10 Things AEW Wants You To Forget About 2023
4. The Random Babyface Alliances
Babyfaces should have friends, otherwise they're unlikeable losers who don't really warrant your support. At the same time, heels need to get heat and should not be thwarted every single time they beat a babyface down.
It's a tricky balance to get right, one that opens up plot holes quite often, but AEW gets it right much of the time.
This is a narrative paradox of sorts, one that Tony Khan has made more complicated than it needs to be by assembling a series of all-star babyface squads. Khan likes to book multi-man matches in order to tease singles matches, and he did so with a meme-friendly angle throughout 2023.
Orange Cassidy...teaming with Bandido?!
lol!
You'll never remember who teamed with Orange Cassidy to take on the JAS in June, because a lot of these temporary babyface squads come and go and are basically answers to difficult trivia questions.
The answer is Keith Lee and El Hijo del Vikingo.
Orange Cassidy has teamed with virtually every face in the company this year (in addition to his actual Best Friends stable): Sting, Darby Allin, HOOK, Adam Cole, Roderick Strong, Katsuyori Shibata, Penta El Zero Miedo...
This is a bit of a problem in itself, in that it underscores how random and trivial Dynamite is too often, but consider the ramifications of this "Hey, check out this weird and wonderful match graphic!" approach.
Eddie Kingston got his ass kicked for minutes on end by Jeff Jarrett's cronies on the October 21 Collision. Eddie had teamed with - yes - Orange Cassidy at All In: London. Cassidy went to war with Eddie, but didn't make the save two months later. AEW used to be the company that rewarded a super close watch; now, they can't even remember their own continuity.
A lot of stuff you are expected to forget just...happened this year.