Chair Shots With Killem Faulkner: Hurricane Ian Dynamite

Philadelphia may not have been directly affected by Hurricane Ian ripping its way through the Gulf of Mexico, but with many of AEW’s performers hailing from areas of Florida that are directly in its path, it was pretty inevitable that this week’s Dynamite would be affected by wrestlers needing to change travel accommodations as a result of the storm. Let me say first and foremost that I hope everyone in the path of the hurricane is staying safe, which is 100% more important than a silly professional wrestling show. I do not blame anyone for missing the show, nor do I blame AEW for having to shift things around at the last minute with regard to its match card. That said, however, there were certain fundamental elements of this week’s show that appear to have remained intact, and we did get three world title matches to anchor the show. How successful were those matches and the company’s attempts to book on the fly?

Best Match of the Night

AEW always has wrestling during its commercial breaks, but this week felt like way too much of the in-ring action took place in picture-in-picture. I’m sure the proportion of each match that was split-screened wasn’t any different than usual, but it felt like the formula for each match followed the same formula: match entrances, brief introductory action, commercial, match conclusion. If you’re a fan of narrative structure, you probably notice that it’s less than ideal to have the middle part, where most of the action generally takes place, swallowed up by that break. Sure, the ending (and more significantly the outcome) carries a lot of weight and plays a crucial role in the way we receive the match, but for TV matches where the result is often not in any real doubt, it hurts the audience’s enjoyment of the match if we don’t get enough of the action. It’s not about the destination but the journey, so it hurt to have so little of that journey on the screen with the live crowd and the announcers to soundtrack it.

That’s a longwinded way of saying I didn’t really vibe with a lot of the in-ring action this week. Probably the biggest victim of a commercial break interrupting the action to an excessive degree was Jon Moxley vs. Juice Robinson for the AEW World Championship, which just missed the mark for an official runner-up spot this week, but it wasn’t the only match that just didn’t feel like it hit its spots the way it should’ve, and the overall show felt fairly disjointed as a result. A lot of that probably has to do with the aforementioned shuffling of the card, which as I mentioned is not something I think is fair to hold against AEW, even if we’ll never really know the degree to which things had to be changed at the last minute. That said, I would like to highlight two matches that stood out among the rest. I continue to be skeptical of Saraya’s role in AEW, which she did little to dispel with her promo about the state of the women’s division (while declaring herself to be “the revolution”) and set up the interim women’s title match as a lumberjack match despite, y’know, lots of wrestlers not being available, but the match itself between Toni Storm and Serena Deeb was able to rise above the muck. I’ve made no secret of my appreciation for Deeb’s technical ability, and it was unsurprisingly on display once again in this match, but Storm still managed to shine as the new champion needs to do at this point in her reign. It was interesting to see Deeb kick out of Storm Zero, which isn’t something you’d expect to see on a regular weekly show rather than a pay-per-view, but Storm got to show her versatility by finding a way to win without her standard finisher. An avalanche piledriver is one heck of a backup plan, for the record. Deeb may win the women’s championship someday, but it was clearly not her time on this night. That said, with the only real justification for this match being that she pinned the champ a couple of weeks ago in a tag match, I don’t think it would have been realistic to expect the challenger to pull off the upset. I liked the fact that the lumberjacks did ultimately fade into the background – there was some nonsense with Britt Baker and Jamie Hayter, but Willow Nightingale ran Hayter off partway through the match and allowed the focus to shift firmly back to the in-ring action. I wouldn’t call this a must-watch match by any means, but it was better than the majority of the other matches on the card.

The best match of the night, unsurprisingly, was the one that managed to escape the above-mentioned formula, mainly by having two commercial breaks instead of just one, meaning we actually got more of the middle section of the match with actual wrestling. That match, of course, was Chris Jericho vs. Bandido for the Ring of Honor World Championship. I saw a lot of complaining online ahead of this match about how there wasn’t enough of a storyline and not enough of the audience knew who Bandido is and why this match matters, and apparently the broadcast crew saw those same complaints because they went out of their way to emphasize the fact that Bandido was never officially beaten for the title to make it clear just how important the match was from an RoH perspective and how disrespectful Jericho was to treat this match like a warmup for bigger things to come. The match started off somewhat slow, though Jericho making a mockery of the Code of Honor by turning it into a sarcastic “secret handshake” that ended with him flipping off his opponent was admittedly pretty hilarious. I still think Jericho’s reign will end up as a footnote in the title’s history and mainly serves to pad his already stuffed resume, but it is relatively harmless considering there is nothing really going on as far as RoH is concerned at the moment. Anyone who holds the title during this period is basically by definition a placeholder, which makes it more understandable that Tony Khan is using it as an opportunity to crown Claudio Castagnoli for the first time in his career and give Jericho something to do while offering him some fresh matchups. By that standard, this match delivered on the promise of Jericho’s reign. Bandido is one of the more underrated wrestlers in the world today, and he put on an impressive display of his athletic prowess in this match, hitting a flipping fallaway slam off the top turnbuckle and a bridging 21 Plex. He also delivered an Eddie Guerrero tribute with an excellent frog splash, which played off his own Mexican heritage and Jericho’s history with Guerrero from their WCW and WWE days. Jericho made him look good while also showing he could turn things back in his favor at a moment’s notice, and the buildup from the Walls of Jericho to the Liontamer that ultimately won the match was a well-told subplot. The blood that stained Bandido’s mask from the inside, apparently the result of an errant blow from Jericho early in the match, also added a unique element to the match as he sought to gut through the injury to no avail. Again, I wouldn’t say this was a can’t-miss match by ordinary AEW standards, but there were some cool spots and it was the overall highlight of the night from an in-ring perspective.

Best Moment of the Night

It might be a minor moment in the grand scheme of things, but the fans chanting “Jamie Hayter” while Britt Baker was trying to insert herself in the women’s title picture for approximately the 10 millionth time warmed my heart. I think Hayter is a future star waiting to happen, and I do think Baker trying to overshadow her (and the rest of the women’s division by association) is actually a good way to go even though it seems like a vocal portion of the fanbase has grown tired of her schtick and impatient for something new. Setting up Baker as a roadblock that Hayter will have to overcome makes a lot of sense, though I understand feeling like AEW should have pulled the trigger on that rivalry already rather than continuing to drag it out. Still, when Hayter gets reactions like the one she got from the crowd in Philly, it seems like the company is doing something right with this storyline and by extension its women’s division overall.

Best moment of the night goes to MJF and Wheeler Yuta, both of whom had their moment to shine in separate but interconnected segments. MJF being good at promos and Yuta being good at beating people up is not new news and in point of fact is actually fairly old news at this point, but MJF did cut a fairly good promo, though as Yuta pointed out it was fairly formulaic, and Yuta got his revenge by pulling off a sneak attack in MJF’s luxury box after he watched Jon Moxley defend the world title against Juice Robinson. MJF took to the mic to taunt Moxley and Adam Page, who won a battle royale on Rampage to become the new #1 contender, about fighting to become the one to lose the title to him, but apparently his big gang of backup guys headed by Stokely Hathaway was slacking on the security duty because Yuta was able to enter the luxury box undetected and jump him from behind. Of course Yuta is over in his home town, but he’s definitely gotten over in other places as a result of his feud with MJF, even if it is all but certain to end in his defeat next week. It has been the very definition of a filler feud, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been a highlight in the meantime.

Worst Matches/Moments of the Night

I feel like I’ve already damned this show with faint praise enough – even as I’ve been like “this was pretty good I guess” I’ve also been pointing out all the limitations of those matches and moments. Hey, did I mention that there was a hurricane and not everyone was available? So uh…yeah, I’m not going to kick this show while it’s down. It was fine, not a great show by Dynamite‘s usual standards but not terrible by emergency booking standards.

Parting Shots

• Did AEW bring Luigi Primo back as a heel because the internet turned on him after realizing he’s an anti-vaxxer? Just a week after counting on him to get babyface sympathy when Ethan Page kicked him in the face, there he was in Philly spinning dough and extolling the virtues of New York-style pizza to draw fully-deserved boos. But hey, I’ll take any excuse to trot out my favorite article on the relative quality of New York pizza vs. other state specialties. (It also helps that they absolutely nailed the #1 spot.)
• Speaking of the opening segment, it seemed like Daniel Garcia officially turned on Chris Jericho without really officially turning on him. Rejecting the hat was hardly a “List of KO”-level betrayal, and he didn’t exactly rip off the obnoxious purple jumpsuit or anything, but agreeing to team with Bryan Danielson against Jericho and Sammy Guevara sure seemed like a defection. I wonder if Garcia is going to end up striking out on his own as Danielson made a point of emphasizing that Garcia could stay with the JAS or join the BCC, but that’s a false dichotomy – nothing requires him to be part of either group, and it would make a stronger statement about his prospects for the future if he laid out both men who have been trying to recruit him and stood tall as his own man.
• It was interesting for the announcers to note that Juice Robinson is a free agent – there was no “X is #AllElite” graphic that I noticed, so presumably he hasn’t put ink to paper yet, but it would be a natural development. Stacking talent for a Ring of Honor relaunch that may not happen in any major way doesn’t make a ton of sense, but he would be a good fit if they can ever figure out a television deal. That’s not to say he is a bad fit in AEW, of course, but I wonder where he would slot in with so much main event-level talent already under contract.
• Not to harp on the Saraya stuff, but it really seems like AEW is trying to eat its cake and have it too (yes, that’s the correct phrasing, just like “heel over head” isn’t just a forgotten Puddle of Mudd song) by positioning her as the savior of the women’s division while not committing to her ever actually wrestling. It doesn’t make sense to sign her if she can’t wrestle, but they can’t very well keep her off TV until then as her star power will likely draw more casual eyes to the product. (Not to mention Tony Khan couldn’t run the risk of WWE re-signing her in the meantime.) I’ll give AEW this – if having Saraya book the women’s division to give us more high-quality women’s matches while annoying Britt Baker until she demands a match with the semi-authority figure, the whole thing will have been a success even if the early days haven’t been amazing. Unless that or something equally satisfying happens, however, I don’t see much room for optimism.

That’s it for another week – like I said, not an awful show under the circumstances, but nothing worth going out of your way to watch if you missed it. Thanks for joining me once again, and I hope to see you all back here next week for more Chair Shots!