10 Forgotten AEW Wrestlers You Totally Don't Remember
Tony Khan has booked a LOT of now-forgotten wrestlers since AEW launched.
Insert jokes about Tony Khan hiring every wrestler under the sun here.
Criticisms about Khan's scattergun approach to roster management are valid, but he isn't going to change now. AEW is five years old, and literally hundreds of workers have passed through the doors. Not all of them get one of those shiny #AllElite graphics, to be fair. You've probably forgotten a few who have though!
Old episodes of Dark and Dark: Elevation act as a reminder of Tony casting a wide net. Those shows normally didn't grab many viewers (at least not consistently), so it's fun to pore over the archives and find some names even the most hardcore wrestling fan would struggle to remember. For example, do you remember a one-off masked gimmick, or who his opponent was that night?
Current WWE main man Cody Rhodes pops up too, because he wrestled someone obscure on an episode of Dynamite in 2020. It's a match from Cody's history books that nobody will talk about at length when he's cutting his Hall Of Fame speech, that's for sure.
Keep score at home and find out how many of these folks you properly recall!
10. Danny Limelight
Danny Limelight goes under the spotlight.
Indy regular Danny joined the AEW train in 2021 and immediately nailed down a spot for himself on lower-rent programming like Dark and Dark: Elevation. He wrestled 18 matches for the company that year, then...OOF! Limelight vanished in a puff of smoke and returned to the independents.
Some of Dan's opponents on Dark included NXT man Ethan Page, Konosuke Takeshita, Christopher Daniels and even Jon Moxley. Limelight also teamed with Matt and Mike Sydal vs. Takeshita, Michael Nakazawa and Kenny Omega on one edition. The guy's shared the ring with some of All Elite's finest then. At least he can brag about that.
Here's the thing: Danny flies totally under the radar for all but the most hardcore of AEW fans. Like, you'd need to be the kind of fan who devours everything Tony Khan produces to even know who Limelight is. Cool Spider-Man ink though; or maybe it's a homage to 2000s nu-metallers Cold.