It's Official: The AEW Roster Is FAR Too Big

The first night, on which he destroyed Jon Moxley alongside the Inner Circle, was incredible. It felt shocking, like the wrestling world had expanded in the most compelling, fantastical way imaginable. Cobb embodied this threat superbly in a physical ripper on his second appearance. His third appearance while good, and daring, lacked entirely the same heft because it followed an absolute deluge of "shock" appearances, which absolutely does warrant quotation marks. W. Morrissey, Johnny Elite, Big Damo...why?

This is excessive in itself. It is even more excessive looking at the sheer, overblown size of the contracted roster. It's also a bit daft when you remember that this sort of shock appearance is the selling point of Forbidden Door. Nobody isn't going to pop for Kazuchika Okada on Dynamite, but why exhaust this device now of all times?

The novelty is dead. It is as dead as the kendo stick shot, the barricade spear spot.

Khan's aggressive recruitment strategy isn't just undermining the very ideal of what a wrestling star is; his booking has suffered through this compromise.

The three-way Tag Team Title match is a good version of something illogical and imperfect. The match should be great, but that's bare minimum stuff in an era almost defined by match quality. FTR are the no. 1 ranked team, but through a series of interrupted interviews and overlap with an existing grudge programme, Tony Khan arrived at Jurassic Express Vs. Keith Lee and Swerve Strickland Vs. Ricky Starks and Powerhouse Hobbs. Actually, Christian Cage did. In a weirdly WWE development, he booked it following a promo train. This is an unwieldy development enforced by there being too many PPV-worthy wrestlers on the roster. Khan isn't so much booking as accommodating.

Really think about any given AEW Dynamite show, and the sheer amount of conflict feels incredibly staged and contrived.

CONT'D...(4 of 6)