10 Biggest AEW Creative Mistakes
5. The Nightmare Collective
Aptly named.
A disastrous byproduct of the original booking committee that Tony Khan disbanded after the in-parallel Dark Order disaster, Brandi Rhodes miscast herself in all too ambitious attempt to rid herself of the valet stigma.
She was great in that babyface role - her vengeful fury at Shawn Spears played a considerable part in one of AEW's most underrated storylines - but she didn't want to do it, and in the promotion that enabled creative freedom, she didn't.
There was something quite important about the group in that it strove for positive, high profile representation, but the praise ends there. It was untenable before it was horrifically am-dram in its arch b*llocks; the big bad, Awesome Kong, was cooked and couldn't physically play the hoss monster, Mel was deeply limited, and Brandi Rhodes never did decide if she wanted to be a wrestler or not. The addition of Luther further depicted the stable as cartoonish community theatre, and the fans were utterly disinterested in a supernatural stable that attempted to recruit an alien in the sports-oriented promotion.
At least NXT 2.0 knows what it is; this was a Bruce Prichard nightmare that took on a heavily ironic definition.