10 Real Reasons Why Wrestling Fans Never Get What They Want
2. The Rankings System
The rankings system was imperfect, but incredible on the rare occasions on which its potential was explored.
In the All Out 2020 World Tag Team title no. 1 contender's four-way gauntlet, AEW accomplished the following:
- Teased the idea of a Young Bucks Vs. FTR in-ring meeting
- Made fans realise that they'd rather pay for the real thing, in an expert use of promotion
- Circumvented the meeting by booking Hangman Page to turn on the Bucks, initiating the next chapter in that story
- By booking the #1, #2, #3 and #4 ranked teams to compete in one major match, told the fans that every match worked by each unit mattered in retrospect
- Set up FTR Vs. Best Friends after the former won the belts at the PPV
It was sensational booking, but, more often than not, sadly, wrestlers went on a sudden, mostly unseen win streak on Dark to get a title match.
It was a flawed, selectively used system, but for a while, its very existence was a benefit to the product. Every single result in every single match mattered. Every match had inherent stakes.
The AEW roster is simply too big to accommodate the old rankings system. With that system in place, too many of Tony Khan's stars couldn't win, else they'd be installed as default number one contenders after a while. Bluntly, the rankings system and the Galacticos era of AEW cannot co-exist, and the debut of Collision renders the idea even more remote. It also feels like it was considered too much like hard work, to be cynical.
It's a shame, because the system forced Khan to work harder, and now that it has been abandoned, bad habits are creeping in. How did Taya Valkyrie get a shot at the World Women's title after unsuccessfully vying for the lesser TBS title three times?
By defeating an enhancement talent in 24 seconds?
Cheap, lazy, and - given Taya jobbed to Shida between title shots - short-sighted and baffling.
It just isn't the same as it was.