Chair Shots With Killem Faulkner: Post-Spookytimes Dynamite

Halloween may have been on Tuesday, but AEW still had a few tricks and treats saved up for this week’s episode of Dynamite from the KFC Yum! Center in Louisville, KY. Namely, championship matches aplenty and some big-name appearances. But was the audience eating up what the company was giving out, or did it feel more like the porch light was on but nobody was home?

Best Match of the Night

This was a decent episode for wrestling, with three matches with title implications that helped them to stand out from the pack. The first of these was Willow Nightingale vs. Hikaru Shida for the AEW Women’s Championship. Shida has proven to be a fighting champion, defending her championship three times in the last week and wrestling four times on television since winning the title. Unsurprisingly, since Toni Storm has been established as the next contender for the title since before Shida won it, none of these title matches nor the eliminator match Shida had previously against Emi Sakura has been particularly dramatic in terms of the outcome. We’re definitely getting Shida vs. Storm at Full Gear, is essentially what I’m saying here. (Also, Storm is almost certainly getting the title, which is why Shida is packing in as many title shots as possible before she drops the belt. But that’s neither here nor there as far as this match is concerned.) Still, Nightingale has been positioned as just outside of the title picture for a good while now, so it was just good to see her get a shot. The match started somewhat slowly, but it built up momentum as it went on and the crowd got more and more invested. Both women are among the most popular wrestlers in the division, so there wasn’t a clear favorite even though the winner was clear from the beginning. This wasn’t an overly special TV match nor was it especially long, but both women delivered in a fairly limited circumstance. The post-match shenanigans even hinted at a Willow Nightingale/Julia Hart/Skye Blue storyline to keep them all occupied now that Willow is done chasing the title for the time being. Willow’s all sunshine and rainbows, Julia’s all evil and dark, and Blue is somewhere in between – a little evil since she can spray mist, but not that bad since it’s blue instead of black and she only hit Julia with it in the neck instead of her face. That would make for a fun secondary storyline outside of the women’s title picture which has unfortunately been quite rare in recent times. This may all seem like faint praise, which I guess it is considering this is the second runner-up, but I am genuinely hopeful that these small steps forward will eventually lead to some positive momentum for the division as a whole.

The next best match of the night was the main event pitting Maxwell Jacob Friedman & The Acclaimed against Bullet Club Gold. This wasn’t a title match per se but it was for the right to carry the world championship belt between now and Full Gear so there was at least something on the line. MJF spent all night trying not to choose Max Caster and his pals only to have no one else to turn to as Chris Jericho turned him down, Wardlow threatened him with violence…just not right now, and Jeff Jarret offered his assistance even though it’s clear nobody wants that. Ever. So we got the inevitable Acclaimed/MJF mashup that we all wanted anyway as the champ tried to get his belt back from Jay White. I think I’ve mentioned before that AEW does pretty well at putting on big multi-man matches like this, so of course this was good. Billy Gunn fought his sons, the heels denied us a mid-match quad-scissor, and Friedman continued his use of the ridiculous kangaroo kick. It was fun and never got overly serious or slow, and the most notable moment of all came at the end when Jay White got a pinfall victory over the champ. He’s probably not going to win the title at Full Gear, of course, but anytime MJF gets pinned these days it’s notable. We still got a post-match scissor from the babyface team, which seemed to overshadow the disappointing result in the eyes of the live crowd. We may never see MJF wearing a pink outfit and scarf ever again, nor are we likely to see Max Caster scissoring his internet boyfriend on AEW television, but this was enjoyable while it lasted.

Repeat after me: Orange Cassidy in the opening match against any but the most tomato can of opponents will always be a match of the night contender. His International Championship match against Claudio Castagnoli this week was the best of the entire night for absolutely not the first time. Claudio’s strength was on full display here, as he used a fireman’s carry to bring his opponent up the ring steps and over the ropes back into the ring with a delayed suplex from the second turnbuckle. Cassidy has had some time to rest since he lost the title, so consider the clock on his title reign completely reset as all (or at least most of) the kinesio tape has been removed from his body. Claudio hasn’t had a ton of direction outside of the Blackpool Combat Club since losing the Ring of Honor championship to Eddie Kingston, so it’s reasonable that he would chase the championship held by one of the men he holds responsible for Bryan Danielson’s orbital bone injury. There were tons of counters back and forth – Cassidy turned an attempted slam into Stundog Millionaire, Claudio turned an attempted tornado DDT into a giant swing, and finally OC turned an attempted popup European uppercut into a hurricanrana for the win. This match was a great example of two men whose styles complement each other perfectly putting on a performance that made both of them look great regardless of the outcome. OC won back the title too recently for him to lose it here, but the rivalry between him and the Blackpool Combat Club makes sense continuing, especially after the post-match beatdown from Jon Moxley, who kicked the title belt out of the ring to definitively prove I was right all along about him not particularly caring about or needing the title. If the match quality continues to be this good, though, I feel like a longer feud until Bryan Danielson can return will be a welcome development.

Best Moment of the Night

I mentioned earlier that MJF spent the whole show trying to find a trio of partners for his main event match, but there was another parallel show-spanning story of Adam Cole continually hanging up on Roderick Strong as he complained about MJF giving him and the Kingdom the cold shoulder. I feel like Roddy shouting “Adam!” has kind of run its course as a comedic moment, so recontextualizing it by having Cole be just as over it as the audience is a smart call. Something has to give at some point – Roddy just wants to be heard while he rants about whatever general complaint he has at any given moment, but Cole is becoming increasingly frustrated with the inanity of his chatter and how it keeps him from doing what he wants to do with his life. That’s…not an ideal basis for a friendship. But oh well, at least it’s funny for the time being.

The only other really notable moment this week was the promo segment featuring Adam Copeland and Christian Cage. The first part of the segment was pretty typical “old guy puts another older guy over” fare, though I appreciate Copeland shouting out Tony Schiavone for all he does behind the scenes for the compnay. The segment really picked up when Christian interrupted and threatened to break Copeland’s neck to leave him as a helpless burden on his wife and kids. He then tried to make good on that threat, having Nick Wayne and Luchasaurus attack while he set up for a con-chair-to. Darby and Sting were able to make the save, of course, and Copeland delivered a thunderous spear to his former best friend, ultimately agreeing to join forces with the face-painted warriors to take on the heelish trio. Of course we all knew this was the most likely outcome, but the way AEW got there was especially effective. Threatening to leave a man’s wife and kids destitute is low but totally predictable from the cowardly Cage, and someone whose career was previously cut short would naturally be sensitive to such threats especially when the method for doing so requires the exploitation of a previously-established weakness. Now if we can just get some wrestling in this storyline, that would be great – the former Edge has been in AEW for about a month now and he’s only had one match.

Worst Matches/Moments of the Night

I said last week that the least interesting choice for Chris Jericho’s promised “larger than ‘Powerhouse’ Will Hobbs” backup would be Paul Wight, so you get zero points for guessing who was revealed as the fourth member of the team in the upcoming Jericho, Kenny Omega, and Kota Ibushi match against the Don Callis Family. The guy can still deliver a punch, but I sincerely doubt he can do much of anything else at this point. Color me unimpressed.

The worst moment of the night, however, was Tony Khan‘s ridiculously pointless announcement about All In 2024 tickets going on sale December 1st. This promo was the mashup of “this meeting could have been an email” and “Christmas season starts November 1st” – the information could have easily been divulged to the public via social media instead, and did this announcement really need to be made on TV a full month ahead of time? The December 1st sale is just a preorder anyway – it’s not like this is the only time you can get your hands on tickets or even that they’re likely to sell out day one. There isn’t even an indication that all the tickets will be available on that date anyway. Khan’s track record with these “special announcements” is pretty low, so if you’re still expecting something monumental whenever he announces he’ll be on TV, that’s probably more of a problem with your expectations than with Khan’s tendency to overhype things, but there’s such a clear and obvious solution – just stop making these onscreen announcements in the first place – that I feel like it has to be a matter of TK thinking he knows better than anyone who might be advising him about the production of the show. That’s not a particularly good look, especially given the well-documented problems with creative lately. (In case you haven’t heard, there have been rumblings of discontent backstage about wrestlers not knowing what their overarching storylines are or what they are expected to do on any given show until they arrive at the arena.) Tony, buddy, sort your stuff out please.

Parting Shots

• Here’s my takeaways from this week’s Collision: what a bummer that Abadon showed up for her annual “it’s nearly Halloween so here’s Abadon getting a title shot” match, but no Danhausen appearance. Oh, and I guess MJF vs. Kenny Omega was kinda sorta really good.
• When did Kyle Fletcher join the Don Callis Family? I am genuinely asking because the last I remember, Don Callis was telling him that he wasn’t ready to join them yet and Fletcher saying he didn’t need anybody to make him successful. So why the 180 in such a short time?
• Hey, the Hung Bucks dropped the RoH 6-Man Tag Championships this week! Also, the Hung Bucks were the RoH 6-Man Tag Team Champions! Who knew? Does this mean AEW will remember that the Bucks are supposed to be the #1 contenders for the tag titles in AEW? I mean, if they can spontaneously remember to have them defend and lose their belts, they should be able to remember something the internet has been roasting them about for weeks, right?

That’s it for another week – pretty good show this week, mainly on the in-ring wrestling side of things, and it’s good that more matches for Full Gear appear to be taking shape now. Thanks for joining me once again, and I hope you’ll all come back next time for more Chair Shots!