What Wrestling Legends Really Think Of AEW
4. Ricky Morton
Obvious caveat here, in that Ricky Morton worked a nostalgic cameo role ahead of and at Full Gear - and, you'd expect, would happily take another AEW payday - but his opinion of AEW is interesting in that Ricky Morton excelled in the past that AEW, per many critics, transgresses upon.
Morton was a legendary tag team wrestler, an artist who, while damned by veterans in his day for hitting excessive high spots in a draining cyclical conversation, knows more than most the value of operating within a tight, rule-based framework. The hypnotic power of his selling informed the hot tag to such legendary and iconic effect that the long-sell spot is literally named after him.
There'd be no heft behind it within the save-heavy, loose tornado mode that tag team wrestling has since evolved into.
Nonetheless, Morton recently tweeted that "One must be able to adjust to today's time and flow," showering the recent, instantly iconic eight-man tag team match on Dynamite with praise.
"[...] watching AEW's 8 man tag match, a lot of people do not understand the story they are telling in that match. It was Rembrandt painting. It was beautiful and majestic."
That it was; FTR's resistance to and embrace of the Young Bucks' style furthered, through elite-tier pro wrestling, a complex and textured mystery of a storyline.