10 Things That Will NEVER Happen In AEW
1. A General Manager
As much as Tony Khan is a fabulous booker, and a great force for pro wrestling in general, his name is getting uttered rather a lot on Dynamite of late. It's a nod to realism - he is, in reality, making these matches - and it's not said often enough that it feels like he's desperate to be part of the show. But it's...enough.
And it is still far preferable to the WWE-style General Manager.
There were whispers, at the defining turn of the year, that AEW would turn to this trope to give a show in uneven form a sense of cohesion and direction. But it was never needed.
Khan acts as a spiritual successor to Jack Tunney in some ways. The offscreen presence - the idea that somebody is making the matches, that there's a robust process involved in making them - is enough. Khan in kayfabe settles spiralling disputes and rewards in-form players with bigger matches on the back of the ranking system. With a set of "fixtures" organically arrived at by plot development and win/loss records, all of which are announced in advance stemming from that week's show or episodes stretching further back, the General Manager is redundant.
Cody outright told Collider Live last year that "We're not going to give you a fake general manager or fake commissioner".
The General Manager is a plot device that WWE uses to piece everything together - to the detriment of realism - the night of.
Dynamite's format renders this entirely pointless, and even in the event of sliding ratings, and a shift in direction, they're hardly going to say "Hey, let's do the failing thing that created an appetite for our company in the first place!"