What do you do when it’s the final AEW Dynamite before the biggest show in company history, and with the Fyter Fest branding to boot? Load it up as best you can, which is exactly the case for tonight’s episode from Duluth, Georgia.
Naturally, setting up some final pieces to All In looks like it will be part of the fun. There’s the obvious stuff, like a contract signing between Chris Jericho and Will Ospreay, as well as a face-to-face interview between AEW World Tag Team Champions FTR (who will be the subject of, let’s call it increased interest due to recent events) and their challengers, the Young Bucks.
Some of the matches on tonight’s card are also previews of sorts for things we’ll see this weekend, including a battle between The Elite and Bullet Club Gold. Even the singles match between Jon Moxley and Rey Fenix has taken on potentially greater meaning since Fenix is rumored to be on his way out of his All In match due to visa issues.
Plus we’ll hear one last time from the two men who will meet in the main event of All In, MJF and Adam Cole. The success of their pairing has gone way beyond what anyone might have expected when it first started (including Cole himself, as he told us earlier this week), but now it’s the most exciting storytelling in all of AEW. Will there be one more twist in their tale before they team, then fight, in London?
Getting answers to questions like that is a big part of why we watch. Let’s dive in.
AEW Dynamite Fyter Fest results from Duluth:
The Elite (Kenny Omega and the Young Bucks) vs. Juice Robinson and The Gunns is a no contest that turns into a huge multi-person brawl
The heel trio doesn’t even wait until our heroes are in the ring to attack, and Juice also abuses the ref for preventing him from using a steel chair. The Gunns hit Nick Jackson with the 3:10 to Yuma, but there’s no ref to count … or to stop Jay White from intervening too.
Omega fights valiantly against White but gets run over by Konosuke Takeshita. Things are looking dire until FTR events the odds, and with Omega and Takeshita isolated in the ring, Konosuke barely escapes the ring before he’s hit with a One-Winged Angel.
MJF proves he’s still having some trouble adjusting to being a face as he promises a pint to all the fans at Wembley but suggests he’ll make Tony Khan pay for them. Renee Paquette asks about the pressure he feels, and he says it’s the most of his entire life while putting over those who paved the way for a show as big as All In to happen.
Paquette also questions the sincerity of his friendship with Adam Cole while showing video of some of their previous interactions. The champ says that he’s become a better person because of Cole, and that while brothers fight sometimes, they hug it out at the end.
MJF suggests that if you put your faith in him, he will reward it. After all, he’s not just a scumbag — he’s your scumbag.
Jon Moxley def. Rey Fenix by submission, plus Santana and Ortiz are back
Fenix gets off to a quick start that includes a tope to the floor, but this all feels like a bit of misdirection given what’s rumored to happen here. Rey takes a nasty bump to the floor and is slow to rise, which may be leading toward what we’re talking about.
Mox rips away at Fenix’s mask during some picture-in-picture action but he’s able to avoid being unmasked and the fight continues. Fenix takes a series of stomps to the face but manages to pull off a superkick that gets him a momentary respite.
Rey tries his rollthrough cutter and gets it on his second try. A frog splash follows and comes very close to winning it for the luchador.
As Moxley tries for the Death Rider, Fenix counters with an inside cradle for another near fall. The two men slug it out until Rey’s thrust kick provides him the time to go up top. But Mox meets him there, biting his face to get leverage for an Avalanche Death Rider.
Fenix kicks out but falls right into a sleeper. Rey tries to fight it but can hold out only so long.
After the bell, Claudio Castagnoli and Wheeler Yuta attack Fenix with crowbars, and when Eddie Kingston and Penta try to come to the rescue, they are stopped by a returning Santana and Ortiz.
Best Friends and Orange Cassidy chase away the heels with chairs, but the damage is done to Fenix, who ends up getting stretchered out.
Penta and Alex Abrahantes hop in the ambulance to ride along with Fenix, and Kingston has an issue with Paquette over “what your husband did.”
Sammy Guevara defends Chris Jericho to Daniel Garcia, Daddy Magic and Cool Hand Ang, who wonder if Jericho will be there for him when needed.
Will Ospreay is accompanied by Don Callis for the contract signing, and Jericho walks out with Guevara. Callis says everyone wants to know why he did what he did, but he makes it simple by saying it was due to Ospreay … as well as having a chance to end Jericho’s career.
He chose money and power over friendship and Ospreay over Jericho. Will grabs the mic to talk about how the match will change his life, and that he’ll be the only person who can say he beat Omega, Kazuchika Okada and Jericho in two months.
Jericho responds by saying Ospreay may not have done all of those things without him, claiming he called Will and told him to calm it down because his style was too reckless to ensure longevity. He says the match at Wembley means more to him than Ospreay or anyone since everyone is predicting his demise.
He touches a nerve as Ospreay smacks the mic out of his hand, and the two men need to be separated by everyone else in the ring. They did sign the contract in there too, so it’s on.
Now it’s Cole’s turn to talk to Paquette, with Cole praising MJF for having belief in him to return to top form. He also says winning the AEW World Championship would cement his status as the best wrestler in the world.
Alas, when he’s shown video of Roderick Strong and how their relationship has suffered while he’s been friends with MJF, Cole gets mad and cuts the interview short, yelling that there are no problems between him and Max.
Darby Allin and Nick Wayne def. AR Fox and Swerve Strickland by pinfall, but there’s more to the story
Fox is wearing the same tank top he wore when attacking Wayne in his home ring, stained with the youngster’s blood. That’s … pretty nasty.
Wayne is taking some hellacious bumps here early on, but he hits a double Wayne’s World to the floor, followed by a Coffin Drop from Allin.
After a commercial break, Allin is hurling himself through the air again. Fox puts him in a chair on the outside, where Strickland lands a Swerve Stomp to knock him to the floor. Wayne is bleeding from his nose too, but he manages to kick out of Fox’s corkscrew brainbuster.
Swerve’s running head kick also won’t keep Wayne down, and when Fox misses a 450 splash, Wayne is able to bridge back into a pin just as Allin recovers to prevent Strickland from making the save before the ref’s count hits three.
Taking the mic, Swerve only laughs, telling Fox how disappointing he has been. “Why are you such a loser, Fox?”
Strickland says this was all a test, and he can’t trust Fox in front of 80,000 people at Wembley. The Mogul Embassy fires Fox and Brian Cage comes in and thrashes AR. Happily, Sting arrives with a baseball bat and Allin forgives Fox.
When Allin asks Strickland “who do you got?” for Sunday, out come Luchasaurus and Christian Cage, with the latter immediately insulting Wayne’s dead father.
So … Cage or the dinosaur man at Wembley?
Paquette sits down with FTR and the Bucks, with FTR saying that the only reason they’ve aided the Jacksons recently is to make sure that in London, they can determine who is the better tag team once and for all.
Nick Jackson suggests that FTR needs to win the match for their legacy, which the champs sort of shrug off. Dax Harwood says both the titles and the legacy are important, after which Matt Jackson starts in on them as well.
The four women in the title match talk about their tag team match at All In … except, curiously, for Saraya.
Ruby Soho def. Skye Blue by pinfall
Prior to the match, Soho delivers a warning to Kris Statlander, saying she’s got her eyes on the TBS Championship. At All Out, maybe?
Blue puts up her typical good fight here, including hitting Skye Fall, but Soho is able to catch her with Destination Unknown for the victory.
Flanked by The Kingdom, Roderick Strong ominously suggests that by the end of the night in London, we’re going to find out who the real MJF is and who the real Adam Cole is.
Without their usual music, The Acclaimed hits the ring and calls out the House of Black. They need to be careful what they wish for, as here comes the House.
A three-on-two beatdown is on, but Billy Gunn comes out to help chase the bad guys away. He gives an impassioned speech before saying he’s up for one more match to get some payback on the guys who hurt his “kids.”
And while fun loving Daddy Ass can’t make the trip to London, Gunn says a “Bad Ass” will be.
Aussie Open def. The Hardys by pinfall to retain the ROH World Tag Team Championship, then get a visit from MJF and Adam Cole
It feels very unlikely that these titles would change hands four days away from All In … but you also can’t rule it out if for some reason the Aussies can’t travel.
They sure look like they have taken control of this one, and by isolating Jeff Hardy, they manage to retain their belts.
For some reason, Aussie Open gets on the mic to promise no double clothesline or kangaroo kick at Wembley Stadium. All that does is bring out Better Than You Bay-Bay, a.k.a. MJF and Cole. The four men have a staredown that turns into fisticuffs.
Though Mark Davis evades a double clothesline, Kyle Fletcher is still in the ring. He nearly gets Cole to kick MJF, and hey come nose to nose before Max holds the world title belt over his head. Cole offers a handshake that MJF refuses before grabbing his Dynamite Diamond Ring, but they end up hugging it out.