10 Biggest AEW Creative Mistakes
2. Aggressive Recruitment Sidelines Santana
AEW's aggressive recruitment strategy has created as many problems as dream matches.
It's easy to understand why Tony Khan hired so many ex-WWE guys - why wouldn't a wrestling promoter hire Keith Lee, Swerve Strickland, Bryan f*cking Danielson? - but the excess has normalised what it means to be a true figurehead wrestling star around which a show is built. Khan has effectively spoiled us, and in doing so, has spoiled more than one AEW selling point.
It's all, at the very least, bittersweet; one of the joys of watching AEW in its original phase was in tracking the growth of and getting behind acts that had little to no mainstream presence before Double Or Nothing 2019. Watching Darby Allin gradually ascend the rankings system, and suffering big match setbacks before finally winning the big one at Full Gear '20, was a great device that encouraged fans to stay with him on his arc. It was an objective winner of a booking mechanism, too; his TNT Title run was a ratings smash.
As a result of the endless wave of new signings blocking out TV time, Santana never did capitalise on his enormous babyface potential. His February 2020 sit-down interview with Jim Ross, in which he revealed he took Jon Moxley's revenge attack personally because his father went blind in his teen years, was both gut-punch and breakthrough - and in general, Santana had a quality that made it very easy to root for him that never tarnished his badass aura. To go from that, to infrequently used tag guy, was a huge shame.
In some respects, AEW is better now - but it's nowhere near as impressive, if that makes sense. Anybody can hire an established, great talent.