Ranking Every AEW Surprise Debut From Worst To Best

The wrestling industry as a whole - much like the rest of the world - has been hugely impacted by the ongoing global pandemic. And when it comes to AEW, few wrestlers have been hit quite as hard as Matt Hardy when it comes to being impacted by the lay of the land right now.

Hardy made his AEW debut at the close of the 18 March 2020 Dynamite - the same episode which saw Mr. Brodie Lee revealed as the Dark Order's Exalted One - yet it was a debut that didn't quite click.

Part of the reason for the Broken One's AEW bow falling flat was clearly down to the empty arena, with the appearance of Vanguard 1 and Matt guaranteed to have gone down better in front of a live crowd. But away from that unavoidable issue, the whole way that the debut was handled just felt entirely hokey and majorly out of step with the sort of content AEW had served up until that point in time.

Throughout the promotion's lifespan, Tony Khan had reiterated that AEW was to be a more wrestling-driven product that wouldn't rely on the cheesy 'entertainment' shenanigans seen by other companies. But as soon as Matt Hardy began teleporting through Daily's Place, it gave off the stench of one of Vince McMahon's "this is such good sh*t, pal" segments that wrestling fans had long become disillusioned with.

While having Matt Hardy and his mind for the business in AEW was great to see, his shock debut sadly flopped.