10 HUGE Tests Wrestlers Passed

Succeeding in AEW is more of a test than you might think.

It's meant to be easy, or at least easier. AEW is the meritocracy that values and encourages creative expression slavered over, one is told, by undiscerning brainwashed WWE haters who would automatically say that Anonymous Dark Order Creeper #6 is a great choice for World Champion, were AEW to do it. They never, ever would, but there's a lot of things they'd never do that tribalist Fedpilled mutants dream up to prove that it isn't good. People just want it to be good.

The opposite is true; these people want AEW to be bad because the primitive ooze packed into their skulls doesn't like that their thing doesn't also get praised. These people struggle to talk - the language is a simplistic hybrid of the ancient and the modern, of grunts and cry-laugh emojis - and they struggle to understand, too.

Were any of the above true, people would be doing cartwheels over Miro's run. They aren't, because it sucks; the Twitch streamer gimmick is far too low-stakes to justify a saga of a storyline that feels at this point like a frozen corpse tied to a tractor, it's that cold and slow-moving.

Miro hasn't (yet) passed his test. He is the former WWE star failing to prove that he could have grabbed the brass ring. He's talented. AEW has failed to exploit that talent.

So far, he's more Aron Rex than...

When Jon Moxley left WWE in 2019, he did so in a state of embarrassment at what had become of his career and his public perception. On Talk Is Jericho, he quite infamously made certain to place the blame on WWE for hiring f*ck-witted but well-meaning writers to appease a low-brow lunatic with the sense of humour of a five year-old.

That isn't a joke. Your writer has a five year-old son who thinks poo is really funny and awesome. Actually, come to think of it, he hasn't for some time. He's becoming more interested in video games and laughs harder at deadpan than toilet humour.

Correction: the sense of humour of a four year-old.

Mox said he didn't want that injection anywhere near his ar*e cheek in a strategic bid to disassociate us from the image. By effectively saying he was a great ideas man who'd do any deranged act of violence to get over as a top star, Mox had to get over as one to spare himself the humiliation.

And he did: Mox recast himself as a legitimate mat wrestler-cum-psychopath brawler who was hard enough to chin anyone, but cool enough to drag a sidekick along for the ride. He was so cool in fact that he got 'Death Rider' over as a nickname and lived up to it by somehow conspiring to remove layers of desensitised husks and, at Full Gear 2019, make violence feel like violence again.

The real test was in his promos. Was he better than a soap opera writer?

Yes. He said sh*t like "I am napalm death" and in the same breath urged you to phone your lonely grandmother during a pandemic because he is the hardest - and best - man alive.