10 Best Matches AEW Still Haven't Booked
Blood, guts, and tears.
The people who love AEW love AEW because it has redefined what all of this is.
These things aren't brands designed to get the brand over, with those contracted to the brand in awe of it. These things are or should be promotions designed to promote the talent and the matches they wrestle in.
AEW are, the odd lull in form acknowledged, exceptional at promoting professional wrestling matches. They don't give matches away. They don't undersell matches by casually repeating them over and over again. This promotion holds a mentality of build, suspense, and anticipation.
Cody Vs. Chris Jericho was loaded with stakes sold with once-in-a-lifetime fire on the part of the babyface challenger. FTR had to tear Kenny Omega and Hangman Page apart, throughout a campaign that lasted months, just to stand a chance of beating them, putting over the act and the reign and the gold all the way over to a realm of total prestige. The Revolution Tag Team Title masterpiece felt gigantic because it was loaded with so much expertly-plotted emotional texture.
This list doesn't even include Darby Allin Vs. Ricky Starks, or Darby Allin Vs. Brian Cage, or Mr. Brodie Lee Vs. Colt Cabana.
The key benefit of AEW's meticulous approach is that they leave so, so much on that table...
10. Mr. Brodie Lee Vs. Lance Archer
Very premature and likely bad faith takes have been disproven: AEW do know how to push their big guys.
Lance Archer lost to Cody at Double Or Nothing, but has rehabilitated his aura by smashing the heads of geeks through ceilings and, in a glorious move overshadowed by a drastically uneven match, winning a battle royal as a big guy. It wasn't perfect, but it was a perfectly in-character way for the Murderhawk to arrive at Jon Moxley. 20 men are nothing when everybody dies. Archer destroys multiple people at once in his recreational time.
Mr. Brodie Lee lost to Jon Moxley on the same show, but demonstrated his intelligence and ferocity by pinning Hangman Page and annihilating Cody, and got over by blowing massive f*cking gaskets over his Dark Order minions.
The big guys in AEW also know how to work like big guys. Both Archer and Lee cast a shadow larger even than their colossal frames; Archer by becoming a skyscraper with his Blackout finish, Lee with a sinister mastery of the space between moves.
Eventually, they will clash, and it is an awesome prospect in the strictest definition. There's an inherently unpredictable drama to it beyond an obsession with future booking plans: they are a physical match each with a jaw-dropping agility capable of summoning a 14 minute-long "Holy sh*t" chant.
Brodie resorting to his suicide dive after a war on the ground. Archer catching it with the claw. Brodie raging back with a series of headbutts. Every 'All Petite Wrestling' mutant crying into their w*nk sock.
You would love to see it.