Why Wrestling Rules After It Admits It Totally Sucks

At the start of 2020, Shawn Spears wasn't over, and the quest to find him a tag partner on Dark/online wasn't getting him there. His placement on Double Or Nothing before the show itself looked even more like an act of nepotism than the spot afforded to his opponent Dustin Rhodes. Only when it went short, broad and comedic did it feel like it deserved it's place on the show as a let-me-up rather than an actual match.

Instead, AEW used it as part of an out-with-the-old left turn. Spears had to look lost in order for Tully Blanchard to summon the energy to try find him. Or at very least the "him" he saw back in 2019. Logical but also hugely pragmatic, it served every master dutifully and suggested the the supposed the babyface company are the actual listening one.

In 2001, Vince McMahon said he was "sick of this Alliance crap" as a way to get one last buyrate out of the horribly botched Invasion angle. Just under year later, he emerged on Raw to the New World Order music then advised the crowd it'd be the last time they'd ever hear it, so wretched was that stable's impact on the product for much of their ill-fated comeback.

It took the Chairman's famous ego to think he could do better with concepts that weren't his, but it took even more to admit defeat (and, effectively, accept the blame) in an effort for the entire show to right itself in the process. There's a prevailing sense that he hasn't been half as inward facing in the last few years.

CON'T...