Tony Khan Must Rip & Tear AEW Until It Is Done

By Michael Sidgwick / October 22, 2024

All Elite Wrestling is a mess. The uneven quality of the programming is still capable of reaching transcendent peaks, but the promotion is an unfocused and often incoherent mess.

The days of a promotion uniquely positioned to map out two years’ worth of storylines are dead. If Bryan Alvarez of the Wrestling Observer is to be believed, the days of long-term planning are dead full stop. This isn’t entirely true - the main event picture is clearly plotted out - but it’s true enough for fans to lose their faith in the process.

Tony Khan has made every mistake that almost every wrestling promoter makes - and it’s especially frustrating, almost to the level of a betrayal, since he vowed not to do that (and indeed premised his entire business on not repeating the mistakes of wrestling’s bleak, monopolised past).

A very impulsive and well-intentioned guy, Khan has done everything to make fans happy. That is not an empty platitude, nor that much of a compliment; Khan was so eager to please that he did too much. He signed too many wrestlers, he introduced too many titles, he signed more wrestlers, he overdid the ladder matches, he signed more wrestlers, he embraced every style, he collaborated with every promotion, he attempted to push too many wrestlers at the same time, then he signed more wrestlers.

This has all converged to create a mess in which nothing really means anything, the fans have lost faith in the journeys of the characters, and the booking can’t tidy itself up.

AEW is simultaneously a promotion that can produce an 8/10 Dynamite more often than a bad one, and needs to change in about 50 significant ways. This paradox only adds to the pervasive sense of frustration and alienation. This paradox must end. The mess must be cleaned. Tony Khan must rip and tear until it is done.

The tag team division is a total mess. Remember when people were mystified as to why FTR and the Young Bucks didn’t wrestle many matches against one another? Now, very few people want to see them share the same ring for a long old time. In the meantime, with too many top singles men’s stars to accommodate and allocate 20 minutes of pay-per-view time, the division withered and all but died. Private Party - who did jobs to MxM Collection in July - were gunning for the belts in October. This push involved them getting annihilated by the Blackpool Combat Club (?) and defeating the Iron Savages in one minute and five seconds. The Young Bucks have taken pinfalls in non-title matches to every single team that has challenged them in their third reign. This diabolical 2019 WWE booking pattern must end.

Rip and tear.

There are too many men’s singles titles - four, not including those promoted under the Ring of Honor name. Jack Perry (TNT) feels nothing like a champion. Kazuchika Okada is the Continental champion, and it’s a galling, insulting narrative accommodation. The New Japan Okada always held gold. The AEW Okada does, too. They’re just as important!

The International championship at least has an identity to it in 2024, in that it’s the banger title contested in advertised dream matches - a sort of star rating inflation version of the old WWF Intercontinental title - and might function as a secondary title as a result. Pick any two to go; it really doesn’t matter.

Rip and tear, or unify at least.

There is an unreasonable number of stables. It was an effective means of gradually building up talent once upon a time. Sammy Guevara was very over once, and the Inner Circle was instrumental in showcasing his bratty douche heel persona. Something like that hasn’t happened in ages. Joining or forming a stable was once sold in AEW canon as a necessary step in progressing one’s career. It’s a backwards step now. What are rebooted LFI really going to accomplish underneath the BCC, the Hurt Syndicate and the Don Callis Family? Why debut the new LFI and build the Hurt Syndicate in the same week? How is the former ever going to be taken seriously?

Stables are just something Tony does now because he needs to book multi-man tags on Collision, which is itself a huge problem, but one that can’t realistically be solved in this rights fee era.

Rip and tear. Dissolve existing factions, don’t form others, and build engaging personal issues on the old staples. Betrayal and revenge. Competition for a bigger spot. Hatred. Professional jealousy. An event in a shared past that festers over the years. AEW did this, respectively, with MJF Vs. Cody Rhodes, Darby Allin Vs. Sammy Guevera, Swerve Strickland Vs. Hangman Page, Kenny Omega Vs. Hangman Page, Eddie Kingston Vs. CM Punk.

AEW can do it again.

The women’s division is promising, and the focus placed upon it has improved AEW in 2024. This is a trickier one to navigate, because there are very few places for the obvious loser contingent of Lady Frost, Serena Deeb et al. to go. There’s no women’s indie scene of note. However, there’s a ruthlessness that Tony Khan needs to seize at some point. Khan needs to select who he actually wants to push and feature, and, drawing from peak resurgence New Japan Pro Wrestling, have them wrestle one another more frequently. Willow Nightingale gets nothing out of beating Robyn Renegade in eight minutes on Collision - but she could get something out of a competitive all-star division gunning to be recognised as the best of the best. With just one match per Dynamite, the wider problem of predictable matches is especially pronounced in the women’s scene.

(Even in this fantasy booking scenario, these wrestlers should get paid what they’re owed).

There is no hierarchy in a deeply flawed narrative ecosystem informed by a reckless and thoughtless recruitment strategy. Adam Copeland with his legacy star power could conceivably be a top guy, so he gets the TNT title. MJF is a top guy, but he’s away from the World title scene, so he gets the International. Okada, Continental. Ospreay, International. Jay White, win some, lose some.

All of which meant that there was no time to properly develop the tag and trios divisions, no time to map out a true path towards the top of the card for Daniel Garcia, Konosuke Takeshita, Wheeler YUTA, Nick Wayne, Big Bill.

Really, the only solution here is for Khan to go back in time and stop being so greedy. That, or develop a ruthless streak, and decide once and for all who the real headline crew is.

Chris Jericho.

Rip and tear.

He’s outlived his usefulness, is a detriment to the vibe of the product despite the odd not unimpressive quarter hour, and when he “jobs” to emerging prospects in six-month programmes, Jericho ends up on the next pay-per-view and they don’t. The vortex is real. Feuding with Jericho isn’t just pointless in a wrestler’s quest to be a star; it is pointless in the actual narrative. An elite coach knows that the best time to shift a star player is before they become totally valueless. Beyond everything else, it lets the rest of the team know that they can’t just coast.

AEW needs to abandon the idea that the promotion itself is worth rooting for as a narrative driver, and reorient itself as a backdrop to title programmes and grudge feuds. This is a less than ideal reality, since the latest Jon Moxley-led takeover angle is just beginning to unfold.

The inherent logical issue with the Nu Blackpool Combat Club is that, the more under-achieving wrestlers Jon Moxley targets, the more the booking is exposed. Mox hates what AEW has become, and is presently on his own quest to rip and tear. He has targeted Private Party, burying them for their inability to advance up the card. Top Flight and the Dark Order, who have also stagnated, were drawn into this big picture story on the October 16 episode of Dynamite.

The thing is, Mox could go further. He could stomp out Kip Sabian. He could go after the Righteous. He could target Johnny TV, Komander, Lee Moriarty…he could bulldog half a roster which, through Khan’s often predictable booking patterns, exist only to lose every few weeks. This only highlights how stagnant or irrelevant half of them are - and how flawed the story is.

If Mox does what the character has set out to do, and this storyline doesn’t shore up on its own island, like the dreadful EVP power struggle, AEW is telling on itself. The only non-humiliating endgame to this angle is that several acts that aren’t over, or have peaked, get over. This is hugely ambitious or even outright foolish, given AEW’s less than stellar promotional form over the last 18 months.

Making or rebuilding stars is pivotal at all times, but it’s especially critical in this sort of storyline (which, historically, rarely works). Gauging by viewership and attendance trends, AEW has driven off many disillusioned fans. Drawing them back in by asking them to support the soul or vision or feeling or whatever of AEW is a bad idea. In fact, AEW is missing the point entirely. This is not a personal issue that draws money.

Those lapsed fans are bored of AEW. That’s the point. It would be a far better idea for AEW to simply be good and not insist to the fans that it still is good.

Beyond everything else, Tony Khan needs to rip and tear every distraction, every suggestion, and realign AEW under a single creative framework.

It’s not as simple as Tony taking a day, sitting down, working out what he actually wants to do, and putting some headphones on so that he can’t hear any sub-WWE 2017 pitches from ex-Impact writers.

But Tony Khan should take a day, sit down, work out what he actually wants to do, and put some headphones on so that he can’t hear any sub-WWE 2017 pitches from ex-Impact writers.

The February 2020 period was AEW at its creative peak. Going back into that invincible world every Wednesday was awesome. And, since Tony Khan had actually shown a bit of ruthlessness by disbanding the creative committee and taking editorial control a month prior, it was a world you could believe was built to last.

The February 2020 period was a world in which an invading Jeff Cobb felt like a much bigger deal than many of the bigger free agent stars who followed him - because it was much smaller. It was a world in which you could watch the Revolution 2020 undercard and think that you were watching, in Darby Allin Vs. Sammy Guevara, the prequel to the Revolution 2022 main event - because a stable hierarchy of talent was in place. It was a world in which you could marvel at the ingenuity of the booking - like Santana revealing that his father had gone blind in his teen years, adding incredible heft to a mere TV main event - because Tony Khan didn’t have to book so many stars with egos and expectations.

The fabled feeling?

That’s it.

The AEW of autumn AEW doesn’t feel like a world that fans can’t wait to re-enter week by week. It feels like there are multiple promotions within AEW, and that isn’t merely the Ring Of Honor influence. In signing so many “top” singles male stars, Khan has broken the way in which AEW (or any promotion) should function.

There’s an AEW in which the promotion wants you to get behind Kyle Fletcher as a top heel prospect, and an AEW that can’t help itself but sign the next WWE free agent.

There’s an AEW that wishes to appeal to the “sickos” who like acclaimed, credible technicians, and an AEW that indulges Chris Jericho’s sports entertainment leanings and books MxM Collection - the parodic stylings of which are both indistinguishable from the source material and several years out of date.

There’s an AEW featuring two separate heel stables with a mission to restore the vision of the company. In addition to being redundant, what message does this send? The show mustn't be that “great” if you are constantly told that it needs to change.

You can’t exactly rip and tear multiple million-dollar contracts and hand over excellent talent to an already runaway monster of a competitor - but AEW can only ever “feel” like AEW again if Tony Khan makes it feel like a meaningful world once more.

He only accomplishes that if he sidelines certain talents. They can’t all get over.