6 Ups & 4 Downs From AEW Dynamite Title Tuesday (Results & Review)

3. Orange Cassidy: Inadvertent Heel

The entire International Title match and post-match presentation was odd. Even under the enforced, unlucky circumstances, AEW deserves criticism here.

Orange Cassidy defeated Fenix in a very short match, the action in which wasn't great. They blew the rope walk kick completely when Cassidy bumped for nothing. Fénix must be more injured than his tremendous performance last week indicated. That is the only explanation for this, which felt nothing like a triumph.

It was very clearly something AEW had to do or felt like they had to do. Jon Moxley wasn't cleared (sloppy shop stuff advertising him, incidentally), Fenix needs time off, and Orange Cassidy, as indicated following All Out, was probably winning the title back at some point anyway.

If - if - this had to happen, why not be more honest and real and less weird about it all? Why give Cassidy the big celebration and the streamers when he only really put Fenix out of his misery? It was an unintentionally comical scene. This is the sort of thing a deluded heel would do, the wild over-celebration gimmick. Cassidy, in his defence, didn't know where to put himself.

Couldn't he have grabbed a microphone and told Fenix that he didn't want to win like that before offering him a rematch when he's ready? Why pretend any of this was normal and that Cassidy had won a hard-fought match? Isn't AEW the real company that isn't synthetic and weird and carny?

Now, AEW might explore the juxtaposition between Cassidy's body language and the production of the win next week, but it was too strange by half.