10 Moves Tony Khan Must Make To Save AEW
3. Abandon Ring Of Honor
Is this where it all went wrong?
That's a drastic way of putting it. AEW still promotes largely very good shows. Still, the sense that AEW just doesn’t feel like AEW anymore is hard to shake.
When did AEW last really feel like AEW? This is as subjective, gut feeling as an insight gets, but Revolution '22 might well be it. The CM Punk Vs. MJF feud in particular saw AEW at its brilliant, unparalleled best. The sheer thought that went into it - from Punk refusing the handshake to MJF revealing that Punk shaking Bryan Danielson's hand is what brought him into the business, pivoting to the incredible exploration of stan culture - hasn't been surpassed since.
And that's because Tony Khan has too much to think about now.
Something like Anarchy In The Arena was a quintessential AEW masterpiece - the sort of incredible theatre of which no other promotion is capable - but somehow, that used to be the standard. AEW used to be surreally, impossibly great. The clumsy attempt to integrate (or impose) a secondary brand has detracted from the old magic.
ROH has devalued the prestige and importance of titles and allowed a generic, unimaginative quality to creep into Khan's booking. Nobody would truly miss it if it went away, so perhaps it needs to go away. It has accelerated Khan's burn-out, as the cynics predicted it would.
It would be embarrassing to bin it off, but that can't be worse than the rather tedious mess it has created. Asking who the ROH Women's champion is a difficult trivia question at this point.