Following up with last week’s “biggest takeaways” from Night 1 of AEW Fyter Fest, Night 2 had its fair share of moments worth talking about, too.
Here is a rundown of my overall impressions of what stood out to me, some thoughts that ran into my mind and some questions/comments/concerns that popped into my head while watching this show.
How basic and fundamental is this feud between MJF and Chris Jericho? Every step of the way, they’re doing old school, generic, baseline booking and it’s working.
You don’t need to be super fancy about something to make it engaging. Twists and swerves are good only when executed well. Otherwise, they’re cheap gimmicks that make something look even worse in retrospect once the immediate effect wears off.
Sure, it’s predictable that Jericho will find his way through the tasks leading up to MJF. That doesn’t matter. It’s about the journey to get to that point.
I’ll take a simple “young guy could have been a great protege, but he has too much of an ego and wants to take out his predecessor” and “chicken shit heel wants to wear down a babyface before fighting him” combo over some convoluted mess that drags out and then leads nowhere because “plans changed” any day.
When Scorpio Sky started wrestling more outside of SCU than as a team, I thought AEW was just setting him up for a singles push out of the trio. Then, the angle of Christopher Daniels and Frankie Kazarian breaking up once they lost pretty much left Kaz with nothing to do.
Going after The Elite started off great. For a solid couple weeks, I thought maybe it would work out well as a renegade character and he’d get even more popular.
Sadly, I’m not getting that feeling anymore. It doesn’t seem as though the legs are there, nor that AEW set him up properly to be effective at this role he’s taken on. Instead of hunting down the members of that faction, he’s just picking a fight and sometimes not coming out on the losing end.
It’s better than nothing. There’s a chance this turns around and it does pay off. However, I didn’t see it this week with his loss to Gallows and subsequent beating.
Chavo Guerrero is a much better choice to be the manager and mouthpiece for Andrade El Idolo, rather than Vickie Guerrero.
Not only is Guerrero too domineering on the mic and would overshadow Andrade, she’s also busy being alongside Nyla Rose. I’d like for that partnership to end, too, but at least not having her pull double duty is a step in the right direction.
It’s great to see Chavo back on screen in some fashion. I always liked him and it’s clear he’s never lost his passion for the business. How WWE never found much of a role for him is beyond me. Not everyone can have a job as a producer or trainer, naturally, but I just expected that to be a natural fit. Now, he can be not only a great mind to tap alongside the others who have come in recently, but he’ll be nice backup for Andrade.
Seeing two guys like Jon Moxley and Lance Archer beat each other into a bloody pulp is always fun to see. How anyone signs up for falling into barbed wire and being bashed in the head with a fork is beyond me. I’m having back problems just the way I’m sitting writing this article right now.
I’m extremely surprised to see Archer win the title. I just assumed Moxley was going to fight the good fight, get a decisive and brutal win after a hard battle and move on, eventually dropping it on a New Japan show.
Don’t take that surprise as a dig, though. Quite the opposite. I keep saying that I’d like to see Archer finally win something instead of coming up short, so this is a massive boost to his character. Not only did he win a championship (even though it’s not an AEW one), he did so by defeating a former AEW world heavyweight champion.
That’s big. The match was fun, I like the outcome and I’m curious what comes out of this, even as someone who doesn’t have the time to follow New Japan Pro Wrestling.
Let’s round things out with a few quick fleeting thoughts to go along with the others from above.
What were your biggest takeaways from night 2 of Fyter Fest? Drop your thoughts in the comments below!