Why AEW Must Steal THIS Hated WWE Idea
Tony Khan hasn’t been doing a very good job for you lately.
AEW needs to do something. Is that something one of the worst ideas ever?
In December 2018, WWE was in trouble.
That’s probably too strong. With the rights fees era well underway, WWE was never going to face serious repercussions for its dire, asinine creative. They had found the floor, and it was humiliating, but it was never going to look like the dressed-up high school gyms of 1995 ever again. Still, trademarks had been filed for a new competitor, the momentum was with whatever ‘All Elite Wrestling’ might turn out to be, and WWE, historically, treated any form of competition with fear and contempt - irrespective of how big or small it might be.
Why did NXT UK happen?
This was an era in which many fans declared the free DIY project Being The Elite better than WWE Raw, and if nothing else, it was certainly more engaging and coherent. It was an era in which Kenny Omega’s epic big match made those fans realise that WWE’s in-ring output was limited and unexciting. It was an era in which Bullet Club t-shirts were visible on WWE shows, a symbol of widespread dissatisfaction and an imminent change sweeping the industry.
In response to this growing narrative and declining ratings, the McMahon family opened the December 17 Raw. The idea was to let the fans know that the product had reached a nadir, that they were sorry, and that they had vowed to make significant, overdue improvements.
This didn’t happen - Vince ranted at the fans within seconds, and 2019 was the worst year ever creatively - but that was the idea.
Does AEW need to do this? Only, correctly?
AEW has actually done this more than once across 2024.
Earlier this year, AEW got ahead of itself. In response to the abysmal, widely mocked ‘Devil’ storyline, Tony Khan booked the Continental Classic tournament in late 2023. It was almost infuriatingly good, particularly on the Collision side, since it was basically a “Let’s just do the G1” cheat code designed to convince the disillusioned “sickos” that he was still hip. He made it look easy.
It worked. AEW drew considerable praise. Capitalising on what passed for momentum amid WWE’s “renaissance era”, Khan declared that AEW was back. To drive this home, he brought back the entrance tunnels and the rankings system.
AEW: just the way you remember it!
The problem is that he didn’t bring back what AEW fans actually wanted: a tightly-plotted world into which they enjoyed escaping. The rankings lasted all of a week before Khan realised that with too many men’s singles stars on the roster, the framework was untenable. AEW’s TV carried over the uneven form and tone from 2023. As Swerve Strickland developed into an outstanding headliner, Adam Copeland drenched Malakai Black in a rubbish WCW-style fake blood angle. It was impossible to determine what AEW actually was, beyond a collection of ill-fitting ideas pitched by stars and approved by a booker who didn’t have the heart to say no.
The “feeling” returned and disappeared from one segment to the next.
Underscoring that the promotion is really quite the mess, AEW has, concurrently, vowed to “restore the feeling”, proclaimed itself to be Where The Best Wrestle, and booked two separate heel factions to in effect bury the booking.
These mixed messages don’t help.
Is AEW good or not?
They tell you it’s good - “Great!” - constantly. The booking of the Jon Moxley-led stable Death Riders, however, indicates that AEW is aware of the issues plaguing the promotion. The idea is to create or formally usher in new faces at the top of the card. In the fiction, Jon Moxley, despairing at the state in which AEW has found itself, is telling the likes of Darby Allin and Daniel Garcia to step up and for Wheeler YUTA to decide what sort of wrestler he wants to be. This is a fairly transparent way of communicating to fans that AEW wants to actually do something with the wrestlers they have neglected in recent years. This is a less than tacit acknowledgement that the process is broken, but they have resolved to fix it.
But how can it be broken, when AEW is Where The Best Wrestle, and the “feeling” has been restored?
If AEW itself can’t decide whether or not it’s actually good, what can the fans possibly make of it?
It’s confusing and alienating. People haven’t really cared about the soul of AEW as a storyline driver since 2022, when the Blackpool Combat Club raged against the “sports entertainment” of the Jericho Appreciation Society - and in one form or another, AEW has attempted to play with this sentiment ever since.
What’s ironic about this latest Stand Up For AEW storyline is that AEW is effectively a sports entertainment promotion now. The JAS won!
On the November 6 Dynamite, the following events happened. Mercedes Moné and Kamille attempted to kill Kris Statlander with a car. A guy holding what is basically the Money In The Bank briefcase then did a talking segment, after which the only women’s match was allocated a mere five minutes. Then, in the main event, a champion was pinned, despite Konosuke Takeashita only winning the International title less than a month prior. Underscoring how little the titles actually mean these days, earlier on the show, Chris Jericho was pinned 14 days after winning the ROH World title.
Isn’t this the late 2010s WWE booking AEW was able to exist in retaliation to?
Shouldn’t this make Jon Moxley the babyface?!
The big issue facing Tony Khan - in addition to the myriad booking woes and the culture of fecklessness he has created within AEW - is that not enough people trust him anymore.
He won’t answer a single probing question, insisting instead that everything is “great”. He lacks credibility amongst the “sickos” because, while he might book something like Bryan Danielson Vs. Yuji Nagata on Collision, on Dynamite, he seems to let Chris Jericho do whatever crap that enters his head. Khan, ahead of All Out 2022, said in an interview with Wrestling Observer Radio that he was “really excited to get Rampage back to where it was”. This was in September 2022. The November 30 Rampage was headlined by a Lumberjack match between Orange Cassidy and QT Marshall.
Hardly Bryan Danielson Vs. Eddie Kingston.
Collision followed the same path. Khan didn’t even begin to try with Battle of the Belts. The various ‘Huge Announcements’ became a transparent ratings ploy and then, inevitably, a meme.
AEW felt different, at first, because Khan, with a legitimate background in real sports, didn’t scan as a carny. He does now.
Put more simply: Tony Khan appears to have buried his head in the sand. It’s coarse, and it gets everywhere, but it’s great!
Khan needs to rebuild that trust, and in the broad theatre of pro wrestling, he could do with being bullish about it. Is it enough for Khan to quietly rebuild, actually do the work in the background, and let it speak for itself?
Probably not. This is unrealistic. If Khan is truly ready to declare that AEW is back, he will do just that. It’s in his make-up to be cocky. A lot of AEW fans want that Tony Khan back, too, but they want to believe in him. They want the guy who buried Nick Khan because Tony knew full well in 2021 that the rumoured WWE/NJPW relationship was never going to materialise.
The difference is that he actually has to substantiate the promise because he has broken far too many of them.
He should relinquish the day-to-day responsibility of booking AEW to somebody else for a month. At minimum. (In wrestling, it’s impossible to tell who does what, but Will Washington seemed to have a lot to do with the very acclaimed Swerve Strickland Vs. Hangman Page feud.)
If AEW was a sports team, the fans would be calling for a new coach. That point has been reached. AEW is not that; it’s a privately-owned company and, supposedly, Khan’s own passion project. But when he dreamed of running his own show years ago, a sports-oriented alternative to WWE, was he really fantasy booking angles in which midcarders run each other over with cars?
Khan should take that month, if not longer, in a bid to replicate the process of AEW’s early days. Removing himself from the grind and the requirement to pad out his three weekly shows with filler - a process that renders it difficult to focus on what actually matters - cannot possibly hurt. Only this way can he focus.
(This, incidentally, is something that he should do on an annual basis at least.)
But what form should this apology take?
Wrestling promoters by hard-coded design lack transparency and accountability. It would be nice if Khan - after actually getting his sh*t together - bucked that trend. It’s 2024. A little bit of reflection and honesty is overdue. And if the grifters get on his case for it, f*ck ‘em. They got on his case after All Out 2021.
Just be honest and do the work. This sh*t sucks more than half the time and only he can do anything about it. Look in the mirror. Wake up. Stop insulting the audience. Stop pretending to pander to them.
Be honest. Nothing’s working. It can’t hurt.
He’d have to kayfabe it to a degree - he can’t say “My booking of this scripted world hasn’t been good enough, sorry about that lads” - but this is possible.
Once he has a plan, he should articulate it carefully but confidently. Tell people you’re going away for a little while, go away, be honest with yourself, start actually planning sh*t, decide what you actually want to do. If that upsets some already very rich people, so be it. You don’t actually owe them a living.
Announce on Dynamite that AEW will be undergoing changes. Merge the three non-World men’s singles titles in a three-way at the next pay-per-view. Whomever wins the TNT title next has to be very over or on the cusp of superstardom.
Announce fines and suspensions for anybody responsible for backstage vehicular assaults (purely to signify to fans that this hacky US TV trope is over with, and that AEW will in general do less contrived Vince Era Fed nonsense).
If the rumoured names want to go, let them go that same night, and announce their departures live on air. Communicate explicitly that you will not be undermined - that the stigma of AEW as a league that entertains uninterested want-away acts is dead and buried.
Also: Khan should vow to elevate AEW into the best version of itself, and say - thus telling people that this “war the soul” stuff is finished - “And that’s the last you’ll hear about it.”
For the fans to take seriously little anything that comes out of his mouth again, that mouth needs to open.