Taz Brings Back the FTW Championship! AEW: Fyter Fest Night Two Review (7/8/20)

Overall

I will be the first to admit that I didn’t have high hopes for week two of Fyter Fest after it was announced that the AEW championship match had been moved to next week’s “Fight for the Fallen” free event due to AEW Champion Jon Moxley’s caution surrounding the ongoing global pandemic. The card seemed a little lack luster and with only one title up for grabs it seemed like AEW had a dud on their hands for this special event.

Boy was I wrong, the majority of the matches tonight were a ton of fun to watch and I really enjoyed our main event match between Chris Jericho and Orange Cassidy (other than the finish which I will talk about later). AEW continues to prove that their men’s tag team division is top notch if not a little crowded, and that they have some of the best in ring storytellers in all of wrestling.

Overall, I had a lot of fun watching night two of Fyter Fest it was a good show and the card for next week’s Fight for the Fallen looks like it will be just as fun. (By the way check back here tomorrow for my break down of NXT’s Great American Bash as compared to Fyter Fest.) So that being said, let’s look at the good, the bad, and the ugly of AEW: Dynamite Fyter Fest Night Two.

The Good

• This opening match between Private Party and Omega & Page was a lot of fun. I loved the moment where Marq Quen was caught between chops from both Kenny Omega and Adam Page.
• Isiah Kassidy’s middle rope springboard into Hangman Page and the crowd.
• The last two shows have really sold me on Private Party, and both their match this week and last week’s match with Santana & Ortiz shows just how well Private Party’s style works with just about anyone.
• Joey Janela’s counter to the blackout from Lance Archer.
• Taz bringing back the FTW championship and referring to it as “some renegade shit right there!”
• Matt Jackson tagging himself in and it not resulting in in-fighting between FTR and The Young Bucks. The easy route would’ve been to have it piss them off, instead the figured out how to make it work and it told a much more interesting story.
• The talk of the Pulp Fiction “gimp”. Just a fun conversation that you won’t find on most TNT programing.
• A solid surprise win for Lucha Bros and The Butcher & The Blade! A really good match with a finish that I wouldn’t have thought they’d go for.
• It should be noted that Britt Baker is a strong enough character that she can really hold a feud even when she can’t compete in the ring.
• The Chris Jericho and Orange Cassidy main event was a lot of fun!
• I specifically want to call out a fantastic moment with the kicks of doom into a true superkick fake out that I was a huge fan of!

The Bad

• Not seeing a lot of mask usage at ringside. (Not that AEW has been particularly good about mask protocol)
• Look, it is bad enough that Jake Roberts is having to come to television during a pandemic but what was he doing or where was he being kept that he got so sweaty?
• Weird Turner synergy between AEW and Tru Tv’s “Hot Ones: The Game Show”. I get why they do it, but it doesn’t feel right on a special event episode.
• The downside to showing wrestler’s records when they are announced is that you can immediately tell how bad the squash match is going to be.
• I wish I hadn’t been eating lunch when they showed us that awful bruise on Colt Cabana…disgusting!
• Jericho had a bad catch for Orange Cassidy’s tope. It wasn’t quite a botch but it wasn’t pretty. I can’t just blame Jericho but he could’ve moved over to better catch him.

The Ugly

• Ok, Orange Cassidy had a great night! He out performed Jericho at nearly every point in the match, he sold what he needed to sell, he looked super quick, and he really showed of how solid of a wrestler he is. Tonight was a chance to really add some legitimacy to Orange Cassidy as a wrestler. Instead, we had to watch Jericho kick out of several finishers including a fantastic “stun dog millionaire” and swinging DDT combo that really should’ve ended it and then sit there as Jericho lands a Judas effect (MMA bros don’t come at me explaining why it actually works, its a crap finisher) to win. This really could’ve been Orange Cassidy’s night, but it just felt like Jericho wasn’t willing to do the job. I almost put this as just “bad” but honestly it is just ugly. It took what could’ve been match of the week and just stomped it out.