10 Defences Of Horrible Wrestling Moments
8. The AEW Devil Storyline
Because wrestling as an industry is fundamentally silly, it doesn't take a great deal for something to simply look rubbish or low-rent.
You can plot something elegantly, tease certain directions, wrong-foot the audience, attempt to get them sleuthing away on Reddit, but if it looks bad in wrestling, it looks really bad.
Case in point: the AEW Devil storyline.
It started dismally. It was baffling, even infuriating, that the Devil's associates dressed like Dark Order creepers. The symbolism of AEW detaching itself from the pulse of the fandom was very on-the-nose. Everybody buried the December 18 2019 Dark Order angle. Tony Khan, in the face of fan backlash, set about changing the product. Almost four years later, the Devil's Masked Men appeared amid much talk of "restoring the feeling".
Time is a flat circle, etc.
After Jay White didn't give a toss about being attacked, the actual plotting of the storyline hasn't been that bad. AEW has corrected the daft notion that everybody cares about who the Devil is, restoring agency to the likes of Samoa Joe and Hangman Page. No MJF attack has been filmed, lending credence to the notion that he's playing a game. Through the use of glass, Jack Perry has been positioned as a red herring. Wardlow's matted-down hair looked like he'd just taken a mask off a couple of weeks ago. With the use of blocking, while hardly subtle, Adam Cole was filmed sat under the mask before the first attack took place.
It isn't good. Haunted by the 0% success rate of the pro wrestling whodunnit, and the goofy presentation of it all - they modulated the voice to make the Devil sound like Ole Anderson - fans are hardly eager awaiting the reveal. Still, a lot of work has gone into it - so much so that perhaps the premise is inherently flawed as much as this specific execution.
It's bad, but too thoughtful to be WrestleCrap-tier.