Fyter Fest was a series of professional wrestling television special episodes produced by All Elite Wrestling (AEW). It was the second event in the Fyter Fest chronology. The two-week event took place on July 1 and 8, 2020. The event was broadcast on TNT as a two-part special of AEW's weekly television program, Dynamite.
The main event of night 1 saw Kenny Omega and Adam Page successfully defended the AEW World Tag Team Championship against Best Friends (Chuck Taylor and Trent). The main event of the second night was scheduled to be Jon Moxley defending the AEW World Championship against Brian Cage, but this match was postponed to the Fight for the Fallen event due to Moxley being exposed to the coronavirus disease 2019. Instead, in the main event of night 2, Chris Jericho defeated Orange Cassidy.
Results:
Night 1
Tag Team Match
Jurassic Express (Jungle Boy and Luchasaurus) (with Marko Stunt) def. MJF and Wardlow
This was a great match to start things off for AEW, especially with what was airing in opposition over on NXT. My only issue with this match is the fact that I don't understand why they are forcing the issue with a possible split between Warlow and MJF. Those two haven't been paired up for even a year and they are already teasing this. Like c'mon, give this act a chance to breathe and grow some legs. It hasn't even been around long enough to make people care enough about the split. They want to tease splitting guys like this up, but just completely ignored the storyline where Adam Page and Kenny Omega were going to split up. I swear, the booking in this company is fucking asinine at times.
Singles match for the AEW Women's World Championship
Hikaru Shida (c) def. Penelope Ford (with Kip Sabian)
For the record, I like both of these women as competitors and talents on this roster, but at the same time, I didn't think it was a great match at all. It was Penelope Ford's best outing on Dynamite to date though, but that's not saying much when she's only been competing in singles matches for a cup of coffee anyway. For the people who might get mad at me saying that this match wasn't very good, look at this way. This match was good by the low standards of the AEW Women's division, but as a women's wrestling match period, it was average at best.
Singles match for the AEW TNT Championship
Cody (c) (with Arn Anderson) def. Jake Hager (with Catalina Hager)
Jesus Christ, I keep forgetting how hot Hager's wife is. I remember seeing her from a few WWE Hall of Fame and red carpet events while he was part of the company but damn, she's a great accessory to his MMA fighter feel. Too bad Jake Hager comes out there dressed like he's a default Create-a-Wrestler in the next WWE 2K game. I didn't care about him in title matches in Lucha Underground and I sure as hell don't care to see him going for belts in AEW. Sue me, I'm still salty about him being the LAST Lucha Underground Champion in history before that company went under. Let's face facts though. Hager was a charisma vaccuum in WWE and nothing has changed since coming to AEW. The best role for him was being the silent enforcer for Chris Jericho. Now that the ship has sunk on that initial title reign for Jericho, there's little for the big man to do, especially when AEW has found themselves "killing time" for the best possible time to do the Jericho vs. Mike Tyson.
To be fair though, I'm going to admit that Cody brought out a decent match out of Hager here. Much like a lot of Cody's matches though, I didn't agree with the finish. Hager came off as a colossal dumb ass celebrating after the bell when Cody's music was playing, but one would think that he would lay into Cody and the rest of the Nightmare Family who came to celebrate with Cody instead of the referee. Instead, Hager lays out the referee and gets himself suspended.
With all of these various run-ins and questionable finishes to his matches, it bloody apparent that AEW is slowly itching towards a slow burn into a Cody heel turn within the coming months.
Tag Team Match
Private Party (Isiah Kassidy and Marq Quen) (with Matt Hardy) def. The Inner Circle (Santana and Ortiz)
This wasn't good at all. The more I see of Santana and Ortiz in AEW, it seems like they are just phoning it in and not taking a single damn match serious - completely contradicting their performances as this no nonsense tag team (LAX) in IMPACT Wrestling. As for Private Party, I like the guys as athletes but every single match they have since their debut in this company is worse than the last. I hate to say it but they are getting exposed hard in this company and coming off greener than grass.
Tag team match for the AEW World Tag Team Championship
Kenny Omega and Adam Page (c) def. Best Friends (Chuck Taylor and Trent)
When Chucky T and Trent got dropped off by their "mom" in her station wagon, I immediately swapped back to NXT's main event because I knew there wasn't absolutely a snowball's chance in hell that Omega and Hangman were losing the tag titles to this losers. I couldn't believe these clowns made it that easy to choose which main event to watch. That was literally handing the ratings war over to NXT in my honest opinion.
I just couldn't believe that AEW would put these losers against the Tag champs in the main event slot against the highly anticipated dream match between Io Shirai and Sasha Banks over on NXT.
Night 2
Tag Team Match for the AEW World Tag Team Championship
Kenny Omega and Adam Page (c) def. Private Party (Isiah Kassidy and Marq Quen) (with Matt Hardy)
At this point, I want to start chanting "SPOTS! SPOTS! SPOTS!" during Private Party's entrance theme instead of SHOTS! for their matches as that's all what it's going to come down to. For their sakes, I hope Matt Hardy is actually taking them under his wing and offering true mentorship like how Michael "PS" Hayes was for him and Jeff Hardy back in the early days of their WWF careers. How many times can Kenny Omega get moves off after stopping, shaking like The Ultimate Warrior, pointing to the ropes and running towards them without anyone stopping him? The more I see him do that, the stupider it looks to me. It was worse when one of the members of Private Party tried to do it too before Omega cut him off and got his in instead. There were a lot of flashy bits to this match - as to be expected with the talents involved - but that was the problem. It was all flash and little substance for much else in-between. It wasn't a bad match at all, but it was just lacking in terms it was a match between two guys just doing moves. I didn't get any sense of a conflict nor a narrative here. The important thing was that Omega and Page got the win though as they shouldn't be losing to any underneath tag teams in this division. This win just keeps them at the top of the food chain in that tag division.
Singles Match
Lance Archer (with Jake Roberts) def. Joey Janela (with Sonny Kiss)
I laughed my ass off at this and not in a good way either. Ever since Lance Archer has arrived into this company it has been painfully obvious that these people in charge don't have the slightest clue on what they are doing with him in terms of booking. He came in with a strong start, beating the piss and vinegar out of some job guys in a ring setup on a farm while his manager, Jake Roberts, watched. He immediately gets into a program with Cody for the TNT title with Jake tearing into Cody heavily with the promos and even dry humping Brandi Rhodes during one episode of Dynamite. In the plug for the PPV, Jake makes another promo for the match, in which it sounds like he's putting himself over for a match with Arn Anderson instead of building towards the matches with their two clients. At the PPV, Cody beats Archer for the TNT title like it's another walk in the park and absolutely nothing comes from the fact that Jake dry humped this man's wife. Cody didn't deliver a fired up promo nor demanded the life of Jake's first born child to be laid as sacrifice for the comeuppance. Cody just won the belt, showed up on Dynamite a few days after all smiles and moved onto his next program without even acknowledging Archer. Meanwhile, Archer has been left to wade through the pools of shit that is AEW's booking as he's been put in against almost every traveling goof that AEW has at their disposal from Marko Stunt to Joey Janela in this contest.
Can someone explain to me why that these matches aren't over in a minute flat? Instead, these matches are going on past a commercial or two! What the hell, man? I thought the point of these monster heels was to show their overwhelming strength with a few squash matches here and there. Stunt was at his best from the little that I saw of him in MLW prior to being on the AEW roster when he was getting the sin beat out of him by the heavy hitters on that roster. He would get a little offense in but he still got the bricks beat off of him.
I just don't understand what is the fascination with having someone who is flat out god-awful at everything from presentation to in-ring ability in that which is Joey Janela. For some reason this company has Archer dragging this match out and trying to make it look competitive on top of that. I thought this should have been over the moment Archer came out carrying out Sonny Kiss like he was a corpse being laid out to the slaughter. He should've thrown Kiss into the ring and do the first bump as usual, hit his finish and should've called it a day. If they want to make Kiss and Janela into a tag team, fine, but fuck that noise about trying to act like Janela can hold a candle to the Murderhawk.
As for Sonny Kiss, I think he can get over on his own without being coupled with Joey Janela in a makeshift tag team/alliance. Being paired up with him is only going to bring him down long-term in my honest opinion.
As for Sonny Kiss, I think he can get over on his own without being coupled with Joey Janela in a makeshift tag team/alliance. Being paired up with him is only going to bring him down long-term in my honest opinion.
Eight-Man Tag Team Match
The Butcher and The Blade and Lucha Brothers (Pentagón Jr. and Rey Fénix) def. FTR (Cash Wheeler and Dax Harwood) and The Young Bucks (Matt Jackson and Nick Jackson)
On paper this should have been good, but I ultimately found this match hard to follow after the opening moments, especially when all four teams started getting involved at once. I honestly couldn't even tell you who was legal at points. I really hate being a Debbie Downer on stuff like this as I like a lot of these guys involved in this match, but once again, the action devolved into a lot of insane spots with not too much logic or reason behind them outside of looking cool.
If I'm honest, I'm not too fond of how AEW has been setting up this FTR and Young Bucks feud. They debut FTR with them "saving" the Bucks then in the weeks that followed they are dicks to each other until they are reluctant to tag with each other to face the Lucha Bros. and The Butcher & The Blade. Don't forget that FTR beat the latter in a normal tag team match, so it's not like they couldn't handle them on their own. FTR has made it clear that they don't need anyone's help but the Bucks keep "brown nosing" with them to get into their good graces almost to suggest that they don't want to face FTR in any shape nor form. Smarter booking would have done the initial tease between the Bucks and FTR during the FTR and not even have both teams come in contact until after one or the other beat Hangman and Omega for the AEW Tag Team belts.
Handicap Match
Nyla Rose def. Kenzie Paige and KiLynn King
This was the squash match of pure domination that Nyla needed at the start of her run here in AEW rather than months after the fact since they've squandered her momentum. To be fair, she lost the AEW Women's Championship in against arguably the best woman on the roster, Hikaru Shida, and that wasn't a burial. Shida had to beat her in a gimmick match to get the job done, so Nyla still has her rematch clause to lean back on if that's a thing in AEW to get her back into the title conversation.
Seriously though, who's decision was it to give Nyla a manager when she's one of the few women in this company who can cut consistently good promos? As of this posting (7/17/20), it has been revealed that Vickie Guerrero has been brought in to fill that role, even though I thought it was going to be Awesome Kong (only if she was done filming her scenes for the final season of GLOW on Netflix...) or Brandi Rhodes.
Six-Man Tag Team Match
Colt Cabana and The Dark Order (Brodie Lee and Stu Grayson) def. SoCal Uncensored (Christopher Daniels, Frankie Kazarian, and Scorpio Sky)
We're quickly approaching the one year mark of AEW Dynamite on TNT and for some reason, we're still doing this Dark Order crap. AEW saw the light and axed that awful Nightmare Collective bullshit when people pointed out how stupid it was. Why can't they do the same with the Dark Order? The longer that Brodie Lee is associated with this faction, the more I can see why Vince McMahon had absolutely no faith in this guy. He is a charisma vacuum in this role as the leader of this group and comes off as exciting as watching paint dry. As for this match itself, it was fine since everyone involved are all capable workers, but it was just a nothing match. It was just here to kill time until the main event.
Chris Jericho (with Santana and Ortiz) def. Orange Cassidy (with Best Friends)
In all honesty, I don't flat out hate Orange Cassidy like a lot of old school wrestling fans and critics do. I get he's one of these niche gimmicks that was brought into this company that caters to the hardcore AEW audience and I don't have an issue with that. My issue is that I felt that Chris Jericho gave him a little too much here. With this gimmick, Cassidy should be an upper to midcard act at best. When he's hanging in there with main eventers like this is the headliner to WrestleMania then we have a problem. Too much, too fast. You don't have to blow your load at once with this guy, especially when the comedy aspect of his gimmick has a limited shelf life anyway. Jericho hit this guy with a baseball bat and multiple finishers and still wasn't able to put him away until some additional interference from Santana and Ortiz while Cassidy was left looking stronger since he had sent the Best Friends away to handle this on his own from the start. They made Ref Aubrey look like a colossal dumb ass calling the finish too when even Jim Ross is pointing out on commentary that she's laying in the same goddamn orange juice that Santana & Ortiz threw into Cassidy's face moments prior while she's making the count. I get this is filler until Jericho can resume the feud with Mike Tyson, but there has to be someone else he can tango with than Cassidy.Closing Thoughts
I just have to remind people who read that I'm not a podcaster/YouTuber who is desperately looking for views and subscribers to boost my channel. I'm not on Patreon, begging for my fans and followers to shove money up my ass either, so don't expect me to grade AEW on a curve. AEW has a lot of talented athletes and performers on their roster. There's no doubt about that. All I'm saying is that their booking leaves a lot to be desired. A lot of this comes across as the same level of booking that people were laughing at IMPACT Wrestling for doing a few years ago and even some of it is as bad and on par with some of the shit on Monday Night RAW and Friday Night SmackDown! over on a WWE on a regular basis. I can't help but to continue feeling that people constantly give AEW a pass on stupidity and poor decision-making because they are ANYTHING but WWE.
I get that every company is struggling during this global pandemic and AEW is no different as Tony Khan has a lot of talent sidelined either by various injuries or barred from any sort of international travel right now. As a result, Tony Khan has limited resources to work with if the #SpeakingOut accusations didn't cripple his roster enough too.
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