10 Ups & 10 Downs For AEW In 2019

6. Ceding The Spotlight

With the Thanksgiving ratings collapse, there’s an argument to be made that perhaps The Elite shouldn’t have gone out of their way to actively book themselves out of massive spotlights. Maybe The Young Bucks and Kenny Omega being booked as major stars from day one would’ve helped mitigate the slide.

Regardless, that AEW’s Executive Vice Presidents didn’t all push themselves to the top as soon as they got the pencil is refreshing. The Bucks lost their Lucha Brothers feud decisively, put Private Party over in the tag tournament’s first round, then fell to Proud and Powerful at Full Gear. Omega, meanwhile, remains locked in a quest of self-discovery, struggling desperately to become the man he was in Japan after high-profile defeats to Chris Jericho, PAC, and Jon Moxley.

Cody is the obvious exception here, though his outrageous popularity warranted his World Championship programme. With crowd volume as a metric, the man is the most over babyface in American wrestling and he lost, bowing out of the title hunt in the process.