8 Ups & 2 Downs From AEW Dynamite: Fyter Fest Night 2 (Jul 8)
Wrestling, bloody hell.
Night one of AEW Fyter Fest 2020 was fantastic.
MJF and Wardlow Vs. Jurassic Express was a symphony of a professional wrestling TV show segment. An electrifying match - a seamless hybrid of a banger and a hoss fight - it developed the legacy rivalry between MJF and Jungle Boy and elegantly furthered the tensions between the heel tandem. That legacy rivalry demands improvement and escalation with each beat to earn itself, and their work was even better than Double Or Nothing's undercard show-stealer.
With one incredible spot and an even more impressive match, Hikaru Shida and Penelope Ford battered, with the force of a lunging knee strike, the fading take that Kenny Omega doesn't know what he is doing. Cody Vs. Jake Hager was the best possible version of itself: an immaculately paced and told story of savvy vs. brute strength in which Cody fulfilled his own remit for the TNT Championship. This was a superb bell-to-bell performance. Santana and Ortiz Vs. Private Party, the lowlight of the show, was still a lot of fun.
Tony Khan again waved his baton throughout a main event segment that distilled the joy that is AEW Dynamite in 2020. The Best Friends' entrance was as hilarious as it was sweet, the closing stretch of the match was white hot, and the post-match angle was sumptuously deft. FTR cut a tag team in half, much less the ring, with a tremendous heel tactic at once clear in its intent and open to misinterpretation, furthering an intoxicating episodic storyline. Storylines plural, actually.
As for night two...?