10 Awesome AEW Booking Moments Nobody Ever Talks About
5. A Match Far Deeper Than A Nostalgia Pop
At part 1 of Bash At The Beach, MJF, the Butcher and the Blade defeated Diamond Dallas Page, Dustin Rhodes and QT Marshall. It was a fun match that, looking at the tone and the players involved, was never going to be more than that. DDP did a dive, and it was nice in that incongruous way.
But it was more than that.
The magic of Cody Vs. MJF - and indeed so many of AEW's major storylines - is that the protagonist and antagonist barely touched beforehand. That was saved for the pape. The approach borrows from Taz Vs. Sabu: anticipation is ramped up and up to a level so high that you have to pay a not inconsiderable sum of money to pay for it.
But you can't tease that brawl too often, only for it to be broken up. You can only cut so many promos. The genius of Cody Vs. MJF was in the heel's psychological torture campaign - he stacked the deck against Cody, and made him do dehumanising things, just to get the match - but also in adapting Cody's interior life onscreen.
To make the match feel that bit more real, and to prolong/enrich it, Cody's extended Nightmare Family backed up their man at Bash At The Beach: a quasi-stable formed over months of booking that made so much beautiful sense in retrospect.
In AEW, even the nostalgia pops are densely layered.