. The only thing that threw me off a little was the fact that Toni Storm was apparently the babyface in the match, yet she was targeting Saraya’s injured neck like she wanted to cripple her. Which is, um…not a real babyface thing to do, Toni. I mean, I guess her character is unhinged and crazy and that gets cheers because it’s unique and interesting, but it isn’t so much that she’s good all of a sudden after being a villain for so long. Anyway, of course Saraya retained in her first title defense, but if she holds onto the belt beyond WrestleDream I will be very surprised. Like if she is still champ at Full Gear, I don’t know what we’re doing. Maybe filling time until Jamie Hayter returns, I dunno. But for the time being, this was a good first defense and a fairly entertaining segment overall.

Runner-up for best match of the night is the main event between Maxwell Jacob Friedman and Samoa Joe for the AEW World Championship. The crowd was super hot for this match and MJF as the local hero, and both delivered up to expectations. Joe spent the majority of the match basically daring the ref to disqualify him – MJF may have gotten away with an eye poke or some biting here and there, but Joe put MJF through a table and hit a piledriver on the exposed floor (not concrete, as the announce team was quick to point out) that probably should have resulted in a disqualification. Adam Cole got involved toward the end, encouraging his tag partner to make a comeback as Joe threatened to make him pass out, so commentary just ignored the fact that he wasn’t there to prevent Joe from dropping his brochacho straight on his dome. (More on why Cole wasn’t there from the beginning in a moment.) However much cheating happened in full view of the ref, though, it’s what happened behind his back that ultimately turned the tide, as MJF suckered in the ref with the Dynamite Diamond ring to hit a low-blow kick behind his back, then removed part of his wrist tape and choked out Joe before transitioning into a more legal-looking submission hold for the win. That’s not to say this match was nothing but chicanery, however – MJF kicked out of a muscle buster, while Joe narrowly avoided defeat off an impressive Liger Bomb from the champ. MJF surprisingly played the underdog babyface well, at least by his normally heelish standards, with Joe as the unstoppable heel who would do whatever it took to put his opponent down permanently. The New York crowd was all in on this match, going absolutely wild when MJF hit the *sigh* kangaroo kick and biting on every nearfall as the match neared its conclusion. On a lot of nights, this would have been the best match, but Grand Slam isn’t just any show, so it wasn’t.

As good as everything else on the card was, nothing was able to top the opening match between Claudio Castagnoli and Eddie Kingston. Both men put their respective titles (the Ring of Honor World Championship and the NJPW Strong Openweight Championship) on the line, which guaranteed one man would put an end to their long-running rivalry by becoming a dual champion. I don’t know if I’ve been as clear about how much I enjoy Claudio as a wrestler as I have been about other wrestlers (Bryan Danielson, Kenny Omega, CM Punk, etc.) but rest assured that I am a fan, though I absolutely loved how much the New York crowd hated him and wanted him to lose. Sure, that’s mostly because they really wanted to see Kingston win, but I do feel like Castagnoli has grown more and more effective as a heel since joining the Blackpool Combat Club. As one might have expected, this was a very strike-heavy match in which both men pounded on each other outside the ring, inside the ring, above the ring, below the ring, between…no, just the first two. I guess those are kind of the only options, really. Until somebody invents the jetpack hologram barbed wire piranha tank deathmatch…I mean, until a wrestling promotion has the guts to implement the hot new match type I just invented. (And pay me a handsome licensing fee, of course.) Claudio and Eddie started mixing in some suplexes and powerbombs as the match ramped up, countering and blocking each other as much as possible, culminating with Kingston kicking out of a Ricola Bomb to a massive ovation. Kingston’s spinning backfist was his best and most reliable weapon throughout the match, and he finally connected on one that opened the door for him to hit the decisive powerbomb. Kingston becoming a world champ for the first time in AEW/RoH was obviously the biggest takeaway here, elevated by the absolutely electric live crowd giving his win arguably the biggest reaction of the night. The show of respect between the two men afterwards, in which Claudio extended a hand to the victor before handing over the title and making a hasty exit, was perfectly befitting the storyline between them – Kingston had to earn this begrudging respect, but both men still don’t particularly like each other so there was no embrace or verbal burying of the hatchet. There’s no reason this feud needs to be revisited, but the nature of their dislike for each other meant a massive, showy blowoff wasn’t necessary. Just a terse handshake, a title changing hands, and both men going their separate ways. Oh, and of course, a great match preceding all of that.

Best Moment of the Night

I don’t often give an honorable mention to something from a match that I already talked about in the best match section of the review, but I’m going to give one to Ian Riccaboni, who greatly enhanced the Eddie/Claudio match with his knowledge and insight into their history and feud. I particularly wanted to applaud his pre-match commentary in which he talked about how Eddie is his own worst enemy and that if he could find a way to overcome himself, he would have a chance at overcoming the champ. It was a great way of explaining Kingston’s character and framing the challenge ahead of him in what Riccaboni termed a handicap match of Kingston vs. himself and Claudio. If this was your first Eddie Kingston match, you’d still have had a pretty good idea of the storyline and what the stakes were just from the opening narration. You could argue that the match itself was good enough that it didn’t need too much buildup, but it did absolutely add a little something extra to an already special match, so it deserves its own shoutout.

As I mentioned in the previous section of the review, there was relatively little of note on this episode outside of the abundant wrestling on offer, but the main storyline that was built up through backstage segments and pre-taped promos was the ongoing Kingdom/Roderick Strong kerfuffle with MJF and Adam Cole. The first of these segments involved Cole visiting Strong in “the hospital” which was an obvious set but, y’know, in a kind of self-aware intentionally unconvincing way. Strong remained unconvinced that Cole really cares about his “neck health” which remains a much funnier line than it really has any right to be. Cole tried to show concern while making it clear that Strong is clearly exaggerating, but he had to leave to make sure MJF was ready for the main event of the show. Later in the evening, in another pre-recorded backstage segment, MJF and Cole arrived at the arena in a Porsche Taycan, a surprisingly eco-friendly choice in transportation for the self-proclaimed scumbag. MJF cut a promo on Samoa Joe while Cole took a phone call from Roddy, which ended with him walking out on his tag partner to tend to his ailing friend. Cole is obviously being pulled in two directions at once, and these segments made it clear that it is unsustainable for him to try to support both of his friends at the same time. Being there for Max forced him to leave Roddy, and being there for Roddy force him to leave Max until it was nearly too late and Max had already eaten a piledriver on the non-concrete plexiglass covering over the basketball court under the ringside area that I mentioned earlier. At some point, this is all going to reach a breaking point and Cole is probably going to be forced to choose between his tag partner and his longtime friends, but in the meantime we get some fun segments like this with Roddy shouting “ADAM!!!” in a comedic tone of voice and Adam saying “you’re not going to die, dude” as he’s talking to his friend who’s in the world’s creakiest “hospital” bed.

The best segment of the night also involved the world champion, but in this case was just him by himself: the special entrance video for Maxwell Jacob Friedman. The champ was getting ready to enter the arena when a small towheaded child called out to him, which caught the scarf-wearing Salt of the Earth’s attention. “Go get ’em, champ!” the precocious tot implored his hero. The boy and his father waited with rapt anticipation as the Triple-B wearing champion approached, leaned over the boy, and bequeathed his scarf upon the child while whispering something in his ear. The champ then walked back down the hallway toward the ring as the boy exclaimed, “Dad? I’m adopted?” The whole segment was very obviously inspired by the classic “Mean” Joe Greene commercial, which had a heartwarming follow-up many years later if you didn’t know, and the over-the-top sickly sweetness of it all was clearly building to a punchline only the people’s scumbag could deliver. It set up MJF’s heavily New York-tinged entrance perfectly as a winking reference to how beloved he is among his people even though he really shouldn’t be. MJF’s whole babyface gimmick is basically one big “I can’t believe you people are letting me get away with this” and at every turn he panders while simultaneously kicking his fans for being naïve enough to support him. In essence, the gawking little boy is the perfect encapsulation of how MJF sees his fans – dumb, gullible, prone to hero worship, and eagerly willing to humiliate themselves for the absolute crumbs he offers them. And he’s completely right. All it takes is wearing a jacket with Jets, Giants, Mets, Bills, and Islanders logos on it and Mets-inspired ring gear and entrance graphics and the crowd laps it up. He doesn’t need to show any real compassion or fondness for his hometown crowd. They’re his cult and he’s their leader. Even Tony Schiavone, who made a point of pointing out what a douchebag he is every time his face appeared on our television screens, seems to have suffered complete amnesia now that he smiles and waves instead of hurling insults at the live audience. Maxwell has to be impressed by how easy it’s been to turn things around for himself and wonder why he didn’t think of this grift sooner.

Worst Matches/Moments of the Night

I referenced earlier the fact that there were two matches that didn’t hit home for me as well as they should have. The obvious one was Jon Moxley vs. Rey Fenix, which won’t officially get a spot in my “worst of” segment because the finish obviously got messed up due to Mox’s apparent concussion. It sucks that this match had such a wonky finish in which Mox didn’t kick out and Rick Knox just stopped counting for no apparent reason, which led to the Fenix Driver spot being repeated for the win, but honestly if it weren’t for the failed kickout this would have been a totally reasonable finish. How many times has someone in AEW hit a big signature move, their opponent kicked out, and then they immediately transitioned to some other signature move for the win? Hopefully Moxley is okay and even though it was apparently an audible, I hope we get a solid month of Fenix as International Champion while Mr. Paquette gets some well-deserved rest. I stand by my previous statement that he absolutely does not need a midcard title, and although this wasn’t by any means an ideal way of getting the title off him, I am perfectly fine if he just disappears for a bit and ignores the title completely when he returns. Anyway, the Moxley injury sucked and deserves an honorable mention as the worst moment on the show, but the match itself was pretty good before that.

The match that you probably weren’t expecting here is Chris Jericho vs. Sammy Guevara, and although the match itself was far from bad and I am willing to hope I’m proven completely wrong here, I really feel like turning Sammy Guevara heel was the worst misstep on a show with very few missteps. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciated the callbacks to Jericho vs. Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania 19, and I’m okay with Jericho being a babyface for a while, though I will argue that the route to his “good guy by default” alignment has been far from smooth. But Sammy is one of the company’s pillars who has garnered go-away heat for a more significant portion of his AEW career than cheers. He’s finally built up enough goodwill with the audience that he’s genuinely getting cheered… and the company turns him heel. It’s exactly the same thing they did to Konosuke Takeshita, which has basically worked out since he’s aligned with the most hated heel in the company, Don Callis, but I question whether it will work a second time. (I mean, assuming Guevara actually ends up joining the Callis family, something we bafflingly won’t get confirmation on until Rampage on Friday for some reason.) Especially with Chris Jericho as the ostensible protagonist. Look, I’m a huge Jericho fan, but I completely understand why so many fans of professional wrestling in 2023 don’t get his appeal. The crowd is way more likely to reject Jericho and cheer Guevara so long as Callis isn’t onscreen with them. So why does AEW insist on ice skating uphill? This company built its reputation on giving fans what they want and yet when the crowd delivers a ready-made fan favorite right into its lap, they ignore it and go the other direction. Again, I hope I’m wrong here and the eventual Jericho/Guevara feud ends up being amazing. I just feel like it’s a really weird decision to turn Sammy heel after letting him be cheered organically for like, maybe a month?

Parting Shots

• Is AEW cursed? It seems like every time they have a big show, something negative happens to offset the excitement. The original Forbidden Door was awesome, but so many wrestlers got injured or couldn’t appear. All Out 2022 was great, but then Brawl Out happened. All In 2023 was the company’s biggest show to date, but Jack Perry got suspended and CM Punk got fired over a backstage fight. Now Jon Moxley and Adam Cole get injured on what was otherwise a greatly successful Grand Slam. I know I’m cherry-picking those examples. I’m just saying, it sure would be nice if we could have a single unequivocally positive show.
• Collision is still watchable but not nearly as fun or watchable since CM Punk got fired. So maybe I won’t do a weekly “here’s what I liked or found interesting from Collision” bit anymore. I may still comment on it occasionally, but probably not every week. Sorry not sorry.
• Speaking of CM Punk, I loved the callback to MJF’s victory over CM Punk which was overturned due to the ref discovering the wrist tape he used illegally to give him the win. This time around, as the wrist tape fell out from his armpit as the ref raised his arm in victory, Adam Cole was there to swoop in and scoop it into his pocket while Max embraced the ref to provide a distraction. Either MJF learned his lesson from the first time around and quickly instructed Cole on what to do, or Cole has been studying his partner’s AEW history and knew what kind of trouble it could cause if the ref noticed the tape. Either way, it was an incredibly well-executed little moment.

That’s it for another week – Grand Slam was overall really great in my opinion, though I don’t think it’ll go down in history as one of the absolute best special episodes of Dynamite of all time. That’s not to say that it wasn’t a great episode of wrestling television, but rather that AEW has put on a lot of exceptional weekly shows over the years. Thanks for joining me once again, and I hope you’ll all come back next week for more Chair Shots!