10 Things That Will NEVER Happen In AEW
3. Endless Chinlocks
There are very few protracted rest hold spots in AEW. Principally, because they are boring.
They're also passé and insulting. They are done in WWE because WWE thinks you are thick and need to give the big and impenetrable block of sh*t you call a brain the ol' breather before the next chapter of the story.
They slow matches to a crawl and cast a homogenised and drab identity over virtually everything. The very pattern exposes the artifice. It's a Very WWE practise that you will not see repeated in AEW, at least not to such a suffocating extent.
This isn't to state that AEW TV matches are undisciplined glorified indie-riffic affairs (not that there's anything inherently wrong with that style). A Dynamite match between Santana and Ortiz and Private Party will look markedly different to the matches they worked together in House of Glory. The structure is more TV-friendly, the pace more restrained. But Ortiz won't trap Isiah Kassidy in a two-minute chinlock because it's tedious and serves no real purpose beyond condescension.
The rest hold is a latently arrogant learn how to work cliché shrouded now in irony because what works is what is over, and that method of generating heat is all but dead.