How AEW Just Taught WWE How To Build A Star

The next week wasn't fantastic, in truth. AEW revealed that Archer was Jake's client, and tried to draw a comparison between the act and the snake he once put in a bag "just to make somebody think about it," but the modern expectation of a bombastic debut overwhelmed the poetry.

AEW produced a vignette to get Archer over on March 18, one so great that it helped manage the grief of the empty arena era into which we had all descended. In Archer's 'Murderhawk Mansion', he, for sport, invited the public to "Try or die" in a deranged backwoods carnival setting. He beat the ever-living sh*t out of about 40 dudes at once, and never, ever let it be whined that there are no huge, credible, larger-than-life characters in wrestling anymore because this totally over-the-top vignette - in the most awesome of ways - was precision-calibrated to answer that complaint. He massacred all of them, obviously - everybody dies - and the heap of corpses made for a terrific visual.

The next week, Roberts cut another promo to further build anticipation ahead of Archer's debut. AEW has flirted somewhat with WWE's meta narrative, but has done so in a far more deft way, in that it gets over the talent without indicting the company. Roberts put over the idea that he and Archer invaded AEW not because the EVPs were too inept to recognise his talent, but because they were afraid, through intimate knowledge of his run in New Japan, of what he might mean to their spot. The presentation of the promo was tremendous, too; Roberts, backed by wood smoke in the darkness, furthered the idea that the act is a supernatural not in overt, goofy literal terms but in the power of their presence.

The partnership is inspired. Archer is such a terrific big man worker that he is as powerful in delivery as Jake's menacing threats.

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