10 Ways AEW Has Revolutionised Pro Wrestling
9. Episodic Storytelling
AEW books storylines in such a way that avoids the incessant need for physical interaction through telling honest-to-goodness pro wrestling stories.
This is a marked and welcome departure to the post-match brawl, the endless rematches, the tacked-on stipulation sequels. So often, the match graphic supersedes the story. Conflict emerges. The match is made.
Then what?
Trash-talk. Brawls. Tropes, like contract signings, pull-aparts. And that is about it; there is no theme to the story, no absorbing, episodic quality. Matches breed matches, more matches, often twice in the very same week.
Per the parameters of the storyline, MJF and Cody touched just once before the famous lashing segment: at Full Gear, when MJF first turned. Beyond that, Wardlow - one of several ancillary characters in AEW, bodyguards, managers, stable heavies - put the beating on Cody. Those ancillary characters, banished by the big-time over the years, serve a distinct, dramatic purpose: they delay and enrich the big fight.
The Elite, bar the shoving and one #1 contendership four-way match, only truly exploded at the same event, Revolution, the tensions behind which were so fraught precisely because the internal desire to lash out was suppressed on television as part of a storyline in which the mutual sportsmanship became untenable.
Chris Jericho tends to get more physical in his programmes - he's a bully with a stable, and so it's in-character for him to weaken his opponents - but can tell a fantastic story with beats and dialogue that compels the public to pay for it.