Chair Shots With Killem Faulkner: St. Patrick’s Day Slam Dynamite

Stick a shamrock in your cap, grab your trusty shillelagh, and make sure you’re wearing something green because it’s time for a special St. Paddy’s Day edition of Dynamite. With a huge rematch one year in the making, a new champ’s first title defense, and a new faction’s “commencement” ceremony, this week’s episode felt like a special edition worthy of extra attention beyond the usual weekly program. Did AEW deliver on that extra hype? Let’s take a look at what worked and what didn’t from this week’s show.

Best Match of the Night

There were five matches on the card for this show, one at the beginning and one at the end, and three in the middle that were somewhere between fine and very good. Stop me if you’ve heard this before. Oh wait, you have? Like…basically every week? Well shoot, it’s almost as if that’s a winning formula for booking a weekly wrestling program. So I suppose you won’t be surprised to learn that the opening match between Adam Cole & reDRagon vs. Adam Page & Jurassic Express was a particular standout, huh? Well, I’ve got nothing better to do so let’s talk about it anyway, I guess. Another not surprising statement is that all six men involved in this match are very good wrestlers who have had excellent matches against one another in the recent past, so that talent and chemistry certainly carried over to this contest. One particular spot of note was the babyfaces hitting a perfectly choreographed triple moonsault on the heels, one from the apron to the outside, one from the top turnbuckle to the outside, and one from the top turnbuckle to the ring. Place your bets on who did what! (Okay, it was Luchasaurus, Adam Page, and Jungle Boy respectively.) The heels wound up getting the win, unsurprisingly since they just lost at the pay-per-view so it feels like this match was primarily intended to keep them in the title hunt, and that’s fine. Cole was launched into the title picture without a ton of build in the first place, so having some more time to develop his rivalry with Page wouldn’t be a bad thing, and reDRagon needs to at least seem like a legit contender to make their feud with the Young Bucks viable. Plus, maybe the whole thing of Page ditching the Dark Order for Jurassic Express could be brought back in some way in the weeks to come. Trios matches like this have become a staple of AEW programming for a reason, and this was definitely an example of that well-worn formula being elevated by two especially talented groups.

Another standout from this week’s show was Bryan Danielson and Jon Moxley vs. Wheeler Yuta and Chuck Taylor of Best Friends. AEW continues to put Wheeler Yuta in featured spots, which speaks to the confidence the company has in him currently and its willingness to invest in his potential as a future star. His grit and tenacity in the face of his opponents’ hard-hitting offense clearly fired up the crowd, who chanted his name by the end of the match. Moxley and Danielson continue to be one of the best pairings in AEW, especially with William Regal as their mentor, and they did not disappoint in bringing the physicality to their opponents who were, let’s face facts, just slightly less overmatched than the Workhorsemen were last week. No disrespect to the individual talents of Taylor and Yuta, of course, but they aren’t exactly the most established tag team in Best Friends, that’s all I’m saying. As a step up in competition for a new team that is looking to establish itself while maybe also looking to recruit others, this match delivered what it was meant to while still being competitive enough to make sure the losers weren’t buried in defeat. Regal’s boys have good chemistry and their styles complement each other well, and it should be interesting to see how their path of violent domination continues to develop in the weeks to come.

Picking best match of the night this week was pretty unfair – it was hard to imagine anything being better than a match that was literally an entire year in the making, so it’s no surprise nothing ended up surpassing the AEW Women’s World Championship match between Dr. Britt Baker DMD and Thunder Rosa. The cage match stipulation meant there would be no outside interference, though it was still somewhat surprising that nobody even tried to get involved, but the pure focus on the in-ring action allowed two of the best wrestlers in the company to pull out all the stops and go to extremes most cage matches don’t reach. We’re talking chair shots galore, multiple thumbtack spots, and a pair of wicked bumps from the top turnbuckle onto several chairs, not to mention the expected use of the cage to rip and tear at each other’s flesh. This was a very “Texas” match, playing to the partisan San Antonio crowd as its adopted daughter Thunder Rosa busted out a stunner and tuned up the band in a spot made famous years ago by another San Antonian. Baker did everything within her power to retain the title, but Rosa would not be denied and rightly so – as I mentioned back when MJF defeated CM Punk in Chicago, you risk watering down the impact of a big loss in a wrestler’s hometown if you do it all the time, and this was definitely a situation where the obvious outcome was the right one. Baker has been on an incredible run as champ, but it was clearly time for her to step back and let someone else carry the division for a while. We also shouldn’t overlook the importance of crowning the company’s first Mexican women’s champ – a good sign for a company that has been dogged by criticisms of its diversity, though there is always still room for improvement on that score. Thunder Rosa’s rise through the ranks has been one of the best stories in the women’s division over the past year, and seeing it pay off with a title win in front of her home fans was the ideal culmination of that storyline. Now, it will be incumbent on the company to continue to book her strongly as the new face of the division.

Best Moment of the Night

I may surprise some of you with a notable omission in this section, but I’ll get to that in a moment – for now, let me just say that I am not remotely sick of the feud between Serena Deeb and Hikaru Shida, and Deeb’s short but focused promo this week was a highlight. Talking about how her opponent has been thinking of her the entire time she’s been rehabbing in Japan, Deeb claimed to be flattered but the feeling wasn’t mutual – she hasn’t thought of Shida at all while she’s been gone. Deeb then closed the promo by warning her rival that she’ll have even more time to obsess over her when The Professor ends her career the next time they cross paths. The post-match interaction between Wheeler Yuta and William Regal was also a great moment – considering he was name-dropped when Bryan Danielson tried to recruit Jon Moxley to join forces in the first place, Yuta had to be feeling like this was his chance to make a statement. Regal clearly relishes challenging the younger stars physically, and he responded with a slap to the face reminiscent of his initial confrontation with Mox and Danielson, telling the young star to continue proving himself and maybe they’ll talk again in the future. Yuta stepping away from Best Friends was a surprising development, and everyone involved sold the moment well. It will be interesting to see how AEW follows up on it and if any other young stars try to shoot their shot now that Regal, Danielson, and Moxley have officially united.

I couldn’t include it in best matches of the night (not just because it wasn’t anything special as a match but also because there were three outstanding matches on the show that outshined it) but the Hardy Boys‘ in-ring debut gets my pick for best moment this week. At this point in their careers, Matt and Jeff may not have too many firsts remaining, so appearing in AEW as a tag team for the first time was a special moment for one of the most decorated teams in wrestling history. Both men seem capable of putting on a good match and work together well after all these years, and there are a number of dream matches ahead for as long as AEW chooses to keep them together. It’s easy to be cynical about the company bringing in wrestlers who made their names elsewhere for that cheap nostalgia, but I feel like there is legitimate reason to be excited to see the Hardys reunited in a division with so much depth that gets plenty of focus on a weekly basis.

Worst Matches/Moments of the Night

So it wasn’t a terrible match, but Wardlow vs. Scorpio Sky for the TNT Championship gets worst match of the night by default, and I have two main reasons for highlighting it rather than just saying the usual “nothing was that bad this week” and moving on. First, it really does your new champ no favors by having him get beaten down and only win due to copious interference in his first defense. Sure, it was only Scorpio Sky’s first defense as champ – he should have plenty of opportunities to show what he can do as his title reign goes on – but first impressions matter, and after being underutilized for so long, it would be a shame to see him slip back into obscurity if the company fails to capitalize on the biggest win of his AEW career so far. Secondly, AEW needs to be careful not to diminish the importance of winning the Face of the Revolution match – that’s now two years in a row that the winner has failed to capture the TNT Championship. It seemed like an odd decision to have Wardlow take his title shot so soon after winning, and it seems like a shame to waste his shot in a match he wasn’t going to win. Of course, it is worth remembering that the big brass ring isn’t the equivalent of the Money in the Bank briefcase, but it feels like AEW could do more to make it feel important. Otherwise, it risks falling to the status of something like the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal trophy – something that seems like it should be a big deal but ultimately doesn’t mean all that much.

Parting Shots

• I was fully primed to tell you to check out Brandon Cutler & the Young Bucks vs. Dark Order from Dark this week if there weren’t enough worthy honorable mentions for match of the night, but there were so I’ll just say it here. I’ve mentioned in the past that Brandon Cutler is the best, and his comedic work in this match is just incredible.
• My pick for line of the night (which isn’t really a thing but hey, maybe it’ll catch on, you never know): “Pray tell, who is that demon waif?” – William Regal on Danhausen
• Honorable mention for line of the night: “No more kids” – Private Party after slamming famous proponent of kid-having Matt Hardy groin-first into the ring post
• Okay, I’ll address the elephant in the room here: I didn’t give the Jericho Appreciation Society’s segment best moment of the night honors, and I should explain why not. I do think Chris Jericho is capable of pulling this new persona off, but I question how well it’s really working at drawing heel heat – the crowd cheered an awful lot of what went on in this segment, and about the only consistent source of boos was referring to “sports entertainment” and letting other members of the group, especially Matt Lee (Minard?) and Jake Hager, take their turn on the mic. You could argue that there are plenty of “cool heels” in AEW like Kenny Omega and the Young Bucks, but they seem to get a lot more boos even from fans who appreciate what they can do as performers. I think Jericho taking away “singalong time” would go a long way toward turning the fans against him – I know “Judas” has never been more appropriate since he actually betrayed somebody for realsies, and they did finally find some fans who know the words to point a camera at this week. Still, until AEW is willing to go that far to get him booed, this group is going to lack the teeth they really need to be anything more than the most obvious WWE parody since the Voodoo Kin Mafia.
• Also, I know Jericho has never been one for specifics, and I’m not a doctor, but I can guarantee Daniel Garcia didn’t break his “fibia” in that car accident. Because, y’know, that’s not a real bone in the human body.
• I will give Jericho credit, though – saying everyone in his group will go by their real names while still going by Chris Jericho is very, very funny to me.

That’ll do it for another week – some great matches and plenty of interesting storyline developments made for a compelling watch from start to finish. Thanks again for joining me, and I hope to see you back here next week for more Chair Shots!