Chair Shots With Killem Faulkner: Jay Briscoe Tribute Dynamite

AEW rolled into the historic Rupp Arena in Lexington, KY with the wrestling world still processing the tragic loss of Jay Briscoe last week. As noted numerous times throughout history, the professional wrestling industry never stops and hardly ever slows down, so the company had to balance putting out a quality product that furthered storylines heading into Revolution with its stars still grieving one of the most respected wrestlers in the business and a close friend of many in the locker room. Accordingly, this review is going to be structured around those two contrasting elements of the show – the tribute to Jay and the actual professional wrestling part. So let’s take a look at how successfully AEW balanced those competing demands on its time and all the best and worst of this week’s show.

Best Moment of the Night

Yes, I’m breaking with the usual format and putting best moment ahead of best match, but I feel like it would be unfair to analyze Mark Briscoe vs. Jay Lethal as a wrestling match, so instead I want to devote this segment to talking about the overall tribute to the late Jay Briscoe that AEW put together. As I said last week, he was obviously very well respected by everyone who crossed paths with him throughout his career, so I’m glad Warner Bros. Discovery relented and allowed the tribute to go on. You can debate whether Jay’s past homophobic comments – which he repeatedly apologized for and seemed to have genuinely grown past – were too much of a liability for the AEW brand to allow him to be on television regularly, but under the circumstances it felt appropriate to put something out that made it clear what he meant to the professional wrestling industry and especially anyone affiliated with Ring of Honor. Allowing his brother Mark to main event the show on what would have been Jay’s 39th birthday and the video tribute that aired earlier in the show were entirely fitting gestures on AEW’s part, especially given that Tony Khan now owns RoH and the company owes so much to that promotion. I’m sure nobody wants to hear serious real-life advice from a silly wrestling reviewer, but I would advise anyone reading this to reach out to someone you love and let them know how much they mean to you. I don’t doubt Jay knew how much his fans loved him – the RoH faithful showed him how they felt every time he stood in a ring in front of them – and the video package that aired really hammered home the mutual love he and his family and friends had for each other. That love and respect transcended everything he did in wrestling, so I hope that is something people can take away from this whole situation. Please take the time to say “I love you” to the people that you care about while you have the chance. I’m glad AEW got the chance to send one final expression of appreciation for Jay Briscoe on this show.

Best Match of the Night

Now onto the standard part of the review. With all due respect to Ruby Soho vs. Toni Storm, which was quite good in its own right except for a somewhat lame finish, there were three matches that stood out on the show but didn’t really stand out from each other. So I’m going to put them in some sort of ascending order, but just know that I have rearranged these matches probably 10 times by the time you’re reading this and I still may not be entirely satisfied that I’ve got it right. Ask me next week to remember which one actually ended up being named the best and I will probably guess wrong. Let’s start with Darby Allin vs. Buddy Matthews for the TNT Championship first – what a concept, having a member of the House of Black in a title match! Plus Buddy Matthews deserves a chance to stand out on his own for once. The announce team put over the notion that Allin was suffering from jet lag coming back from his and Sting’s participation in the Great Muta’s retirement match, which formed the basis for the match’s drama even though it seemed pretty clear Allin would retain his title. The House of Black got involved but were neutralized by Ortiz and Sting, which was probably the right call, allowing the focus to remain on the men in the ring while logically explaining why nobody was there to save Matthews from the finish. The supposed Scorpion Death Drop off the top rope was the only thing that felt a little wonky here, but everything else was fairly smooth and well worked. The finish looked good and felt like a logical payoff to the match that came before. Not much else to say here – Samoa Joe isn’t done with Darby Allin, apparently, so that’s a thing. Buddy Matthews and the HoB are probably going back to Dark. At least they had a good match first.

Let’s jump back to the opener, Chris Jericho and Sammy Guevara vs. Action Andretti and Ricky Starks, for another pretty good match with a less satisfying finish but a little more heat. I know the Jericho Appreciation Society probably needed the win after suffering multiple losses in a row, and it made sense for Action Andretti’s first loss not to be clean. That doesn’t make Daniel Garcia cheating to help his guys win any better or less unsatisfying, though, especially since Starks had just laid out Jericho with Rochambeau on the outside yet was nowhere to be seen as Guevara cheated to win. Everything that came before was good, at least. Andretti continues to impress and Starks continues to get more and more over as a clear rising star. Jericho was clearly the slowest of the bunch but still held his own, and Guevara kept the pace high with his usual risk-taking approach. Fairly inoffensive opener that got the crowd heated up for the rest of the show.

I’ll give a slight nod for best match of the night to Bryan Danielson vs. Brian Cage just because there was some level of heat and the ending was satisfying rather than lacking in one of those aspects. I guess I like Brian Cage more than I realized since just about every time he shows up on television his match gets at least nominated for match of the night, but to be fair his style does mesh well with lots of AEW’s talent roster. Danielson continues his quest to earn an ironman match against MJF at Revolution, so that gives all of his matches a sense of importance that they might otherwise lack. Plus MJF paid off Cage to break Bryan’s arm last week, so the stakes were clear in this encounter even though the most significant narrative development was saved until post-match. Cage did work over Bryan’s arm during the match, logically enough, while Danielson continued fighting back and gutting through his opponent’s power moves in order to deliver some damage of his own. Both men played their roles expertly and the match was paced well for one of the longer non-main event matches on the card. As I said, this match didn’t stand head and shoulders above everything else, but given the consistently high quality of the matches on this show, it didn’t really have to.

Worst Matches/Moments of the Night

I said last week that the “family therapy” Billy Gunn promised for the Gunn Club and The Acclaimed didn’t sound like something we needed, and that ended up being absolutely true. For an unnecessary segment, at least it was short, but that didn’t make it much better. Max Caster and Anthony Bowens deserve better than this melodramatic “you weren’t there for us, dad – give us a title shot to make up for it” nonsense. I’m even okay with building up the Booty Bros, but this doesn’t seem like a very good scenario to make them feel more legitimate. They need wins and a storyline apart from dear old daddy if they’re ever going to make an impact in the division, or Caster and Bowens need to just put them down quickly (like FTR should have done previously) to give them a fresh start. The longer this storyline plays out, the worse it is for everyone involved.

Parting Shots

• Is it just me, or is it weird for Renee Paquette to continue working while Jon Moxley is…on vacation? Taking time off? Selling his injury from losing to Adam Page? All of the above? Whatever it is that he’s doing, shouldn’t Mox and his wife have some time off to spend together? Don’t get me wrong, having Renee interview Hangman in Mox’s absence makes plenty of sense for the storyline, but I feel bad that they aren’t both getting some time off at the same time.
• Timothy Thatcher vs. Bryan Danielson next week should be an interesting matchup. I know the “MJF makes his opponents jump through hoops” thing is a trope at this point, but I do appreciate the sheer variety of opponents that have been worked into this storyline.
• I like the babyface Adam Cole segments we’ve been getting lately, but I’m a bit worried about the start-stop nature of his return. We’ve seen this before – Cole, Bobby Fish, and Kyle O’Reilly already returned just to turn on The Elite before being written off again – so I’d much rather see him held off TV until he’s actually ready to go again. His promo skills are strong enough that he can keep himself relevant by talking alone, but as a fan I feel like I’d rather not invest in what he’s doing until I know he’s fully cleared to wrestle again.

That’s it for another week of Dynamite – I thought this show was really good overall, and it ended in a fitting celebration of Jay Briscoe and a cathartic moment for the roster to embrace his brother Mark as the show went off the air. Thanks for joining me again, and I hope to see you all back here next week for more Chair Shots!