It's Official: AEW Needs A MAJOR Wake-Up Call
What Tony Khan has arrived at in 2023 is a cast of characters that are hard to believe in navigating a landscape that is so repetitive and predictable that watching them succeed isn't compelling. Those two characters prove that your investment isn't as valued as it once was. AEW is unfocused, where it was once so thorough and immersive. Consider Darby Allin's ascent up the ranks.
The time limit draws. The narrowest of losses resulting from one simple error. How this pivoted to both his triumphant TNT title win over Coy Rhodes and a grudge programme in which he learned the lesson and tilted Brian Cage. Darby, an original "Pillar", was booked with an incredible attention to detail and focus. The contrast between that arc and those of his next breakthrough successors is bleak.
How exactly does AEW wake up?
Is it as simple as booking the Elite as the narrative epicentre of the promotion? Whenever it was hot - with those kinetic, overlapping brawls ahead of Full Gear 2019, the complex motivations in early 2020, the full-blown heel chicanery of that white-hot riot in the summer of '21 - they were the common denominator. Their sprawling, thoughtful approach elevated everything.
Khan must challenge himself to no longer operate in autopilot. Implement self-imposed bans on tired tropes like the gauntlet, at least until they can mean something again. Utilise the roster better. Unless there's a complex story at play about which the audience is unfamiliar, like a disciplinary matter, the use of Eddie Kingston in 2023 is unacceptable. Without being cruel, there are more than a handful of wrestlers that Tony Khan has frequently used on television this year that cannot lace the man's boots. Kingston might not be 100% fit, but HOOK almost certainly is. He, too, is stuck in place doing uninteresting things, constantly, with an assortment of undercard comedy heels. Khan has shown a personal bias to more than act this year - there are wrestlers in AEW who should be obvious that the audience simply does not like as much as he does - and not a one of whom was as over as HOOK was as 2021 drew to a close. Give Allison Danger full control over the women's division. It is abundantly, depressingly clear that Khan has little interest in really making something of it as a passion project.
Just as gauntlets and stables are tired, so too is the Dynamite format.
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