New FTW Champion Crowned at AEW Dynamite: Fyter Fest

The FTW Championship officially change hands at AEW Fyter Fest: Night One this week, as Ricky [...]

By Connor Casey

The FTW Championship officially change hands at AEW Fyter Fest: Night One this week, as Ricky Starks ended Brian Cage's year-long reign with the title. The divide between to the top stars of Team Taz had been brewing for months, but it looked like the faction was going to side with Cage when Powerhouse Hobbs stopped Starks from trying to use the title as a weapon. This turned out to be a trick, as Hobbs bashed Cage across the face with the title while Hook distracted the referee. This gave Starks the opening to nail a spear and pin Cage for his title.

Taz first introduced the FTW Championship in 1998 while taking part in a storyline with ECW World Champion Shane Douglas. He revived it in July 2020 while Cage was feuding with Jon Moxley over the AEW World Championship.

Starks arrived in AEW in 2020 to answer Cody Rhodes' open challenge for the TNT Championship and was quickly signed to an exclusive contract (he was a free agent at the time after leaving the NWA). He later revealed in interviews that WWE called him right after his match with Rhodes to try and sign him as well.

The funny thing is, the day that I wrestled Cody I got a phone call from WWE saying 'Hey, we've been watching you and we wanted to bring you in'. I said 'Oh really? oh ok. Interesting. Of all days'. And so I entertained that conversation because I was curious but I think I knew already which decision I was going to make," Starks said in November while talking with Chris Van Vliet. "And I had a very dear, great friend tell me once: you should look at the people who want to invest in you and not know anything about you as opposed to the people who only wanted you when they saw someone else having interest. So that put things in perspective and I don't hold any ill will towards WWE but I really think they dropped the ball majorly on that. I'll never know why and I guess I don't care now."

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