Why AEW Were Right All Along
Bad as that period was, AEW is still here. AEW is thriving, much as the perspective has been lost. The Collision attendances aren't fantastic most of the time, and the heat isn't what it was in 2021, but AEW is still in tremendous health.
In a weird way, AEW has followed the bizarre route WWE took in making its astonishing comeback (not that the popularity between each company is remotely comparable). WWE was essentially horrific for decades, plural, beyond some incredible, outlying top-level programmes. They are enjoying an incredible resurgence driven in no small part by contrast. A coherent, basics-forward product in which the promotion of the star acts is more impressive than the dry storytelling is drastically better than the faeces Vince McMahon called entertainment. "Drastically" isn't even an accurate synonym. Nothing can articulate how dismal WWE became between 2019 and 2021, and it was hardly great in 2009.
All Tony Khan had to do, it seemed, was deliver lame and antagonistic booking for two decades before making it make sense. If that reads as snarky, you'd probably be correct, but Khan experienced a mini version of that phenomenon over the last few months, as he launched a renaissance of a similar scale.
The Continental Classic did much to "restore the feeling". The wins mattered. Through the framing of the round-robin tournament - wins really mattered and were visually represented through the awarding of three points - winning a single match at the death over Brody King when he was already out of contention meant more for Daniel Garcia's career than Takeshita defeating a much bigger star twice. The agony of Eddie Kingston losing cleanly two times in a row drove his arc. He simply could not lose again, and this urgency drove his work. He button-bashed those chops against Daniel Garcia in a particularly excellent performance. That match, in addition to being awesome, was drenched in meaning. Eddie Kingston losing cleanly did significantly more to drive support for his character and for his overall career prospects than the dismal, laughable way in which he was "protected" in the Barbed Wire Everywhere post-match against Chris Jericho in 2022.
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