It's Official: A New Era Is Under Way In AEW
On March 1, 2023, he lost to HOOK. He actually threw the match with a nod and wink, knowing he was closer to escaping Ethan Page's contractual hold over him. Then he deleted the Firm in the Firm Deletion on May 3. Then, three members of the Firm (!) lost to Bandido and the Lucha Bros. on June 7, and while Hardy did explain that the match had already been signed before he took over Page's contract, what sense does that make? The Firm got deleted over a month ago! If that result mattered, the Firm should not have been allowed to team with one another after the fact. Any match for which they were scheduled should have been deleted from future cards.
Ethan Page lost the trios match on the 7th because he was distracted by Hardy, who willingly gave up a cut of Page's potential earnings at the pay window. The AEW match result was a punchline.
How is this taking wins and losses seriously? What does this have to do with championships? Does the Matt Hardy character know what an AEW wrestler should be doing? Does Tony Khan know, deep down, that this is utter garbage, and is only featuring Hardy on TV to keep his biggest fans happy because he wants to re-sign them before their deals expire at the end of the year?
Has politicking and ego got in the way of AEW's once-unique creative vision?
The addition of several new titles beyond the original big three is another factor in AEW's malaise. With such a lack of focus and impulse control, the booking in AEW now is a messy web in which it is all too easy for Khan to get stuck.
Consider the fact that everybody in AEW is aligned with somebody.
This has always been the case. From day one, Khan devised a stable-dominated framework in order to service his booking model. The idea was to use stables to build big, premium matches indirectly. Members of the Elite and the Inner Circle frequently worked singles and tags, as an example, before the intended Blood & Guts payoff (which of course evolved into the original Stadium Stampede).
The amount of interference on a typical Dynamite is relentless and increasingly ineffective. Another breaking point has been reached. Khan got stuck in the web at Double Or Nothing; the first five matches were swarming with interference. By the time Karen Jarrett generated booming heat in a fairly quiet T-Mobile Arena, Luchasaurus and the Outcasts had no chance. The thing is, in every isolated scenario, it made sense from the perspective of the characters to get involved. That's what the Outcasts do. It's also what Bullet Club Gold do. And Mogul Embassy. And La Faccion Ingobernable. And QTV. And the Jericho Appreciation Society. And...
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