Chair Shots With Killem Faulkner: What Day Is It Dynamite

Due to some sort of sportsball thing taking Dynamite’s regular timeslot this week, we got some bonus wrestling along with our tacos with a special “Title Tuesday” edition of AEW’s weekly flagship show. In order to live up to that name, the company threw four title matches onto the card and called it a day. Well, there were other promos and segments as well, but as far as the in-ring output, it was all championships all the time. Which is far from a bad thing, certainly, but just because all the matches had something on the line does not mean they were automatically good. So let’s take a look at all the best and worst from this week’s episode…a day earlier than usual!

Best Match of the Night

As I pointed out in the intro, there were only four matches on the card, and there’s a very obvious reason why I’m not going to talk about one of them, so let’s go through the other three in ascending order of quality. I enjoy Ring of Honor, and Dalton Castle is one of the company’s stars who flies below the mainstream radar, but his reign as champion (with a broken back, no less) was actually a highlight from a relatively down period in the company’s history. His match against Chris Jericho was nothing particularly special, and he never seriously threatened to regain the title as you might imagine, but it was definitely above average for a regular weekly television match. My only real criticism of the match was that there was too much time devoted to “the boys” on the outside trying to beat up Jake Hager and take his hat, which seems like the sort of inoffensive fluff you might expect from a Dalton Castle match, but it detracted too much from the in-ring action in a match that was already a bit on the short side. Castle using three of his boys as human lawn darts against Hager was enjoyable enough, though, and if you’ve never seen a Castle match before, his entire presentation in this match was a really good encapsulation of what he’s all about. Jericho was his usual solid self, and although his Judas Effect finisher is self-consciously bad, the speed and impact of it here as a counter to a clothesline attempt from Castle actually looked pretty good. I wouldn’t recommend going out of your way to see this one if you missed it, but if you watched the show or are thinking of rewatching it, you certainly wouldn’t be miserable watching it. That sounds like faint praise, but on a night in which there were some even better matches on the card, there’s no shame in being the second runner-up.

First runner up for match of the night goes to Toni Storm vs. Hikaru Shida for the interim AEW Women’s World Championship. I’ve probably mentioned this before, but I really enjoyed Shida’s run with the title, even if it isn’t remembered as fondly as some other women’s title reigns, and this match was a good reminder of why she worked well as champ. Her meteora off the second rope followed up by a gutwrench slam looked great, and her strikes were just as snug and impactful as you’d expect. The champ more than held her own with strikes and slams, including her trademark German suplex and running hip attack looking especially snappy, and she ultimately finished off her game foe with a tornado DDT and Storm Zero. Again, this was a TV match without much drama surrounding the outcome or much of a storyline to justify pitting two women who were partners just a week ago against each other, but unless you’re just now watching AEW women’s division for the first time, that’s pretty much par for the course. The attempt to keep Britt Baker, Jamie Hayter, and Saraya involved in the storyline post-match was unnecessary at best, though Riho making her return was kind of neat, so maybe long-term storytelling isn’t everything. Regardless, Storm and Shida overdelivered here, and while it won’t go down as one of the best women’s matches in the company’s history, it’s certainly among the better Dynamite women’s matches in recent memory. (That’s saying something considering I’ve named the women’s match one of my honorable mentions for the last three weeks.)

Best match of the night honors go to the opening AEW Trios Championship match between Best Friends and Death Triangle. After Orange Cassidy finally got one over on his longtime rival PAC, taking the All-Atlantic Championship in the process, the Freshly Squeezed one and his closest pals Chuck Taylor and Trent Beretta looked to finish the job by taking the trios titles this week. I mean, what is there to say here? The Best Friends/Death Triangle feud has been on and off for quite a while now, and I don’t think they’ve yet had a below-average match. Penta and Rey Fenix are among the best luchadores in the company, PAC is capable of high flying and brutality in equal measure, OC is a great character who also can wrestle circles around most performers out there, and the tag team combo of Trent and Chuck regularly serve up some excellent double-team spots while also serving as a solid base for their speedy opponents. Of course they always deliver. About the only critique I have is that the ending felt a little abrupt with Fenix hitting a sitout driver for the win, but the journey to that destination was more than worth it. There was even an added wrinkle this time with PAC’s obsession with using the timekeeper’s hammer to batter Orange Cassidy causing some friction with Rey Fenix. Although he was able to resist the urge to get his team disqualified and they hugged it out in the end, this seems like the start of something significant between the trios champs, which is good because the Best Friends rivalry has pretty well run its course. (Depending on who you ask, it may have run its course several times over by now.) PAC’s increasing villainy can be used to drive the in-ring story to allow Death Triangle to branch out a bit and face trios who might be considered less threatening to their title reign without losing much in the way of drama or noteworthy storyline development. It’s still probably most likely that they drop the titles back to Kenny Omega and the Young Bucks whenever their suspension is lifted, but with the threat that the champs might implode at basically any time, it isn’t outside the realm of possibility that another team might get a run with the titles first. Regardless of what comes next, this would be the match I most recommend going back to watch if you missed the show this week, though it was hardly the only recommendable segment.

Best Moment of the Night

Renee Paquette’s backstage interview with Blackpool Combat Club members Bryan Danielson and Wheeler Yuta was a nice way of teasing some dissention in a faction that has largely been almost entirely cohesive since its inception. Danielson expressed his disappointment with Daniel Garcia, who turned his back on his would-be mentor and realigned with the Jericho Appreciation Society last week, while Yuta vented his exasperation at Danielson’s gullibility – Garcia has “dragon slayer” in his entrace video, for crying out loud. It was, in Yuta’s telling, the very definition of a sudden but inevitable betrayal. He even questioned Danielson’s commitment to the group – he pointed out that the world champ takes the BCC seriously, and both he and Claudio had to prove themselves worthy of membership in the group, but the former Yes Man still has something to prove to his stablemates. It would be interesting to see Danielson attempt to prove his loyalty by getting a trios championship match for himself, Yuta, and Castagnoli, leading to a showdown with a similarly infighting Death Triangle to see who can hold together well enough to pull off the win. Alas, for now we’ll have to settle for a continuation of the BCC/JAS feud that has been dragging on for a while now, but this segment was good enough in itself that the immediate follow-up to it is less significant.

The best segment of the night by a long shot was MJF and William Regal sparring verbally over their shared history from when Lord Regal was one of the talent scouts in WWE. While I recommend watching the opening trios match if you missed this week’s episode, this was the absolute best thing on the show overall. I could summarize it, but I don’t think it would really do it justice – you’re better off just watching it yourself, but it basically boiled down to MJF thinking Regal was going to offer him a job but rebuffing him over his age and advising him to make a name for himself first. Regal stood by his dismissal, saying if an email from him was the worst hardship MJF faced in his career, he’s had it remarkably easy. MJF is about the only one in AEW that I really trust to consistently blend reality and fiction like this, but that’s only because he’s really great at it. What a crazy concept, right? Both men know their characters so well, it comes across as effortless for them to speak from the heart and embody the roles needed to make this segment work. And it did work. Really well. I know I’m probably underselling this match by not going on at length about it, but it’s genuinely one of the best promo segments MJF has had, and that’s really saying something. Watch it if you haven’t, and maybe watch it again even if you have.

Worst Matches/Moments of the Night

The very obvious worst moment of the night was a legit injury suffered by “Hangman” Adam Page in the main event, necessitating an improvised final promo segment from Jon Moxley and MJF to close out the show. MJF’s part may well have been planned – it did follow logically from the earlier segment with Regal, and we did eventually need to get official confirmation that MJF will be cashing in his poker chip for a title match at Full Gear anyway. However well the company handled this unfortunate scenario, Page’s injury was scary and overshadowed everything that came before and after it. Anytime a head and/or neck injury is in play, the mind tends to go to a very dark place – not only have we seen the careers of Edge and Bryan Danielson (temporarily) cut short due to these types of injury, but going further back Darren “Droz” Drozdov was permanently paralyzed after a move gone wrong in 1999. Thankfully, it sounds like any of the worst-case scenarios are likely off the table here, though he did still suffer a concussion, which is not ideal by any stretch of the imagination. It’s a sobering reminder that even the “safer” bumps in wrestling can potentially end in disaster – there’s a reason those “don’t try this at home” ads were played for years during WWE programming. All the best to the Anxious Millennial Cowboy for a full, speedy recovery.

Parting Shots

• I hope somebody told Max Caster and Anthony Bowens that their “Acclaimed Every Wednesday” catchphrase didn’t apply this week. (I kid, of course, they had a promo segment to set up their “titles vs. trademark” match against Mark Sterling’s goons on Friday.) On the other hand, maybe that frees them up to do something special in honor of having a free Wednesday on the schedule.
• Speaking of that backstage interview segment, props to Renee Paquette for one of the funniest little moments on the show when it looked like Billy Gunn was going to go for a scissor and Renee gave him a subtle disapproving shake of the head and pushed his hand down to stop him from drawing the ire of Mark Sterling’s legal maneuvering.
• I’m generally not a fan of the feud between Jay Lethal and Darby Allin, but their backstage confrontation actually worked decently well this week. Sonjay Dutt claiming to know Allin’s weakness and the use of the garage door to pin Allin down so Lethal could lock in the Figure Four were nice developments even if I don’t much care how that plays out. I fully expect Allin’s “weakness” to be Sting or some such nonsense, but whatever. This feud is filler for everyone involved, so as long as there’s decent matches that don’t take too much time away from better things, I’m okay with it.
• It’s a shame we never got to see FTR vs. Swerve in our Glory while the latter were still champs, but I’ll settle for a #1 contenders match next week. I fully expect FTR to win and try to add to their haul of tag team gold at Full Gear, but Swerve Strickland and Keith Lee figure to make them earn the opportunity first.
• I’m very interested to see what AEW does with Luchasaurus at this point – Christian Cage promised his mentee will make life hell for anyone carrying a championship belt, which is…not the direction I expected them to go in after settling things (for now) with Jungle Boy. Hopefully he doesn’t just become the new Lance Archer, the big violent guy who would seem intimidating if he didn’t lose every time he got within spitting distance of a heavy metallic belt.

That’s it for another week – really good show except for the highly unfortunate finish, for which I hope nobody blames Jon Moxley or AEW because, y’know, accidents happen in every wrestling company in the world. There’s nothing particularly unsafe about the way Moxley delivered the move, and the company likely didn’t even need to approve such a standard spot. Anyway, I look forward to how the company follows up much of what happened this week at our normal time next week, and I hope you’ll all join me then for more Chair Shots!