Recapping the year of 2020 for WWE was the Biggest Blunders and Greatest Wonders list. When it comes to AEW, I thought I’d take it in a different direction with an overall “biggest takeaways of the year” list.
These aren’t so much just the best and worst things from All Elite Wrestling in 2020, although some of it is. Rather, this is more of the ideas and assessments I’ve judged (positively or negatively) about the company as a whole and its comings and goings.
The list is in no particular order, so without further ado, let’s just start off with….
Dark Order is Better as Losers
When Dark Order first arrived, I had no idea who they were. They seemed kind of dumb, but I figured I’d give them a shot. Between them, The Butcher & The Blade and The Nightmare Collective, I was really down on AEW’s creativity.
Thankfully, The Nightmare Collective went away, Butcher and Blade just sort of faded into the roster and Dark Order eventually found out what it does best this year, and it’s not what it originally was.
At first, the group was a legitimate fearsome faction. They took people out and were vicious, but not all that interesting. Turns out the magic formula is that instead of recruiting losers and making them evil minions that do your bidding while you’re great, the real key is that they’re all STILL losers.
Mr. Brodie Lee can be a winner. He’s huge and can conceivably whoop most of the roster. But does anyone really care about 5 or 10? Nope. I never bought into Evil Uno as a legitimate threat and now, both he and Stu Grayson are less intimidating than ever.
Colt Cabana doesn’t have it in him to be a serious and dark person. I don’t know why he’s even still in the group, to be honest. Taynara Conti isn’t even fully associated with them because it seems weird to keep her the way she is and also be in the group, as Anna Jay has a more monotone and blase demeanor about her.
But the real breakout stars are John Silver and Alex Reynolds, particularly Silver. The dude’s great to watch in the ring but even better on Being the Elite. He is a PERFECT example of a loser who is gaining confidence by being surrounded by a bunch of other losers he can overshadow, which makes him feel like he’s stepping up the ladder.
The joke, which is great, is that even if he’s able to make fun of Alan Angels or whoever, he’s still very clearly a loser compared to most of the rest of the roster. I love it.
This is much better as a cult of failures with a bad pyramid scheme, in a sense, than something I’m supposed to take seriously.
The TNT Championship is a Major Win
I’m not big on the design, but the TNT Championship was one of the best things AEW introduced this year.
The name of the belt makes so much sense. They get to score major brownie points with the network, but if they were to ever split and go elsewhere, they can still keep the name. All they have to do is change the design to not look like the TNT logo and play more into the fact that the show is called Dynamite.
It’s a Television Championship without forcing itself to have that distinction and need to be defended on television. I’ve never loved that concept, as house shows are basically dead, so there’s no need to distinguish a TV title as different from any other belt. TV and PPV are the same, basically.
Having a midcard title gives many people on the roster something to realistically shoot for. I don’t think any of us would expect Shawn Spears or Matt Sydal or Frankie Kazarian to win the world title, right? But if they won the midcard belt, that makes a lot of sense.
It’s a stepping stone for younger guys like Darby Allin and Ricky Starks while it gives Cody Rhodes something to revolve around since he decided to go with that dumb “never going to challenge for the world title ever again” idea, too. It’s just great and I’m so glad they added that into the mix.
Orange Cassidy May Be AEW’s Secret Weapon
We all know MJF is wonderful. It’s clear Jungle Boy has a lot of potential. Hangman Adam Page will definitely win a world title, if not lead this company for years to come.
But who would have thought Orange Cassidy would prove himself to be such a Swiss army knife of a performer?
The guy’s obviously great on the comedic side of things. I thought he was fantastic from the moment I saw him and I was astounded by his athleticism, too. Again, that’s never been in question.
But what has been part of the discussion—and no longer is—was the idea that he was just good for a laugh and he’d never be anything else. Basically, once his shtick ran out of steam, he’d be worthless.
Nope. Turns out, this guy’s got real staying power and is one of the easiest people to believe in receiving a legitimate push. He’s had an easier go-around this year than Scorpio Sky, which I never would have imagined being the case, as I thought Sky was an easy midcard to upper-midcard push.
Cassidy is amazing and after his feud with Chris Jericho, I don’t think I’m alone in saying if he won the TNT Championship tomorrow, I wouldn’t bat an eye at it or think it was a mistake. Now, I think he has a legitimate shot at becoming a world champion one of these days, even.
The Women’s Division is Severely Lacking
AEW needs some better wrestlers in its women’s division and a better direction for them, fast.
What the hell was going on with Allie this year? She went from Allie to The Bunny to Allie to The Bunny and they ignored some obvious feuds for her to do just for her to literally say she transitioned back again because she was bored!
Brandi Rhodes, to spite herself, desperately wants to be a heel. The Nightmare Collective failed and she opted to go into the more babyface path, but inevitably circled back to being a bitchy character obsessed with her action figure. Why? Is anyone really super engaged in that story?
They have some quality talent like Penelope Ford, Big Swole and Hikaru Shida. Even Taynara Conti, who I was VERY down on in NXT, has been pretty good in AEW and I’ve had to give her lots of credit there. But I could not care less about KiLynn King calling herself the Queen of the Crazies and doing not a single thing that would show off having the slightest bit of a crazy edge to her.
Nearly everyone on AEW Dark with the women’s division is so forgettable. Red Velvet is one of the few I’ve thought had promise, so I’m glad they signed her.
I wasn’t even loving the Japanese stars all that much, to be honest. At no point did I clamor for an Emi Sakura or Yuka Sakazaki match after seeing a few of them. They couldn’t even compete for most of this year, though, due to the pandemic. That’s not AEW’s fault, but it did show that they had half the roster overseas and needed more home-based talent. Once they can wrestle again for the company, I don’t think those women are going to save anything, either.
Remember how last year, there was that tease of Aja Kong against Awesome Kong? Yeah, that went nowhere for many reasons. Womp womp. Total bust.
Comparing AEW’s women’s division to NXT’s right now is a landslide victory for the black and gold brand. Hopefully, some more investment will be made into getting performers who are already seasoned enough to add quality to the division, rather than signing only green people who we have to just wait and see grow into viable competitors.
Get enough people who are good enough now that it masks the trainees until they can be regular talent without it being obvious they’re still learning. I’ve grown far too impatient in this idea of the biggest value being that I’m watching them struggle to blossom as performers, rather than watching them be good performers already.
Someone is Obsessed with Gambling and the Beach
Fyter Fest was a parody of Fyre Fest, with its tropical vibe. I’m okay with that, even though the joke is already dated and I don’t think it should come back every year. It did come back, though, with a tropical aesthetic.
Then, Fight for the Fallen also had a tropical set, for whatever reason.
They also had Bash at the Beach, which is now going to be Beach Break. Another beach related thing. It seems they only went the opposite direction with Winter is Coming and I can only imagine that’s because someone (Tony Khan? The EVPs?) is a super big fan of Game of Thrones and just marked out over using that name.
But it’s clear they’re also way, way too into gambling related ideas, too. Nearly everything has some sort of gambling element to it, even if it doesn’t make any sense.
Double or Nothing had the Casino Battle Royale. Okay. It’s a play off the James Bond novel/film and they’re in Las Vegas, so that makes sense. If you’re not in Vegas or at Double or Nothing, you shouldn’t have a “Casino” Battle Royale, though. And then, they had the Casino Ladder Match, which should’ve been named something else even if they kept the poker chip idea.
You have the Buy In. You have the Deadly Draw tournament. People were filmed gambling at the early days of the pandemic.
I’m not really looking forward to the next 10 concepts of AEW being the Texas Hold’em Match and the Double Down gauntlet and the Royal Flush pay-per-view where they’re all decorated with palm trees. Let’s get some more variety going.
AEW Needs to Stop the Rush Push & Ditch Method
AEW has had a tendency to bring people in, make a big deal of them, push them straight to the top in a very fast time frame and once they lose their title shot, put them on the sidelines with no clear direction what to do.
It happened to Brodie Lee, Lance Archer and Brian Cage. They all came in with a big storm, fought for a title soon after, lost, and have struggled to find a purpose ever since. Hell, Lee even won the secondary title after that and still managed to only get it cause Cody Rhodes was busy filming other projects before promptly dropping it back and disappearing mysteriously.
Cage was given the FTW Championship. Big deal. It’s Taz’s personal belt. It means nothing in comparison to actually winning the AEW World Championship or having a program beyond wailing on a guy 1/4th your size for months while your tag team partner overshadows you.
Even FTR, who won the tag titles, already dropped them and feel like they’ve gone through all they need to go through and can just leave the company without it being weird.
Eddie Kingston debuts with a title shot. Not long after, gets opportunities against Moxley. Do you honestly think he’s going to win that world title in 2021? I sure as hell don’t.
It’s hard not to just capitalize on the momentum of someone being a big deal when they first come in and maximize that drawing power. I get it. It’s tempting to take the easy route. But if you have no exit strategy, then everyone just waits around for months to restart the climb from the bottom they would have had if you hadn’t done that. Think of the first couple feuds you want them to do before you debut them and that might solve that problem.
This has me thinking about two other guys who came in and didn’t get pushed straight to the top, but have had a rough time…
Miro and Matt Hardy Prove the Grass Isn’t Always Greener on the Other Side
Miro sucks. The guy himself has a lot of value to him, of course, but this character revolving around being a Twitch gamer who wears expensive Mickey Mouse shirts is garbage.
Granted, WWE had him in a terrible love affair storyline prior to his release. I don’t blame him for wanting to leave. But when you go to AEW and you have the ability to stop that bad booking from happening and assert more creative control, this is what you decided you wanted to do?
Speaking of which, Matt Hardy is his own worst enemy about this. He clearly thinks the Broken Matt Hardy gimmick is as good as it used to be and that he has all these characters that are amazingly interesting, but I’m not feeling it. I skip past his segments on Being the Elite as I don’t find them funny anymore. I have no interest in watching another Hardy Compound match with the same jokes as before. I’m tired of the speech patterns and the laugh and whatnot.
Matt wants to have control and I get that, but he’s also the guy who thought it would be a good idea to do that dive and ended up whacking his head on the concrete as the worst of his many injuries these past few months.
I can’t help but feel like Hardy would be doing better work (in the grand scheme of things) just alongside Jeff in WWE while Miro would be better off waiting to go to New Japan or maybe even fitting in better with NWA.
Cody Wants AEW to be WCW 2.0
AEW was originally going to be called World’s Best Wrestling and I can only assume Tony Khan planned to revolve it around CM Punk, rather than Chris Jericho. It didn’t work out that way. Instead, he got Cody Rhodes, Kenny Omega and The Young Bucks as EVPs and it’s clear they all have different ideas of what the company should be.
Omega has more experience with things like New Japan, so of course, he focuses on some of those elements. The Young Bucks seem pretty dead set on being meta, lampshading the business and being ROH in some ways. Khan strikes me as a WWF/E fan who takes some inspiration from that.
Cody is 100% pulling from WCW. This year, it wasn’t so much about taking inspiration from that, but trying to literally just bring it back.
Rather than coming up with their own names, they tried to get a bunch of WCW trademarks. How weird would it have been if instead of Full Gear and All Out, we just went back to Slamboree and Hog Wild?
Blood & Guts is just WarGames. They even tried to get The Match Beyond to tie into that.
Now, they’ve got Sting. Would I sign him if I were them? OF COURSE I WOULD. But you factor that into the mix with being on TNT and having Tony Schiavone call your action while you try to do Bash at the Beach and so on and it just strikes me as interesting.
Don’t be WCW. Be AEW. Learn from WCW’s mistakes and if you want to do similar concepts, give it its own branding. Don’t use the previous trademarks and try to squeeze whatever leftover juice there might be out of the old company.
AEW Dark is Spiraling Out of Control
When AEW Dark was a dark match filmed before Dynamite, it made sense. It was short, bite-sized bonus material on YouTube to showcase someone who didn’t get a spot on the show.
Now, it’s longer than Dynamite by a considerable chunk! What the hell?? Why is the main show 2 hours and the bonus material nearly 3 hours every week?
What’s frustrating about this is that WWE has the week overloaded and everyone complains about it, but no one’s giving the same criticism to AEW. Everyone complains about Raw being 3 hours, but I’m not hearing a ruckus about there being 2 and a half hours straight of the same Little Bit of the Bubbly commercial 6 times in a row on AEW Dark. Why’s that?
The show serves a few purposes. I’m not denying that. AEW makes some revenue off it. Wrestlers get more practice and can show off their characters more, which helps them further develop a bond with the audience that they might not have had with just Dynamite as they might not have been booked. It also gives people a chance to rack up wins and losses.
But you know what sucks? Since every match features jobbers, you know exactly who is going to win as soon as they announce the lineup. As there’s nothing but wrestling on the show, you’re waiting 10 minutes per match seeing tons of superkicks and suicide dives knowing full well Shawn Dean and Ryzin aren’t winning. If the match isn’t amazing, it is rarely worth getting invested in.
It also means the enhancement talent of Dynamite get their wins here. Why do I care about Luther and Serpentico beating a couple no-names when I know there’s no way Chaos Project is beating Best Friends if they get booked on Dynamite?
This shouldn’t be some 2+ hour show. If it is, it’s just SmackDown compared to Dynamite’s Raw. And if that’s the case, why is your second show just The Jobber Hour?
Trim it down, make it less about enhancement matches that go on forever, and make it worth actually watching in its entirety to anyone other than those who are strictly getting off on mindless maneuvers.
AEW Can Make a Big Difference by Playing Nice
WWE made itself look really awful this year with its layoffs and forcing its talent to abandon Twitch and Cameo. That was not at all a step in the right direction for morale.
Meanwhile, AEW has done the opposite. They’ve been signing people and saving them from the misery and uncertainty of the indies. With the pandemic, they’ve had their shit together quicker and seemingly in better working order than WWE, so that’s a major positive, too.
You want to have a Twitch account? Go ahead. You want more creative control? Let’s work that out for you. Here’s a decent enough check, too, by the way, that may even be more than you made in WWE. Also, you don’t have to work as many dates and it seems like we’re running a cool atmosphere backstage that you can hang out in, rather than feel stressed out and nervous all the time.
That’s quite the sales pitch. If I were a pro wrestler (which I’ve never wanted to be, never will be, and would be absolutely atrocious at), I know I’d be tempted to work there, for sure.
Also, AEW is playing nice with other companies, which WWE never really does. The more companies like Impact Wrestling, NWA and AAA that AEW has a working relationship with, the better.
Over time, if AEW continues to grow while the indies and other smaller companies struggle, we may see more of a cohesion between them, rather than just crossovers. A few years from now, we could be looking at AEW buying out and merging with these companies to form a company that can fully stand up to WWE an even bigger threat than it is now.
A united front of “everyone who isn’t WWE” doesn’t seem like it’s as crazy of a thought anymore, does it? And when you’ve got talent having less and less reasons to stay in WWE while the competition looks like it has few downsides to it, guess where people will go? Once more talent goes, guess what fans will watch more of?
The pandemic could have accentuated the negatives of WWE and the positives of AEW in ways both companies didn’t even understand until after it has happened. Unless WWE turns things around and/or AEW loses track of all this, it’s looking like All Elite Wrestling is going to have a better year in 2021 than 2020, while WWE may struggle just as much, if not more, than it did these past couple years.
Those are just some of the biggest observations I’ve had about AEW from this past year. What are your takeaways, both positive and negative? Drop your thoughts in the comments below!
