14 Ups & 4 Downs For AEW In 2020
Downs...
4. Matt Hardy's Run
AEW is the self-styled buffet of professional wrestling, but Matt Hardy and his BROKEN universe has always felt incongruous to it. AEW promised a variety of disciplines presented under a meaningful sports-adjacent framework captured with an acknowledged camera. You get lucha libre. You get the best of the hybrid modern style. You get blood, guts, and brawling.
You get the full professional wrestling on TV experience: great promos, great angles, great matches, great hooks.
Hardy's heightened gimmickry feels less like a classic staple WWE abandoned, and more like a passé trend that felt far more ancient than the Dog Collar and the whip-lashing because the BROKEN Universe is not timeless.
Even when not visited by disaster, Hardy's in-ring suffered. He worked a dud with Santana and only approached the gentleman's three with Sammy Guevara. The run wasn't an unqualified disaster - Hardy was terrific value in the build towards and at Double Or Nothing itself - but the character was untenable (and unwanted) in this context.
But, as you'll read, Hardy has recovered - and that Up has more weight than this Down...