10 Awesome AEW Booking Moments Nobody Ever Talks About
8. FTR's Debut
It wasn't just about FTR's debut, glorious as it was in casting a mystery; the first phase of an intricate psychological game designed to shatter the Elite - and put over the AEW World Tag Team Title as a prize that required months of campaigning to win - the opening segment of the May 27, 2020 Dynamite was a total masterclass of the cause and effect of episodic TV booking.
The Young Bucks and Matt Hardy defeated Joey Janela and Private Party after Marq Quen suffered an ankle injury. In the midst of a fun trios match, the action spilled over to ringside. AEW used the deflating contrivance of an emulated wrestling crowd to drive its storytelling when the Butcher and the Blade set upon the Bucks. When the match returned to the ring, the Bucks and Hardy won.
Hardy, a noble babyface, helped Quen to the back. This allowed the Butcher and the Blade to attack the Bucks without the face side skewing the psychology with an advantage. It was then that FTR arrived in a truck to craft their masterplan.
Hardy is an avuncular babyface. He would do that. But he didn't do it just to do it; in the aftermath, he formed an alliance with Private Party. Joey Janela, left devastated by yet another defeat, drove around at night. He was directionless, despondent, and he found solace in a tag team act with Sonny Kiss.
This one segment spawned two new alliances, two new matches - the Butcher and the Blade Vs. FTR, and then the Young Bucks - and it was designed to plot the very first beat of a dream pay-per-view match. Hell, even Quen's ankle injury put over his resilience in a cracker of a TNT Title match weeks later.
Literally everything mattered. It was a narrative big bang.
Genuine maestro sh*t.
DEFT.