10 Storylines AEW Dropped COLD
6. Shawn Spears' Tag Team Partner Hunt
It could generously be argued that this actually did actually have a payoff - Shawn Spears didn't make one friend but several - but 'The Chairman Of AEW' was looking a little lost at sea before MJF's group formed in 2021.
Spears had already joined up with Tully Blanchard in an effort to tone down the bench-warmer's instinctive wackiness, and the former Horseman/Brainbuster's plan sought to salvage Spears was with run in AEW's stacked doubles ranks. The campaign to get Spears a partner kicked off in February 2020, but that pretty much doomed it too. As the world closed down during the onset of the pandemic, so too did lesser angles and stories that couldn't easily be tended to as AEW attempted to reset and reimagine a challenging time.
When the story went nowhere, (and a second bite with a fabled loaded black glove fell equally flat) Blanchard himself seemed to make a move. Sidling up to FTR in a natural pairing, it looked as though Spears had been left to rot before all four joined up with MJF and Wardlow during The Pinnacle's aforementioned shocking debut.