10 Most Desperate Ways AEW Got You To Watch
6. Gimmick Match Overload
The gimmick match used to feel so much more earned and elusive - special - in All Elite Wrestling.
Sadly, in and around the incredible peaks of which the promotion is still capable, the attraction match is another victim of the rampant excess with which Khan has indulged himself. Consider the pre-pandemic period.
The Lights Out match between Kenny Omega and Jon Moxley felt like a pulsating, 40-minute transgression of the compromised violence to which the millennial fanbase had grown accustomed. The Steel Cage match between Cody and Wardlow felt like a devious, dangerous trick played by the sociopathic MJF. All the while, AEW developed an impressive audience - one large enough to secure a sizeable rights fee far earlier than anticipated - by simply presenting excellent and eclectic action in the singles and tag contexts. AEW had preserved the special aura of the gimmick match.
You can only do something for the first time once. Novelty is fated to die.
That however doesn't excuse undermining the violent aura of the Lights Out match by turning into basic plunder and presenting a ladder match an once-per-month basis. Violence used to be a scary prospect in AEW.
Now, to maintain numbers, it is presented on the "Sammy Guevara had a good one in January, so let's just do it again" basis.