8 Problems Nobody Wants To Admit About AEW

1. It's Nearly Impossible To Be A Heel

MJF Chris Jericho
Lee South/AEW

AEW clearly has characters who are portrayed as the villains of the promotion, yet it’s pretty much impossible for any AEW talent to be fully embraced as a heel.

An excellent example of this comes from this week’s edition of AEW Dynamite. After screwing over Cody at Full Gear, MJF came out to the ring to a chorus of boos on Dynamite. Great, that’s the response a heel should be looking for, right? Of course it is. Yet while those initial boos were ferocious, the crowd was soon laughing along with MJF’s lines and cheering on his interaction with Chris Jericho.

Likewise, Jericho himself is the company’s biggest bad guy, yet he also finds himself being cheered and chanted for each and every week – regardless of what heinous acts he partakes in.

It’s not necessarily the wrestlers’ faults, per se, but the AEW audience makes it an unenvious task to try and get genuine, sustained heat. By this point in time, a certain section of wrestling fans want to make it clear that they appreciate how good you are at being bad, and so thus end up applauding your villainy and character work… which in turn defeats the object of even being a heel in the first place.

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Senior Writer
Senior Writer

Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main dayjob, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks, Jamie Hayer, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg.