Discussion: Make AEW Better.
You read it right...
Let's make AEW better.
Most of us here love wrestling and most of us love the potential of AEW. At the same time, most of us probably agree there's plenty wrong with AEW. So, how would you make AEW as a product better? What size roster would you have? Who would you focus on? What would you do if you had free reign to make AEW better?
Tony Khan is the biggest problem with AEW
Quote from Mud Mouth on 18 April 2024, 15:25Tony Khan is the biggest problem with AEW
100% agree.
But if you take him out, where do you personally start when it comes to making the product better? What's missing from it for you? For me, it has some of the best professional wrestling available to a degree, minus finishers meaning nothing and too many false finishes.
I would revamp a good portion of the roster. For one, it's too large. I would rejig their top-tier- Jericho should be more a speaking/personality role and Jon Moxley does not impress me one bit, neither on the mic or in the ring. So I'd build up some more in-house talent to fill those spots and give them CHARACTERS, CHARACTERS, CHARACTERS. This isn't WWE and never will be and even the WWE doesn't realize there biggest problem is lack of characters. Generic FIRST LAST name wrestling made add a bit of "realism" since these people do indeed have real names, but pro-wrestling isn't about realism. Being a tough guy isn't a character. It takes significant talent and skill to be a Dean Malenko and be interesting watch. Where are the Papa Shangos, the Stings? More Somoa Joes, less Adam Coles. Meaningful stables for the guys/girls you aren't ready to push yet and more stable vs stable stuff.
Alright so I'm going a little indepth here cause realistically, AEW needs a lot of changes in a lot of places to truly get back to what it was a few years ago.
First up, I will disagree with getting rid of Tony Khan. I think he has his place but he does need to be heavily neutered. Keep him in the backstage with the actual management tasks, keep him off the booking aside from the truly big stories and above all, keep that motherfucker off twitter even if you have to have someone with him 24/7 to slap his hand away from his phone.
So now, I'd say first setup a booking team. They've started slightly with having people like Chris Hero and Danielson helping out but I'd set up an official one and bring in Scott D'more to oversee the entire thing. Outside of Shawn Michaels, D'More for my money is the best booker in the last decade or so and having him with the likes of Hero, Danielson, Jeff Jarrett and the many great minds backstage, you'd be cooking with gas.
Now roster wise, I think ROH needs to be killed off. Half the time it bleeds into Dynamite/Collision anyway and aside from a few of the women and a few storylines here and there, it's really been a nothing burger. So all the belts aside from Athenas, unify them with their main AEW counterparts. But what we do instead is Dynamite and Collision becomes a roster split. AEW have enough wrestlers and belts to easily do this (and they were blatantly going to do it before when it was the Punk show) and this way they can keep their giant roster and showcase more people too.
For the roster dynamics, I'd go Dynamite is your edgier, more character story based brand and Collision is the hard hitting, all action brand. Belts on Dynamite would be International, AEW Womens World and Tag Titles. Collision would have Continental, rebranded ROH Womens and Six Man. TBS I'd probably retire too given there's not enough women to really need three belts and TNT I'd either retire or have it be a lower floating title for the up and comers that gets defended on all shows. As for the World title, that's absolutely floating. World Champ appears everywhere and you have a similar deal as the early Undisputed belt where both brands compete to see which of their guys fight for it next.
Either way thou, hard brand split. Outside of the two floating belts and a few events a year, wrestlers from Dynamite don't fight people on Collision. That way you can build up to big brand on brand fights. Instead of blowing your load on Will Ospreay vs. Bryan Danielson straight up for example, build that shit up for a few months and have it explode at All Out. Also go back to wins and losses matter. You don't necessarily have to go back to the rankings, but absolutely establish divisions for the males. They don't have to be completely strict cause if say Dalton Castle gets over as shit by booking him and you can logically push him to fight the world champ do so but they have be logical, not Dustin Rhodes getting a world title shot for no reason deal.
Basically, booking done by people who know what they're doing, have a setup where you can showcase everyone and keep it from getting oversaturated and focus on doing the best wrestling rather then one-upping a company you couldn't hope to overcome.
Also get Chris Hero back into ring shape and give us Kings of Wrestling vs. FTR or Lucha Bros as soon as possible thank you
The biggest thing I think is lacking in AEW is storytelling. They have decent performers but there is no thought or time placed in their storytelling. They rely so much on showing blood, cursing at all times, doing death defying stunts, etc. All of that has a place, but when used too much, it becomes predictable. The thing that made the 90’s and early 20’s great was storytelling.
Lastly, they’re falling into the WCW trap. “Let me bring aging WWE guys in and we’ll attract an audience.” I enjoyed the younger guys like MJF or Darby, let them develop. They’re just making the same mistakes WCW did at the end.
Quote from Zeus on 18 April 2024, 15:36Quote from Mud Mouth on 18 April 2024, 15:25Tony Khan is the biggest problem with AEW
100% agree.
But if you take him out, where do you personally start when it comes to making the product better? What's missing from it for you? For me, it has some of the best professional wrestling available to a degree, minus finishers meaning nothing and too many false finishes.
With Scott D'Amore gone from TNA, how is a good time to get him in the company and having him in charge of creative. There's lot of people I like in AEW, but there's also a lot of people I don't wanna see, and that plays a big part in me watching the product. I go to the live shows when they're here in Florida, but I don't find myself watching the product much on TV. I also think that the roster between AEW and RoH has gotten too big and Tony needs to start cutting people that have been with the company long enough and not produced results.