10 Things AEW MUST Achieve Over The Next Five Years
2. Grooming The Next Creative Minds
Professional wrestling is cyclical in a way that even its greatest creative minds fail to consider.
This is obvious throughout history, so much so that it barely qualifies as an insight. Most every wrestling fan is aware of how rapidly the pioneering Bill Watts declined in the early 1990s. He exemplifies the trend. Vince Russo's mega-successful formula aged horrendously in about three years, and he refused to abandon it - or was incapable of abandoning it - to the defining detriment of TNA/Impact Wrestling. Paul Heyman leaned on garbage wrestling despite it being subsumed by WWE and WCW by 1998/9. Even NJPW's Gedo, who enjoyed a longer peak than most, is cracking.
And now Triple H is confronted by merciless time: his NXT, with its emphasis on heavy workrate matches with soulless, polished build, is no longer the "future" of pro wrestling. When was the last time anybody cared about a great video package, at which NXT still excels?
The live fire of the unscripted promo best sells the wrestling match in 2021. WWE is lagging behind badly insofar as the hype, buzz and conversation goes.
AEW cannot repeat Vince McMahon's greatest mistake - he's still in charge despite being woefully unqualified, and here's the refrain again, despite how good he once was. By 2026, AEW's new and exhumed ideas alike will have developed the odd callous. Vice President Chris Harrington will know the pattern better than anybody. He is a knowledgeable wizard of the numbers game.
Your writer reckons that Santana has the booking gene, but it's on AEW to determine that - and, crucially, have the lack of ego to recognise it.