How AEW Collision Will SOLVE Wrestling's Biggest Problem

6. How Did We Get Here?

Upon launching in 2019, All Elite Wrestling obviously had to deal with the fact that the majority of the industry's true top tier players were contracted to other promotions.

Sure, this meant that mainstream star power was largely lacking once you took Chris Jericho and possibly the Elite out of the equation, but the silver lining of this was that AEW could shine a spotlight on the stars of tomorrow who had yet to be given a real chance by a WWE, a NJPW, or even an IMPACT Wrestling.

As such, Tony Khan and his crew scoured the independent and international scenes to sign up talents who had the potential to step up from relatively unknown indy darlings to become mainstays on a globally broadcast wrestling product. Names such as MJF and Darby Allin had mild experience of TV wrestling due to their time with a promotion like MLW, but so many of the initial AEW roster had zero experience of working in such an environment.

The point being, it was very much a 'learning on the job' time during the early days of AEW for so many of the grapplers contracted to Khan's company. Likewise, there was understandably a level of 'learning on the job' for TK himself, as reflected by how many talents were being signed by AEW in an almost trial and error type of experiment.