Why AEW Rampage Hasn't Quite Worked (Yet)

Dynamite was a strange and beautiful thing in 2020, acting as it did to try and preserve one on of the industry's original consumer tenets. Wrestling's supposed to be a distraction from your reality, and AEW provided this in a time when it had never been more required.

But in doing so (and when mostly back at full roster capacity), it highlighted an issue many believed an extra hour would immediately fix. The distribution of time for talent seemed skewed, with countless acts falling through the cracks while others didn't so much maximise their minutes as greedily gobble them up.

Not to zero in on him (as was often the case in 2020 and is still somehow the same during an otherwise red hot time in AEW's history), but there's still so so much Matt Hardy across the shows. Too much.

We are now existing in the era of that magical third hour, but Rampage has added to a problem rather than solving it. Thanks to his position at the top of the Hardy Family Office (itself an inherently illogical and mostly uninteresting stable), Hardy can keep his fingers in several pies and command attention over multiple segments.

This was the case over two consecutive weeks in September on Rampage, and his overbearing omnipresence in Arthur Ashe Stadium was about as welcome as ants at a Central Park picnic.

And the issue seems to be extending outwards.

CONT'D...