10 Terrible Debuts AEW Quickly Fixed
1. Brodie Lee
Elsewhere on this list, the late great Brodie Lee was credited with salvaging the tattered remains of a Dark Order gimmick in disarray when he debuted in March 2020, but the idea wasn't so good that he too wasn't tainted by the stink in the early days.
Lee's well-built arrival was unfortunately snakebit - the March 18th episode of Dynamite was supposed to take place from his hometown of Rochester, New York, but was in fact the first episode moved to Daily's Place in the immediate wake of the pandemic. On the same night, his arrival was trumped in the post-show hubbub by the show-closing arrival of Matt Hardy. And the overall look and feel didn't exactly pop off the screen. But some of the best ideas never do straight away.
An on-the-nose Vince McMahon parody wasn't perfect but it was a giant leap in the right direction, and soon the papers-swinging maniac of Being The Elite was a genuine danger to the roster. His Double Or Nothing loss against Jon Moxley was impeccably worked and immaculately booked, and even that couldn't compete with his era-defining demolition of Cody for the TNT Championship on August 22nd.
It made him, his stable and his newly-won belt, at long last realising his immense potential as a headlining star before any further opportunities were tragically lost.