10 Biggest AEW Creative Mistakes

10. The Wingmen

Fans have to organically connect with a certain act.

They had to be charmed into embracing, for example, John Silver's exaggerated hyperactive teenager. They warmed to him following a series of Being The Elite skits in which Silver was repeatedly caught being a buffoon by Mr. Brodie Lee. Had Silver suddenly turned up on Dynamite flexing his muscles and grinning like a daft, incorrigible tw*t, it would have reeked of off-putting desperation.

Enter the Wingmen: AEW's ill-advised and mercifully brief attempt at forcing a meme onto its audience in the summer of 2021.

That isn't how memes work, and their antics, like giving Orange Cassidy a mid-match makeover, felt like a frantic attempt to engineer that which takes on a life of its own. It was just too wacky for its own good, and because nobody got in on the joke first, the punchlines didn't land. At all. Even as a frivolous undercard act, the Wingmen failed dismally. There was no catharsis in watching them get their asses handed to them because they were too busy getting their own self-indulgence in than anything else.

Nothing spoiled - they barely ate up any TV time in an otherwise great period for the company - except something was, because JD Drake is a super-worker who has (or had) the potential to make the established stars look awesome in defeat.