INSANE Wrestling Fan Backlashes You Didn't See Coming
1. AEW Brackets General
AEW has suffered the same fate NXT did in 2019.
AEW has suffered the same fate that befalls virtually every pop culture entity.
AEW, four years in, has last the charm and the novelty and entered a period of familiar, declining creative.
The problems are mounting, and various, which might explain why every individual fan has their own solution. A lot of things have converged to make this so. Fans are spoiled by excellent and unbridled in-ring that no longer feels unique or special. The typical Dynamite match, while forward-thinking, is less effective than ever. The 12-15 minute back-and-forth of top star versus solid midcard hand/up-and-comer/veteran no longer hits in the way it once did. It used to be that the top star won a meaningful ranked match where the opponent got something too - this device helped Darby Allin ascend - but how true is that now?
How many wrestlers actually get over by joining a veteran presence in a stable?
What use is investing in a performer if they'll just disappear for months on end?
AEW is also the victim of its own greedy excess. They've done everything over a hundred times: signed hot free agents, promoted countless ultra-violent matches, glommed onto every cool trend (the next generation of lucha libre head-turners, most recently)...
In general, four years of non-stop TV is a lot, and it's easy, sadly, to grow jaded even by fantastic star talents - like Jon Moxley - after that amount of time. This is why wrestling was better (or at least more interesting) with more than two major promotions jostling for market share. The wrestling dream factory is facing the backlash, which reinforces the fact that everything at some point will.
In that sense, you should have seen all of these coming. Actually. If anything.