It's Official: AEW Is Actually BACK
At Big Business, when Samoa Joe walked to the back, he saw a security guard lying in agony having been attacked by Swerve. Joe kicked him off the ramp and into oblivion. It was great, hilarious in how completely unnecessary it was, and it underscored that, on this form, in AEW, every last second is treated lovingly.
Mercedes Moné was given the major star treatment and embodied the qualities of a superstar at Big Business. The women’s division has also improved, but then, Riho is so great as an underdog babyface that she’s effectively a cheat code. If Moné signals a shift towards true parity, and hits the peaks of her brief, uneven run across New Japan and Stardom, things might actually change.
AEW is not perfect, but then, no great or hot promotion ever was. There existed a considerable gulf in quality between the undercard and main event scene of the AJPW King’s Road era. Peak JCP was similarly top-heavy. Tag team wrestling wasn’t a boon during NJPW’s 2010s resurgence. Peak NXT was a bit dry in its week-to-week booking. Peak ROH lacked true range and its indulgent, excessive match lengths were a bit much. WWE in 1997 promoted some dismal in-ring despite, at WrestleMania and SummerSlam, perfecting the art of the finish.
AEW itself, during the vaunted February 2020 period, was let down slightly by the Joey Janela Vs. Kip Sabian worked shoot nonsense. The summer of 2021 was undermined by Matt Hardy’s dire programme with Orange Cassidy and the creeping sense that they’d hired too many wrestlers (Andrade’s debut and indeed run was hardly great).
2024 AEW has its own issues. The Undisputed Kingdom was fated to die immediately. The talent:TV time ratio is still all over the shop. ROH gets in the way of the live experience, which itself needs more punters to positively affect the atmosphere. The results, at times, are still questionable: why aren’t the Blackpool Combat Club in the Tag Team title tournament?
Tony Khan is a bit feckless as well. AEW is not always the listening company it professes to be; were that the case, Chris Jericho would be enjoying a long vacation.
The “feeling” is AEW being better than your fantasy booking, better, even, than the sum of the company’s extravagantly great parts. Tony Khan, and this is the really encouraging bit, has remedied an issue that has plagued AEW since the beginning. He isn’t f*cking around getting to the big matches, as Ospreay Vs. Danielson underscores. The increased pay-per-view schedule won’t allow for the dawdling of old.
The feeling isn’t just back.
AEW - if the first three months are an omen - might enter its best ever creative stretch.