10 Booking Steps For The AEW World Title Tournament
Deftly Game.
It's weirdly daunting, this geek-out indulgence, because AEW books so well and so intricately.
Still, it's genuinely quite nice that a list like this is even worth doing, when it was rendered extinct through sheer pointlessness when WWE long ago punished your investment.
The old e-Fedder that was Tony Khan knows that, in hooking the hardcores that create a word-of-mouth base, they will fantasy book that product like an e-Fed in kind. You want to know where everything leads, and in nerd culture, the best properties encourage this mode of thought because it guarantees long-term investment.
Look at whatever is going on with Chris Jericho and MJF. Foreshadowed almost a year ago, we're reaching the culmination of whatever this story is. But what is it? Is MJF going to steal the Inner Circle from Chris Jericho, or is he merely going to fracture it and form his own splinter "Wolfpack"? Is MJF the mythical, teased "Fourth" after Shawn Spears and FTR, and is all this leading to a Four Horsemen vs. Inner Circle programme?
Is MJF joining the Inner Circle? Does Chris Jericho want MJF to join the Inner Circle?
And what, also, of this AEW World Title tournament announced this past Wednesday... ?
10. Hangman Page Can't Win
This is the first and most important step.
Hangman Page is the long-term Ace of AEW; the Wrestling Observer's Dave Meltzer has reported this several times, and it can be inferred from the incredible amount of detail with which his arc has been mapped. AEW are layering and layering the sympathy we are to feel for him, balancing it perfectly with a strong win/loss record, with the idea that the fanbase will buy him as a World Champion when they most want to see him ascend.
A witty, irreverent and sensitive babyface for a more progressive generation, Hangman retains enough of what fans have traditionally valued in a top guy - he's a superb, heavy-hitting babyface drinker with a convincing, badass frame - to appeal universally. AEW cannot risk the intricate booking that began at All Out 2019 to split the audience.
Jon Moxley is too over as the current top guy. AEW fans are encouraged to agonise over where to direct their support, in certain storylines, but the choice here is too stark: Mox is the man, and the man who defeats him is going to be heavily resented for it.
But how does Hangman Page not win?