How AEW Perfected Pro Wrestling Storytelling
World of Sport.
As JR is fond of saying, it’s all about the winner’s purse.
In AEW, wins and losses matter. This is the core of sport. It was once the core of wrestling. This sporting framework enables suspension of disbelief and gives everything purpose. In any sport—even this emulation of it—stories develop from that competitive framework: legacy rivalries between elite institutions; endearing underdog tales; the magic giant-killing form of a cup tournament; even controversial cheating from panto villains.
In-form wrestlers advance up the card. Cody’s pay-per-view winning streak saw him contend for the AEW World Championship at Full Gear. Darby Allin drew with Cody, for which he was rewarded with a chance to contend for it. The runners-up and bronze medallists of the World Tag Team Championship tournament were placed in a three-way match in Baltimore. There is an incentive to win, and this—the knowledge that everything is of consequence—in itself is a compelling wider story, a league, to use AEW’s own lexicon, that immerses fans into the fictional universe.
Equally, there is gravity to every loss.
Some have it that AEW have mishandled Hangman Page and Kenny Omega.
Page has experienced a mixed win/loss record, the failure of which is magnified by his inability to capture the AEW World Championship. This decline in form has informed his character arc. Shaken by his perception as a bust, he has left the Elite faction because he felt he isn’t living up to its very name.
As for Omega, he is plotting an interesting—if divisive—arc of his own.
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