10 All Out Mistakes AEW Can't Afford To Repeat At Full Gear
2. Shorten Individual Match Length
AEW presents just four major, premium pay-per-views per year.
Virtually every moment that unfolds on Dynamite aims to enhance the hype and build the anticipation in a bid to draw your money, even if indirectly: FTR's mind games campaign; Cody risking humiliation just to get his hands on the man who betrayed him; the Elite waging war with the Inner Circle for over half a year. You only got four of them a year. They are meant to be premium nights that culminate months of storytelling repay the considerable sum of money you have invested.
This is why the pay-per-views go long. It is a sound strategy because AEW is intent on solidifying that diehard base as the first phase of its growth.
But it's a strategy that AEW took too far at All Out, to the extent that the baggy midcard fare undermined the purpose and appeal of the key matches.
The Dark Order Vs. the Nightmare Family went 15 unnecessary minutes. It did weave three separate developments into its duration - Scorpio Sky was highlighted, Colt Cabana cost his team the win, and the result led to Mr. Brodie Lee Vs. Dustin Rhodes on the post-PPV Dynamite - but so much of that match has receded into a nothing blur. It wasted time that the audience needed to reenergise. Presented amid gruelling humidity, the suffocating conditions also affected the very good and important matches.
Saturday's forecast poses only slightly less of a challenge.
Does MJF Vs. Chris Jericho, the first match in a long, long-term story, need to exhaust people on that story by clearing the 20 minute mark?
Cody Vs. Darby Allin might well tease the draw to extract the maximum drama and serve the continuity of a dynamic separated only by seconds. Kenny Omega Vs. Hangman Page is going long. FTR Vs. the Young Bucks is going long.
Nothing else needs to.