6 Ups & 4 Downs From AEW Dynamite: Fyter Fest (20 July)
1. Weird Booking Everywhere
Despite its hysterical online appraisals, Chris Jericho vs. Eddie Kingston wasn't all bad (more on the wrestlers' honest endeavour later) - but the Fyter Fest main event was let down by its booking.
A lot happened here. Sat at ringside guarding the shark cage's controls was Ruby Soho, whose job was to keep the Jericho Appreciation Society locked up and unable to interfere. She was wiped out by Tay Conti, whose old tag partner, Anna Jay, turned heel by siding with the Brazilian after initially getting in her way. This brought down the cage. The JAS swarmed in but were run off by Ortiz and the Blackpool Combat Club. Then, as if that wasn't enough, Sammy Guevara (inexplicably not in the cage) came down, subdued Kingston, and enabled the match-winning Judas Effect.
Too much happened in too short a time window for any of this to land. Anna Jay turning heel and reuniting with Tay Conti should have felt big. Instead, it barely registered during a match between two wrestlers that somehow finished having featured 13 in about 15 minutes.
Jericho won but ate dirt afterwards. Kingston fought him and Sammy off before throwing Chris onto a barbed wire spiderweb. This was presumably done to give Eddie something following the defeat, but his dissatisfied facial expression said a lot. Kingston's character shouldn't be satisfied by merely putting Jericho onto some barbed wire, despite his promise to make the JAS leader bleed. He lost. Inexplicably.
The finish and post-match are wholly unsatisfying. If this is a The Feud Must Continue scenario, that's suboptimal as this storyline has been ongoing since December and there's nowhere to go after Anarchy in the Arena, Blood and Guts, and Barbed Wire Everywhere. How do you possibly escalate from that?
And if the feud is over, Kingston lost. The post-match doesn't qualify as a "win" despite fulfilling Eddie's promise.
An unfortunate miss, even if Jericho is being built as Jon Moxley's next challenger.