8 Things AEW Need To Do To Reach The Next Level

If you look back to the best feuds throughout wrestling history, you will always find different, more intense elements being added to the plot at every step of the way, deepening the combatants’ hatred of one another.

In many ways, this is what keeps the anticipation hot for the actual match or matches and makes people more invested. Now sure, every feud can’t be a Jericho-Michaels or a Rock-Austin, but that doesn’t mean you can’t try and add new dimensions to them as they progress.

Hangman Page and Pac have been feuding for what feels like an eternity now and there really is no reason why they should be having a match in the most recent episode of Dynamite. If their rivalry was solely based on completion, then that should have been put to bed, at least after Page got his win and the safety of his balls back on the last pay-per-view.

If you do use the previous examples as a benchmark, Jericho and Michaels in 2008 first began fighting over the latter’s dishonesty, then Jericho almost blinded Michaels, followed by the stuff with his wife, before the world championship was thrown into the mix. An intensification at every step of the way to keep the feud burning strong and guaranteeing we were salivating at the prospect of them facing off, no matter how many times it happened.

This doesn’t mean it’s a feud we don’t want to see - by all means the bastard vs. the hangman can be one of the best wrestling rivalries going on anywhere in the world. But for that to happen, it needs more edge, more driving forces than the same thing they have been squabbling over since earlier in the year.

Same logic applies to all the important storylines. The feuds need to escalate and reach new heights for them to generate the kind of traction AEW wants.