Inside AEW's Creative Process | How It Works
With full editorial control, Khan booked the hottest wrestling promotion in years. His self-appointed ability to cut the most self-indulgent ideas helped the Elite rehabilitate their star aura, but his continued willingness to allow these diamond-sharp wrestling minds to tell their own story, albeit with an editor, was a masterstroke. In the summer of 2021, AEW was, mostly, in perfect harmony. This was the glory era of collaboration.
All the while, even down to the lowest spots on the card, Khan encouraged his wrestlers to cut promos unscripted. The results were mixed, but this model allowed some of the best promo artists of their generation - Jon Moxley, MJF, Eddie Kingston et al. - to play their own music. Poor Marina Shafir was stigmatised for her dire, unintentionally funny attempts as a virtual novice, the response to which was wildly disproportionate in this social media age. Calls for some scripting were whispered, and this noise intensified when the widespread political unrest set in. Khan may well have listened.
This harmony was disturbed by more than one factor subsequently, and what followed was a series of overcorrections that ultimately created a gigantic mess that is increasingly difficult to clean.
Firstly, Tony Khan expanded his roster to a preposterous size with an impulsive greed. He did so with no calculated long-term vision as to where every piece would fit. On a case-by-case basis, most of the signings were shrewd. Understandable.
Keith Lee is the best example to use here, because why wouldn’t a promoter pick up a talent with such vast, unfulfilled potential? Lee was a one-of-a-kind act on the indies, a wrestler nobody else could train to become, a living oxymoron of agility and size who had stolen the show on two consecutive WWE Big Four pay-per-views.
The answer to that question is that Khan had no room with which to accommodate him and, after an inspired team with Swerve In Our Glory, Lee more or less vanished. Tony Khan to this day hasn't booked a singles grudge match between Lee and Swerve Strickland. So much more content got in the way, and now that the feud is ice-cold, a lot of time has been wasted. If Lee as is tradition won the theoretical blow-off, under the old rankings system, he'd have to nearing contention for a title. It was either that, or book him 50/50, but with no room in a crowded scene, neither development happened. It was easier for AEW to just pretend that he no longer existed. The rankings system was abandoned in part because it no longer worked in the context of the new super-sized AEW. It wasn't practical.
A problem (too many star names) created another problem (too few meaningful match results), which might explain why AEW's creative decline feels exponential.
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