Every AEW Title Reign Ranked From Worst To Best
1. Kenny Omega & Hangman Page - World Tag Team Titles
Tag team wrestling matters again, and it is to the enormous credit of Kenny Omega and Hangman Page.
They captured the titles from SCU on Chris Jericho's cruise, and have subsequently led and elevated the greatest tag team division in modern history. Match quality has ranged from merely very good to the greatest tag team match of all time. Dense, intricate, emotionally devastating masterpieces (Young Bucks); jaw-dropping, pulsating lucha sprints (Lucha Brothers); openers with less heralded teams that had no right to be as convincingly dramatic or as high in quality as they were (Private Party, Natural Nightmares, basically every match they've had in recent months): Page and Omega have positioned themselves as true Ace figures as part of an ongoing storyline ludicrously rich in its intrigue.
There is an astonishing level of detail to their work. This beast of a long-form narrative is so well thought-out in these structural masterclasses. Kenny Omega, as the man who pitched the team, plays the workhorse. He takes the body of the match. Page - and sometimes this feels cynical, sometimes noble, it's all so interpretative - is the explosive hot tag who gets the W. It is a twisting, heartfelt drama of masculinity told through the medium of professional wrestling.
What we essentially arrive at is a team you never want to see split up, but can't wait to see split up. A team that is fated to combust, but is perfect, and doubted only by themselves. A team that, ironically for "two singles wrestlers", is far more reliant on one another than most. But, through every grandstanding flex, or every selfish flash of the old megastar teeth, a team that is tragically unaware of it.
The deft plotting of these beats has converged to create the best storyline in wrestling all year, if that's even the correct unit.