It's Official: AEW Has Broken Its Most Sacred Rule
The deft touch of this gripping, ultra-violent programme was staggering at its best, dovetailing across Eddie's history with Claudio Castagnoli and Bryan Danielson, but it went badly wrong at Fyter Fest: Shark Week.
Something felt off immediately. The cross-promotion was what it was. It was even inspired by the standards of this sort of thing; the shark cage aspect was both mandatory tie-in and nod to the Last Battle of Atlanta. The barbed wire wrapped around Justin Roberts' microphone however was an example of AEW getting much too "cute", and while it informed a great, raucously received spot that sparked the match into life from the first second, the overall aesthetic of the match felt silly. Why was the ring bell covered in barbed wire? Why couldn't the scene have looked and felt like a serious, dangerous, FMW-style battleground? There's no point asking why the barbed wire wasn't quite everywhere. It wasn't everywhere because if it was everywhere, Kingston and Jericho couldn't have left the ring and performed various spots on the outside, which felt contrived as a result.
Elements of the match were excellent - Kingston sold the ever-living sh*t out of the threat of the wire, not just the impact - but it fell apart as an overbooked shambles at the midway point. The shark cage was ultimately pointless. AEW treats cages like WWE at this point. The overbooked and redundant faction brawl, combined with the deciding factor of Sammy Guevara's interference, felt like a grim attempt to "protect" Kingston in defeat. If only a deeply contrived sequence of events hadn't happened; Eddie would have won otherwise!
The post-match was bullsh*t, frankly. Allowing Eddie a "measure of revenge" - one that allowed Jericho to take a bump that framed him as a badass committed to the AEW cause, which was certainly the intention too - was patronising carny b*llocks. Jericho won the match, but Eddie got what he wanted, too!
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