It's Official: A New Era Is Under Way In AEW

Time exposes almost every artist, certainly the pro wrestling booker, and perhaps Khan has simply ran dry his well of ideas. Perhaps he has listened to the wrong people, not just within his organisation, and WWE-ified his product under the impression that his vision wasn't the way to go.

Worked shoot promos. Promo trains. Run-in finishes in what feels like every other match. A near-constant swarm of activity at ringside. Referees working comedy matches. Special guest referees. The music-backed run-in every single time. Stipulation match overload. Far too much content, including a network-imposed second flagship show. Two shows that nobody cares about and have been left to wither and die. Spoofs of the big bad "media". Parodies of the "competition". Scaling back characters, like Eddie Kingston, that fans are really invested in. More than one worker who hasn't earned their spot on merit getting a spot on TV because the boys like them. Unwittingly creating a loose-lipped viper's nest of a locker room by expanding it too aggressively. Creative having nothing for several acts to do. A marginalised women's scene. Cooling off hot babyfaces, like Ricky Starks, that the fans were prepared to fully get behind. And, in the case of Collision, in the one dying days WCW analogy that actually makes some awful kind of sense, a totally untenable political scenario destined to end badly.

AEW has turned into every North American wrestling promotion ever so gradually that you hardly noticed.

And again, it's still very good most weeks. Sometimes, it is phenomenal. This article might be poorly timed, given how awesome Forbidden Door looks. But in another unsettling echo of every North American wrestling promotion ever, the heavily-hyped month of June and All In II feels like a tacit promise to do better.

We've all been here before, haven't we?

In adding so much to All Elite Wrestling, in an all too familiar story of excess, Tony Khan has rid his promotion of the most important things: meaning and identity.