Chair Shots With Killem Faulkner: No Holds Barred Dynamite

AEW’s flagship show aired live from the campus of Wright State University this week as the company leaned heavily on the in-ring action for this week’s Dynamite. Six matches were promised with three of the company’s champions in action and two titles on the line. Did these bouts deliver a satisfying night of entertainment? Let’s take a look at all the best and worst of this week’s show.

Best Match of the Night

Dang, this was a heck of a night for wrestling. Like, I’d really like to tell you about how much I enjoyed Konosuke Takeshita vs. Brian Cage, but it was the clear fourth-best match of the night. That’s how good the in-ring portion of the show was. About the only thing that separated the three top matches was the quality of their finishes, so let’s start with the obvious worst finish: Jon Moxley vs. Adam Page. I understand why the finish was inconclusive – this feud probably isn’t over and this was just a stopover on the way to a more conclusive finish, probably at Revolution in March – but having Mox reverse his own signature submission hold into a sudden leverage pin still felt like a bit of a damp squib after an excellent match. Logical, as commentary pointed out – you have to know what people will try to do to counter out of your finisher – but still a bit of a letdown. Everything that came before was good enough to qualify it for this segment, though – Page and Mox have been feuding for a good while now, and the physicality has only escalated between them each time they face off. In this case, they couldn’t even wait for the bell to ring to start brawling, fighting up into the crowd with Mox locking on a Figure Four on the arena steps and back to ringside where Page hucked a chair at Moxley’s face, which of course drew blood. Yes, the chair definitely busted him open. Never mind the clear as day shot of him dragging his hand across his forehead as he sat slumped in the corner a few moments later. It was a legit hardway busting open for sure. This match featured some cool spots with Page powerbombing Mox through the timekeeper’s table, hitting a small package driver and a tombstone piledriver for a near fall. Mox got his shots in and even kicked out of a Buckshot Lariat before ultimately winning in the aforementioned fluky finish. I mentioned a couple of weeks back that they could have held off on having these two face off again until the pay-per-view, and I stand by it, but I understand having this match in Dayton to capitalize on Moxley’s popularity in the state of Ohio. Mox and Page are always going to put on a good match, so I don’t have a problem with them wrestling a lot. I just feel like this match wasn’t really that necessary to their feud, as enjoyable as it was.

An equally good match with a better finish was Timothy Thatcher vs. Bryan Danielson, albeit with a very different style. Yes, this match was also very hard-hitting, but primarily in service of a submissions-based catch wrestling showcase. Commentary did an excellent job putting over the Pro Wrestling Noah star as a dangerous mercenary capable of ripping the arm off a healthy opponent let alone someone with a clearly injured wing like Danielson. This match was incredibly simple from a psychological perspective – Danielson sought to protect himself from taking too much punishment to the injured left shoulder while dishing out enough impactful offense to pick up the win, while Thatcher looked to hurt his opponent as much as he could before presumably trying for a submission victory. Again, there was no doubt about who was winning, which has been a theme of Danielson’s latest string of matches in search of a world title shot against MJF at Revolution, but that clearly hasn’t stopped the American Dragon from putting on compelling matches. The story, rather than relying on the drama of whether Danielson can pull off the win, remains what sort of shape Danielson will be in by the time he takes on the champ, and to that end this match was incredibly successful. Rather than going for a submission, which would have required him to use the injured arm for leverage, Danielson instead relied on a strike and a pin, winning off a running knee that finally put his double-tough opponent away. MJF attempting to get directly involved was another nice development in the ongoing storyline, as was the announcement that the world champ would have to face Konosuke Takeshita next week on Dynamite after the Japanese rising star ran him out of the ringside area before he could use the Dynamite Diamond ring. Those developments along with the focus on submissions helped differentiate this match from what we’ve seen in this series of Danielson matches so far, and it delivered as the second-best match of the night.

Best match honors go to the TNT Championship match that saw Darby Allin face Samoa Joe for what promised to be the final time in a no holds barred match. It had the most satisfying finish and an outcome that wasn’t obviously set in stone before the bell rang, which puts it a notch above the rest of the show’s in-ring output. Allin sought to negate the size and power advantage of the King of Television by going all out from the opening bell, entering the ring with a hoodie covered in thumbtacks and immediately delivering a splash to his opponent. Whereas the Moxley blade job was incredibly blatant, Joe was either legitimately busted open (or at least did a great job covering it) after having a table driven into his face as Darby dove from the ring just as Joe was lifting the table to put it into the ring. I absolutely loved the moment when Joe told fans to move out of the way so he could prop a table up against the barricade and the fans rushed to part like the Red Sea – Joe’s legitimacy is unquestionable. Darby ramped up the desperation as the match went on, diving at Joe and putting himself through the aforementioned table, hitting a coffin drop with the thumbtacked hoodie, and ultimately cutting the ropes anchoring the ring mat to set up for something devastating on the exposed wood frame. That was his undoing, of course, as Joe hit a muscle buster off the top turnbuckle onto that exposed frame to win the match and become two-time TNT champ. A matchup like this plays into both men’s strengths as Darby shows off his never-say-die attitude while Joe looks like an unstoppable monster. It’s no wonder why Joe spent so much of his TNA career in the X Division despite not being the prototypical size for that division. The post-match angle reintroducing Wardlow as presumably Joe’s next challenger hammered home the notion that this really should be the final encounter between Joe and Darby (at least for a while). While I’m not the biggest fan of hot-potatoing a title like AEW has with its secondary men’s belt recently, I can at least appreciate that Darby strung together as many title defenses as possible in his short second reign before dropping the belt. With that said, hopefully Wardlow defeating Joe for the title will give way to a longer reign for the War Dog, as the title should not become defined by frequent changes but rather a high quality of matches on weekly television. (For reference, Wardlow is the only champion whose reign lasted longer than 100 days since 2021, and even that was a fairly uneventful run with the belt.) With that said, if this match will hopefully bring an end to the run of rapid-fire title changes, it was a heck of a match to usher in a new era for the belt.

Best Moment of the Night

Once again, I promise I am trying to keep these reviews shorter in 2023, though I’ll admit I allowed the previous section to run a little long because I really don’t have much for this section of the review. I appreciated Jungle Boy Jack Perry declaring that as much as he’s appreciated his recent alliance with Hook, he’s been there and done that with the tag team division, and he now intends to turn his focus to the singles division in 2023. Jade Cargill winning her 50th consecutive match was a great milestone even if the match itself was just average. Uhh…The Elite announcing they’ll defend the trios titles against AR Fox and Top Flight sounds like a positive development, right? (I won’t even speculate on how many takes it took for Nick Jackson to hit that jump shot.) Give one of those moment of the night, I guess – I’ve done my part by nominating three moments that were good. Let’s move on to the next section.

Worst Matches/Moments of the Night

Hey, the Gunn Club vs. The Acclaimed still isn’t particularly good. In other news, the sky is still blue. There really wasn’t anything else worth noting on the negative side this week.

Parting Shots

• I highly recommend checking out Ring of Honor’s tribute to Jay Briscoe – as much as I appreciate what AEW was able to do last week, RoH was his home. Plus the RoH show was designed for Youtube rather than broadcast TV, so they were less constrained than AEW was by the powers that be at Warner/Discovery. It was a fitting celebration of his life and legacy. You can find that show here.
• I know heels like to set up stipulations for babyfaces to “earn” another shot at them, but the Jericho Appreciation Society’s “Garcia-Guevara gauntlet” idea was overly complicated and poorly named. If the gauntlet doesn’t begin with Danny Garcia and end with Sammy Guevara, what are we even doing? I get that it’s more properly the Garcia/Guevara gauntlet, meaning Ricky Starks will have to face either Garcia or Guevara, but at that point it’s more of a 2point0 gauntlet since Starks will have to face both Daddy Magic and Cool Hand Ang regardless. Then again, why not just throw the entire JAS at him? It’s literally two more guys to put in his way.

That’ll do it for another week – some really good matches with not a lot of filler in between. We still have another month until the pay-per-view, so plenty of time to bring rivalries and angles into sharper focus. Wrestling-heavy episodes like this are all about building up the perceived quality of the performers, which is necessary in addition to more story-building shows that heighten the audience’s emotional investment. With a longer time between shows, AEW can afford to give us a solid mixture of both. Thanks for joining me once again, and I hope to see all of you back here next week for more Chair Shots!