10 Bad Habits AEW Must Kick RIGHT NOW
4. Attaching Meaningless Stakes To Matches
He's a 10 but he won't stop adding superfluous stakes to matches that could and should simply exist as fixtures that determine the rankings in a wrestling promotion that seeks to emulate sport.
Seriously: the absolute worst, most dog sh*t take in all of wrestling discourse is that Tony Khan doesn't tell stories. He tells too many, if anything.
A couple of months back on Dynamite: Barbed Wire Everywhere, the hapless John Silver attempted to present the Butcher and the Blade with matching 'Budge' t-shirts. He was decked in response before being saved by Hangman Page, thus setting up a match between the two teams on that week's Rampage.
What a phenomenally useless heat angle. The match could simply have existed, again, as a fixture. Presumably, that's why both teams were interviewed backstage. The match was happening already. Why couldn't the commentary team have set it up by saying something along the lines of "We have new Tag Team champions, and it's time to determine a fresh pair of challengers and see who can climb up the rankings"?
Did a living soul say "Oh no, poor John Silver! Blast the Butcher and the Blade for refusing his offer of a t-shirt! I hope he kicks their ass!!!"
This isolated event hardly matters in and of itself, but the desperate urge to add any story beat to everything just makes too much of Dynamite feel contrived.