Ranking Every Kenny Omega AEW Championship Defence From Worst To Best
4. Vs. Rey Fenix (AEW New Year's Smash 2021)
Kenny Omega vs. Rey Fenix played out exactly as you'd expect it to; consistent, methodical, balls-to-the-wall professional wrestling, using the ring as their playground for displaying innovative flips and inhumane bumps that should only exist in these sorts of scenarios.
Having only been built up over, really, one episode of Dynamite, there was no reason for Omega and Fenix's bout to be anything but this. They prioritised Twitter GIFs over traditional pro wrestling psychology, though said psychology wasn't sacrificed. In a way, there was a story in Fenix's uber-popping Moonsault German suplex. It served as a legitimate way to weaken Omega's neck, thus diminishing the chances of a One-Winged Angel.
It was an awesome match, inarguably the greatest of Omega's seven defences from an actual wrestling viewpoint. It lacked in almost every other area, though.
The story going into the match was tremendously basic by AEW standards, with Fenix only requesting a title match because he'd been forced to withdraw himself from the AEW World Title Eliminator tournament in which Omega earned his chance at Jon Moxley's championship.
Meanwhile, the post-match shenanigans, in which Omega, the Young Bucks, and the debuting Good Brothers reunited over a fallen Jon Moxley felt like the match only existed as a means of beginning AEW's 2021 with a banging main event. It worked, mind, but that's all it was.
Just a match.