9 Ups & 9 Downs For AEW In 2022

4. The Old Values Disintegrating

AEW promised uncut drama of the purest strain upon its launch.

There were just three titles. Contending for one of them, after an arduous climb to the top of the rankings system, felt like a major undertaking in and of itself. Winning one felt like nothing less than the highest achievement of an athlete's career. Losing a title was devastating.

There are now 14 - 14! - titles sanctioned across AEW and what appears to now be known as AEW Presents ROH. The volume alone means that championships no longer feel elusive, and with there being so many champions, Khan has fallen into a sub-WWE trap in which, as a result of statistical inevitability as much as anything else, he books champions to lose frequently. Between All Out and November 17, that frequency was one AEW/ROH titleholder losing every single week. That's a direct defeat, too; yet more lost matches by virtue of being in the same tag team or trio.

Wardlow cut a promo on the post-Full Gear Dynamite and barely cut a disconsolate figure, and while that wouldn't necessarily be in character, he should have sold it a bit more. He even got his catchphrase in. We are drastically removed from the crisis that the characters once faced.

The lazy Eliminator appears to have replaced the compelling intricacy of the rankings system outright, which also adds to the sense of inflation. Rematches are far more frequent, which makes the idea of a clash feel much less elusive and unmissable as it once did.

If one word defines AEW in 2022, it is excess - and that has extended, sadly, to the very core of the creative product: despite first presenting itself as the artful, premium alternative to WWE's content churn model, Rampage descended into entirely skippable fare that so obviously didn't care about changing the world.

It barely cared about anything across too many episodes.