10 Ups & 10 Downs For AEW In 2019
1. Trust The Process
The level of trust AEW has earned from their audience is their biggest triumph since launching as it shows that if something fails to click, they aren’t going to swim against the tide. They won’t put stock into dead acts with dead crowd reactions: instead, they’ll go back to the drawing board, reconsider, recalibrate, and come up with something better.
Hangman Page is the most notable example thus far. Fans chanted “thank you Jericho” as the future ‘Le Champion’ bludgeoned him at Fight for the Fallen. It was supposed to generate sympathy for his title charge, but it didn’t, and Page fell flat, only to rekindle his fire after failing at All Out, performing with more fire and determination than ever before, removing himself from The Elite when he realised he wasn’t living up to the faction’s name.
Similarly, the Dark Order are on the rebound as a twisted incel cult after failing to get over after their flat debut. The Librarians, meanwhile, have been relegated to jobber duties and Dark. The stuttering Shawn Spears has been cycled out of major programmes. Had a Cody or a Jericho bombed in similar fashion, they’d have likely cured their problems with the same effectiveness. They haven’t, though.
The promotion deserve this faith. Let’s see if it carries over into 2020, and they set about addressing the problems noted under our Downs header.