10 Times AEW Put Amazing Details Into Storylines
1. Jon Moxley Vs. Chris Jericho
Jon Moxley arrived at Chris Jericho's AEW World Championship on a tear of runaway momentum that left behind pierced flesh and bruised skulls.
Jericho, sh*tting himself, drew on their old mentor/student relationship in an attempt to recruit him into the Inner Circle, using his wealth to sway the deal with an obscenely expensive Ford GT. That Ford GT matched perfectly with the outrun aesthetic and theme of Bash At The Beach, to which Mox arrived in the sports car, but from which he left with a punctured eyeball that necessitated an eyepatch.
The next Dynamite took place on the Jericho cruise, drawing another parallel between the story beat and the aesthetic of the show. One wasn't contrived to fit the other; these were traditional heel delay and heat tactics enhanced with a sense of personality that enhanced the promotion itself - one that made the effort to experiment with different aesthetics, creating a spectacle across an otherwise mundane weekly cycle.
Mox had to run through the Inner Circle to get to Jericho - and Jeff Cobb, in a great twist that spared the aura of Jake Hager ahead of his Revolution match with Dustin Rhodes - and this included, obviously, Santana.
Moxley blinded Santana in retaliation before the match, anchoring the surface elements with a biblical theme of revenge, and it transpired that his father had succumbed to blindness in his teenage years in another, more sobering twist.
In a storyline designed to make Moxley the top babyface, AEW, with tremendous irony and deftness, built a top guy for the future in plain sight.