How AEW Must Reheat Its Biggest Monster

Monsters get slain in pro wrestling.

It's an abiding truth that the modern pro wrestling fan cannot seem to reconcile at times, likely because the problem is exacerbated across internationally broadcasted episodic television. The inherent plot hole - they should probably win all of the time, given how f*cking massive they are - opens wider every time they don't. Under the old model, this was circumvented. The monster could lick their wounds in another territory, aura automatically restored under the "Look at the sheer size of the c*nt" principle that gets them over in the first place. The new world makes this impossible, and the mad rush to tie every name performer down to a lengthy contract, in the wake of renewed competition, will make that harder still.

Mr. Brodie Lee has vanished since his loss of the AEW TNT Championship. He was protected in the loss as he was strengthened by winning the strap in the first place. He captured it by annihilating Cody in three minutes in a shocking squash made all the more effective by how unprecedented it was. AEW's headline matches are invariably competitive. This wasn't. In an audacious booking manoeuvre penned to write Cody out of storylines, AEW retconned the disaster of December 18 to present the Dark Order as a cackling - and now effective - gang of hard bastards. It was great, as was the final chapter. Cody returned after weeks out to promise vengeance. He delivered it, like a proper babyface, in a gruesome epic of a Dog Collar match that skilfully folded in deranged high spots in a manner that didn't compromise the tone. Lee lost, but it took a monumental effort to uproot the tree.

CONT'D...(1 of 6)