Chair Shots With Killem Faulkner: TK’s Gift Dynamite

There are certain wrestling towns that just about require a wrestling promotion to be on its A game, and Philadelphia is certainly one of those towns. AEW did its best this week to put on just such a show for the Philly faithful, with two big debuts, two title matches, and a significant piece of non-championship hardware on the line. Would these Elite offerings satiate its hardcore fanbase or provide only a mediocre offering despite the show’s strength on paper?

Best Match of the Night

There was a lot of wrestling this week, and it was all quite good. Sometimes I have a lot to say in the intro to this section, but this time around I think that single declarative statement will suffice. Maxwell Jacob Friedman vs. Juice Robinson was a good choice for the opening match, and considering the storyline implications for the loser there were some actual stakes here even if the result was fairly easy to predict. MJF put his Dynamite Diamond Ring on the line as Bullet Club Gold sought to take everything from the champ ahead of his defense against Jay White at Full Gear. It sort of seems like cheating for Friedman to defend his ring in a one-on-one match considering it has generally been a multi-man match that determines who gets it, but I suppose there is no hard and fast rule that requires that. I guess I just thought when the ring was introduced that it would be a little more random who gets it each year as opposed to one person defending it on an annual basis. Anyway, Juice has been quite good during his time in AEW, and he showed once again here that he’s more than just Switchblade’s lackey. There were some heel shenanigans from the Booty Brothers…er, Gunns, but I did appreciate that it was relatively restrained and didn’t overshadow the wrestling. MJF used the ring to his advantage, proving once and for all that the real ring is better than Robinson’s cheap TJ Maxx knockoff (and you know it), and he was finally able to finish off his opponent with a heatseeker DDT. MJF has always been known more for being a diabolical genius rather than the world’s best technical wrestler, so it makes sense that as a babyface he still manages to outsmart his opponents as he did here. His “work smarter, not harder” approach is going to be tested, however, as he has several more matches coming up already, so he will have to try to find ways of ending his matches quickly to keep himself from getting completely exhausted. After all, what kind of disgusting poor wrestles four times (at least) in the span of about a month?

The Ring of Honor six-man tag title match pitting Hangman Adam Page and The Young Bucks against the Hardy Bros and Isiah Kassidy (a.k.a. the Hardy Party) was also a good if predictable match. (Side note, what is the deal with Marq Quen? I know he was injured at some point, but like…where is he? Still injured? Still employed with AEW? Can we get an update at least?) The Hardys are still a mostly fun nostalgia act, and of course Page and the Jackson brothers are among the best wrestlers in the industry today, so it’s not surprising they put on a quality bout. Brother Zay provided most of the athleticism for his team, while Matt and Jeff provided the Twist of Fate/Swanton Bomb combo that gave their team the closest nearfall of the match. Unsurprisingly, though, it was the Hung Bucks who retained with a BTE Trigger on Kassidy, continuing their title reign for now until RoH can find a worthy trio to take the belts off them. I don’t expect the EVPs of AEW to hold onto those titles for a super long time, of course, but in the meantime at least they provide some legitimacy to the belts as former AEW trios champs (the Bucks anyway) in their own right.

Best match honors unsurprisingly go to the main event pitting Orange Cassidy and Kazuchika Okada against the Blackpool Combat Club’s Bryan Danielson and Claudio Castagnoli. Unlike the other matches, I genuinely didn’t know which way this match would go – obviously Danielson and Castagnoli have more tag team history and chemistry than their opponents, but Cassidy and Okada are two of the most talented workers on the planet at the moment. There wasn’t anything explicitly on the line here, so I suppose it could be argued that it could have been better with some stakes, but in my opinion the matchup itself was enough to justify its existence. The broadcast team did a great job of putting over the fact that Danielson and Okada were both out for revenge after their clash at Forbidden Door – Okada for the loss, Danielson for the broken arm he suffered. This match was all about the clever counters, with OC turning an attempted giant swing into a Stundog Millionaire and Claudio returning the favor by countering an Orange Punch attempt into a giant swing. Okada may not be at the full height of his powers, but he is still a novelty here in America and he pulls his weight in big matches like this. It was his in-ring Dynamite debut, so he was clearly motivated to put on a good showing. Danielson was selling an injury weirdly at the end, which I didn’t fully understand – hopefully he wasn’t legitimately hurt, but I can’t figure what they were going for otherwise – but otherwise this was a good showing for him as well, though Castagnoli surprisingly won without the benefit of his running knee. I’ve said this many times before, but AEW is often at its best when it just throws together a match involving wrestlers the audience wants to see fighting each other, and that formula was in full force in this week’s main event.

Best Moment of the Night

I’m going to pick one part of a much longer segment here as I’m specifically interested in MJF and Kenny Omega agreeing to a match for the AEW World Championship on Collision as one of the best moments of the night. Everything with the Acclaimed, the Kingdom, and Bullet Club Gold that preceded this moment was good, but nothing really to write home about. The company’s two longest-running world champs booking a match on free television, however, is far more noteworthy. MJF is about to break Omega’s record, so it makes sense to give the former champ a shot at winning back the title before that happens. I’m not going to lie, as soon as this segment happened, I really considered skipping this review and just writing about Collision this week, but I realized that it’ll be more fun to watch that match as a fan rather than as a reviewer. (Plus there were enough notable moments on this show that I felt it would make for a decent review anyway.) It wasn’t an especially long segment or anything, but the excitement level brought on just by putting Omega and MJF together for a promo was enough to earn an honorable mention.

I’m also going to give an honorable mention to another short segment – Wardlow explaining why he’s returned to challenge MJF. This certainly felt like a bit of a heel turn from the big man, who came off as somewhat bitter about MJF’s ascent in his absence, but considering MJF is still basically a tweener despite his overwhelming popularity, I don’t know if the Wardog needs to fully commit to being a heel. I’ve always said a heel with clear motivations, where you might agree with him in theory even if he clearly goes too far in practice, can be the most effective type of heel, and that seems to be the case with Wardlow in this instance. He’s certainly as intense as we’ve seen him with a definite chip on his shoulder to prove he’s worthy of a main event spot, and he’s certainly been waiting long enough for that kind of opportunity.

The best moment of the night by far was the pre-taped segment in which Swerve Strickland and Prince Nana invaded Adam Page’s home to send a disturbing message to the Anxious Millennial Cowboy. Swerve has insisted throughout this rivalry that it isn’t personal for him, but then he goes and does something like this that proves the exact opposite point – classic heel behavior. Swerve has proved to be one of the most outright detestable villains in the company over the past few months, going after Nick Wayne at his late father’s wrestling school and now invading the home of his rival Page. They did a great job of implying without showing Hangman’s son in the crib as Strickland cut a promo about how he was going to get his opportunity whether he has to take it from the elder Page or the younger before leaving a Mogul Embassy shirt as evidence of whose house it is. Of course Page’s son wasn’t really there – if for no other reason than a crying baby would have ruined Strickland’s promo – but the implication alone was monstrous enough to garner significant heat. I have absolutely loved this program all along, and I only hope that AEW follows through with making Strickland into its next main event heel.

Worst Matches/Moments of the Night

There really wasn’t anything to complain about on Dynamite this week, so instead I’m going to give you a bonus “worst” from this past week’s Collision. I am begging anyone involved in AEW right now: please stop booking Jeff Jarrett in matches. Especially stop booking him to to win matches. Extra especially stop booking him to win matches against legitimate stars like Eddie Kingston. I know it took basically five people to beat Eddie in this match, but what an absolute waste of TV time. Jay Lethal gets to challenge for the Ring of Honor title because Double J won this match, so either Kingston wanted to face Lethal or he’s just the typical idiot babyface who doesn’t understand the value of bringing backup in a no DQ match in which your opponent is 100% likely to cheat. I don’t care about Lethal vs. Kingston since I don’t watch RoH regularly enough for it to matter, so this was extra pointless in addition to being an overbooked mess that wasn’t particularly entertaining.

Parting Shots

• I know I’m in the minority on this, but I really don’t care about Ric Flair, in general in the year of our Lord 2023 (but really for a good while longer than that) or specifically his debut in AEW as Sting’s “special gift.” Maybe this was a one-off appearance, though something tells me it is not, but regardless I just don’t feel like he brings all that much to the table. It’s abundantly clear that he’s just there to collect a paycheck, hang out with his pal Sting, and bask in all the “woo”s he’ll undoubtedly get every time he shows up. And maybe that’s enough for Tony Khan. It’s his money and he can spend it however he chooses. I would suggest that there are perhaps better uses than paying for weekly appearances on your wrestling show from a 74-year-old (alleged) sex pest who absolutely should not take any bumps. But hey, I’m not a billionaire so what do I know?
• What a bummer that the Dark Order are just fodder for flavor of the week tag teams like Hook and Rob Van Dam now. (Granted, since the show was in Philly, I understand why ECW alum RVD and ECW alum’s nepo baby [j/k] Hook got the win.) At least John Silver and Alex Reynolds were on TV and put on a decent match, but they have fallen pretty considerably from their peak in the company with the late Brodie Lee at the helm. I have not been shy about my membership in the Dark Order, so I would very much appreciate it if Evil Uno would get his boys back on the winning track as soon as possible.
• Chris Jericho threatened to bring in someone bigger than Powerhouse Will Hobbs to even the odds against the Don Callis Family. I wouldn’t be surprised if that backup ends up being Paul Wight, which would be a bummer no matter how much fondness I have for Captain Insano, but I genuinely wonder what other options there are that would be more interesting. Luchasaurus, Satnam Singh, and Big Bill are already taken, Lance Archer doesn’t seem like a real inspired choice, and none of them would have any sort of personal connection to Jericho anyway. I guess I can always just cross my fingers and hope it’s Keith Lee somehow, right?

That’s it for another week – I really enjoyed this show, especially for how wrestling-oriented it was. We are less than a month away from Full Gear, so it’s definitely time for AEW to kick some of these rivalries into…well, full gear, I suppose, but I am glad we’re getting such quality matches on regular weekly TV in the meantime. Thanks for joining me once again, and I hope to see you all back here next time for more Chair Shots!