Chair Shots With Killem Faulkner: Tables Ladders Flatscreens Dynamite

Boston played host to a hot night of AEW wrestling as a big debut, multiple tournament qualifiers, and a huge tag title match were advertised. Add in some storyline developments in a heated personal feud and a burgeoning tag team rivalry and you have the ingredients for a standout show. But did it deliver? Let’s take a look at the biggest moments, worst flops, and everything in between from this week’s Dynamite.

Best Match of the Night

Nothing was beating the match that at one point inspired me to write in my notes “I CANT KEEP UP THERE IS TOO MUCH HAPPENING WHAT THE HELL” but let’s take a look at a couple of other notable matches first. It may not have been an all-time classic, but I want to give some credit to Julia Hart and Hikaru Shida in their Owen Hart Foundation Tournament qualifier. Hart’s slow descent to the dark side as a result of Malakai Black spraying black mist into her eye has been a nice little Easter egg for those who have been paying attention, and she took on an aggressive heelish role in this match that suited her well. Shida is arguably the best in the women’s division at the gutsy babyface comeback, and she once again played that role well in this match. This was a relatively simple match with some good character work that elevated it over the average TV fare, and it’s good to see that Shida and Serena Deeb haven’t forgotten about their apparently never-ending feud as they faced off after the match was over.

Adam Cole and Christian Cage delivered one heck of an opener as they faced off for the first time in singles competition. Christian works well with seemingly anyone, and Cole pushed him to deliver above his (admittedly high) usual standard. Although Cage is only peripherally involved in the feud between the Elite and Hangman Page/Jurassic Express, he seemed personally invested in getting some measure of revenge against the man whose best friends recently stole his allies’ tag titles, while Cole looked to remain in strong contention for the world championship that he believes is rightly his. With all due respect to Christian’s former tag team partner, Adam Cole is AEW’s ultimate opportunist, and that was on full display here as he routinely tried to take shortcuts and take advantage of any minor opening to control the match. Christian is no fool, however, as he was able to catch his opponent slipping several times, including a particularly humorous spot in which Cole spat in his face and ran away only for Christian to cut him off on the outside because he knew exactly where the Panama Playboy would be. Christian’s sunset flip and tornado DDT from the second rope are still as smooth as it gets, and he threw in a couple of top rope spots in this match that showed Sting and Jeff Hardy aren’t the only wrestlers in the company willing to take risks late in their careers. Cole managed to pick up the tainted victory off a thumb to the eye after getting his foot in the ropes as Captain Charisma tried to deliver the Killswitch, which was the right call here – Cole will challenge for the AEW World Championship on next week’s Rampage, we learned after the match, in a Texas Deathmatch, so it was important for him to keep building momentum while the cheap finish keeps Christian protected in defeat. AEW certainly doesn’t need to give us first-ever matchups on a weekly basis, but putting together two big names in the company and letting them deliver in the ring like this is always welcome when it does happen.

It should be obvious based on the runners-up (or just by having watched the show) that the best match of the night was the main event between FTR and the Young Bucks. I mean, what more do I need to say? The matchup pretty well speaks for itself, and AEW made sure to give these two teams plenty of time to deliver an absolute clinic in tag team wrestling. I would say this match will be hard to top when it comes to the end-of-year best tag team matches awards, but there’s always the possibility that they face off on pay-per-view at some point, and then there’s also the Lucha Brothers once Rey Fenix heals up, and presumably the current champs Jurassic Express will get involved and…well, okay, suffice to say it is a good time to be alive if you’re a fan of tag team wrestling. Still, just because AEW’s tag division is stacked to an almost hilarious degree, that doesn’t mean this match is destined to get lost in the shuffle – I wasn’t joking when I said my note-taking skill failed me to the point where I couldn’t even take down all the cool stuff happening in the match. It’s kind of amazing how well FTR is taking to being a babyface team considering how well they work as heels, but they are such a talented team that it’s no wonder crowds are so willing to cheer for them. The Young Bucks are kind of the opposite – they seem like such natural babyfaces with their high-flying arsenal that it’s kind of a wonder how well they work the crowd into booing them. FTR winning is probably unsurprising since they just won the Ring of Honor tag titles last Friday, and it makes sense to keep them hot since they just recently turned face by firing Tully Blanchard and seemingly splitting off from the Pinnacle. Anyway, that’s a lot of words to say “just go watch this match, you won’t be disappointed” but then again that’s kind of my job, isn’t it?

Best Moment of the Night

This may just be a personal thing, (but it’s my article so I’ll include it if I want, OK?) but the backstage faceoff between Jamie Hayter and Toni Storm was one of those “okay, this is happening” moments that make it so exciting every time someone new signs. Hopefully they face off at some point in the Owen Hart Foundation Tournament and, if I’m allowed to be greedy, maybe they could even feud for a while? Just a suggestion, AEW.

I’m also going to give a minor shoutout to the running gag of the backstage monitor being broken after Eddie Kingston yeeted it into the door divider as the Jericho Appreciation Society hightailed it out of the arena. Excalibur referenced it after the Blackpool Combat Club’s backstage interview, and MJF commented on it later on after issuing a challenge to the Captain Shawn Dean. It wasn’t a big running plotline or anything, I just…found it funny.

One more little moment I especially enjoyed this week before we get to the big winner: Jade Cargill took a shot at her next opponent, Marina Shafir, by saying she’s tired of these MMA rejects showing up in her business, and the Boston crowd let out a huge cheer that warmed my heart. I have made no real secret of the fact that I don’t much care for former MMA fighters entering the world of professional wrestling with little to no formal training, trying to make everything look like a shoot fight, and unsurprisingly being pretty uninteresting to watch and listen to since they generally have basically no character other than “legitimate fighter unlike all you fake wrestlers” which gets very old very quickly. It’s not great that this line had to be delivered by a heel, but it was nice that the crowd responded positively to that sentiment anyway. (I also don’t mean to suggest that I wish people like Marina Shafir would go away – she’s clearly putting in the work to get better as a professional wrestler, which is all I really want from anyone who wants to make a career in the industry. I just resent the ones who have a clear disdain for professional wrestling yet want to get paid not to put their bodies at as much risk when their MMA careers are winding down.)

Best moment of the night has to go to Samoa Joe‘s debut – sure, it’s not entirely clear how much he’ll be around AEW as his real debut was at Supercard of Honor last Friday and he has more history with that company, but the fact that Tony Khan owns both companies allows for easy crossovers between the two. The match between him and Max Caster was good if unspectacular – it was mainly a highlight for Joe, though Caster got his trademark verbal shots in pre-match – but it was a great moment hearing Joe’s music play and the crowd chanting “Joe’s gonna kill you” for the first time in…well, a while. Plus, as much as I like the Coquina Clutch, it was cool to see the man I like to call Hawaii Steve hit a Muscle Buster for the first time in…a while also. (I call him Hawaii Steve because I was convinced that’s what WWE would change his name to when he signed with them. It’s a dumb inside joke that maybe two people in this world understand, but again, it’s my article. I’ll ruin it with my dumb inside jokes if I want to.)

Worst Matches/Moments of the Night

I continue to be nonplussed by Sammy Guevara and Tay Conti‘s feud with Dan Lambert. No, not with American Top Team or even the Men of the Year but Dan Lambert specifically. That’s kind of the problem – sure, Sammy may try to fight his way back into TNT Championship contention, and we may get some sort of mixed tag against Paige VanZant and…somebody, but for now it’s just a lame back-and-forth with the super boomer leader of the team. Sammy’s usually entertaining cue cards bit during the commercial break was pretty lackluster this week, but at least it was in service of a feud that I couldn’t care much less about.

I can’t bring myself to say a Hardys match is actually bad, but I will say the logic of the tag team tables match they had against the Butcher and the Blade left something to be desired. It didn’t help that Jeff was driven through a table that didn’t quite look like it broke, but he was eliminated anyway. From there, the eliminated members of their respective teams were allowed to remain at ringside – I know the match is no disqualification so they couldn’t exactly be prohibited from getting involved, but generally in these kinds of situations the refs at least make a cursory attempt to send them back to the locker room. The absurdity reached its apex when, rules be damned, Jeff actually won the match for his team by leaping off a ladder onto the Blade who was laid out on a pair of tables. Yes, it did satisfy the rule that stipulated an offensive maneuver must put the opponent through a table in order to eliminate them, but it’s generally a bad idea for someone who has been eliminated from a match to be the one who ends up winning it for their team. It was a cool spot for sure, only slightly undercut by the fact that we got an even cooler version of the same spot last week, but I seriously question why Matt wasn’t the one put through a table if he was going to be relegated to just helping his brother at the end. Seems like such a simple solution to an obvious problem. I guess it wasn’t explicitly an elimination match – the rules just stated that both members of the opposing team had to be put through a table to win, but that just raises more problems than it solves.

Parting Shots

• I continue to enjoy the Best Friends/Wheeler Yuta storyline – Chuck Taylor is the naive optimist who just wants to keep the family together, Trent Beretta is bitter that Yuta wants to move on despite the perceived opportunities the group has given him, and Yuta is the headstrong young gun who’s eager to prove himself on his own. Whether he’ll actually turn his back on his friends or just leave for good remains to be seen, but he’s undeniably a bigger star now than when this whole storyline started. The RoH Pure Championship that he now holds is just further evidence of how far he’s come as a singles star since joining AEW.
• There was a weird recap of the feud between Hook and QT Marshall partway through the show for no reason I could discern. Maybe they were just sowing the seeds of Hook’s eventual debut on Dynamite but it was an odd moment that seemingly didn’t have any meaningful follow-up planned as far as I could tell.
• I know anytime someone gets put through a wall like Keith Lee did to Powerhouse Hobbs, it’s a fake wall that has been specifically gimmicked to break, but this one wasn’t especially convincing. I do like this feud between Team Taz and the pairing of Lee and Swerve Strickland, but I’m not sure if this brief backstage brawl really served much of a purpose.
• Bobby Cruise introducing the main event was a nice little moment – he’s one of the main voices of Ring of Honor, and since the RoH tag team titles were on the line, it made sense to bring him in to give it that added bit of flavor to the presentation to prevent it from feeling too much like just a standard AEW match.
• I may be the least perceptive person in the world, but something about the way Tony Schiavone said “Dax and Cash” in the intros to the main event made me wonder if they specifically picked those names as a tribute to Ax and Smash of Demolition fame. FTR’s whole gimmick is a throwback, so I wouldn’t be surprised if that reference has been staring me in the face all along and I just never picked up on it until now. Feel free to leave a comment telling me what a moron I am for not realizing this or, if you’re super brave, you can admit if you didn’t catch it either, or some other seemingly obvious wrestling-related reference that it took you a long time to notice.

That’s all for another week – great main event, overall really good show, and lots of positive developments to build on going forward. Thanks again for joining me for another Dynamite review, and I hope you’ll come back next week for more Chair Shots!