AEW has undergone significant changes over the past year, with some areas improving while others continue to face unresolved issues. As the company navigates its challenges, fans are left wondering if AEW is truly listening to their concerns. Despite the ups and downs, there’s still hope for AEW to realign with its audience and deliver the product they expect.
They say the more things change, the more they stay the same. It’s a truism that fits perfectly into the cyclical nature of wrestling. Things repeat themselves.
It’s a very human issue. Repeating our mistakes due to oversight. We get caught in traps and repeat cycles.
Just see “Hangman” Adam Page’s current relapse into a sense of failure. Businesses and wrestling promotions tend to make the same mistakes that seem glaring in hindsight.
The issue is that, even when you do your best, you don’t notice you’re slipping. Or you ignore some aspects and hyper-focus on others.
Across the last year between AEW Full Gear 2023 to 2024, a lot has changed. Here are 4 ways it’s changed for the better. Yet, despite some optimism, I can’t ignore the unaddressed mistakes that have gone unchanged.
Not just in the build and watching Full Gear 2024. But over the last 12 months.
We’ve had two invasions/battles for AEW’s heart and soul. Neither has been a quick fix or a reset to the longer-term issues. To date, neither has comprehensively addressed the big-picture issues.
AEW Women’s Division’s Inequalities
On the one hand, AEW is utilizing its women’s division more effectively than a year ago. On the other, women’s wrestling on Dynamite remains marginalized. Regularly one match is often cut up with an ad break.
Women’s segments are sometimes lumped together. At times, segments and matches just feel brief and functional.
Although there are multiple women’s matches on Rampage and Collision, the booking of those shows is different. Bluntly, they are treated as secondary to Dynamite.
The other sticking point has been the self-fulfilling prophecy in every other half-realized women’s revolution in AEW. AEW only gives one or two top women at a time the spotlight and/or time to develop into 3D characters. Sometimes, the championship almost gets used as a substitute for character growth.
It’s a fate that defined Dr Britt Baker’s reign. It’s impacting the early part of Mariah May’s.
In a reverse scenario of the post-babyface blues, May the backstabber had so much potential stepping out of “Timeless” Toni Storm’s shadows. Even to upstage her with a potentially just as interesting and contrasting personality.
Instead, her character has been a splicing of stereotypes. Femme fatale meets stuck-up brat with a flurry of sexualized verbiage. Her character work is strong but it’s restricted.
May has not been given the time or creative care that the Timeless character received as part of her growth. Instead, May seems caught in a holding pattern. Waiting for Storm to return.
What about the women outside of the title pictures? Including former champions. What character evolution or stable card positioning have former champions like Hikaru Shida and Nyla Rose had lately?
Jamie Hayter, after a hot return, has been normalized. Her character is reduced by a lack of agency because, interchangeably, she has to wait her turn.
Stagnation of the Tag Team and Trios Divisions
Both four-ways at this year’s and last year’s Full Gear for the AEW World Tag Team Championship were fun in different ways. Neither hid the thinness of the division.
It’s not that AEW lacks teams. The company has an array of interesting teams with clear characters with their own unique marketable distinctions.
You have the comedy acts from MxM Collection to The Outrunners and serious ass-kickers like The House of Black and LFI. Fun high-flyers from Top Flight to current tag champions, Private Party. The lack of care and attention and repetition have undercut them.
Without a clear hierarchy that means, even when tag teams do feud with each other, it feels meaningless. There is no progression because there is no structure. There hasn’t been since the put-together tag team of Big Bill and Ricky Starks upset FTR.
As a combination, the team worked and made the most of their opportunity. But underneath them, none of the established teams were built up to take over.
This rot festered into The Young Buck’s reign. FTR and The Acclaimed had likewise grown cold. Mechanically, their matches together and against others are solid, but heatless and heartless.
Add into the mix the use of the AEW Trios Championship which muddies the waters and confuses things. It further dilutes the idea that wins and losses matter.
Private Party’s championship win might have been more of a triumphant underdog story if they hadn’t lost a trios title shot with Kommander so soon before besting The Bucks. The House of Black might be the winningest trio but two-thirds of them lost in singles action to Adam Cole.
With no clear attempt to provide structure or create a dynamic ecosystem beneath the championships, both tag and trios divisions feel rudderless.
AEW Refuses to Let the Devil Die. And with It Sports Entertainment
Not even the Devil, MJF himself, can convince the audience that this feud with Adam Cole needs a conclusion. Weekly retcons and attempts to square this round peg are failing what many felt was the worst feud of AEW last year. It feels like the weekly segments try to retcon a story that fans voted the worst storyline of 2023 in the Wrestling Observer.
The mental gymnastics needed to get your head around the face and heel dynamics would make Vince Russo say that’s too much. Being stretched out until World’s End to near-universal disinterest, like last year with Jay White’s poor booking, AEW is handing critics a whip to beat them with. Not letting it go leads to the final and biggest issue.
Yet, it’s only part of a wider issue that AEW has failed to address but only tried to divert attention from. Last year’s Continental Classic was supposed to be about regaining fans’ trust in and realigning AEW with the expectations fans had of a sports-centered product.
Similarly, the rankings were brought back in and then abandoned again. It all feels like distraction tactics to gloss over that badly kept secret. That the devil (sports entertainment) never left.
Over this year, AEW has still been dominated by sports entertainment. However, sometimes a balance and consensus can be made between fans and performers.
“Timeless” Toni Storm reached a fan-pleasing compromise, balancing the character within the in-ring demands of AEW’s style. Other attempts have been alienating. See Chris Jericho and The Learning Tree.
The Elite’s Corporate turn might have been intended as a parody of sports entertainment and WWE tropes. However, the entire storyline fell victim to these trappings. Even the Death Rider storyline involves Attitude Era vehicular violence.
It begs the question.
Is AEW Still Listening?
AEW has lost fans this year. The ratings highlight an issue and, while the “AEW under attack” narrative has truth, it’s also been conveniently weaponized. By both sides.
AEW and some of its fans have used it to dismiss criticism. That doesn’t mean the company’s dying. The same prophets said the same about WWE in the 2010s despite their profitability.
Crowd reactions, or lack of reactions, at recent Dynamites, are starting to feel eerily like that dark period of WWE. It’s too easy to just call fans fickle and spoilt. Frankly, that’s exactly what WWE did and still repeats when some valid criticism is brought up.
No better place is this more embodied than with Chris Jericho who, in many ways, represents AEW principles more than anyone else. Like the company, Jericho’s character has changed on the surface. Seemingly acknowledging the concerns but not addressing the repeated frustration.
For those AEW fans who are lapsing or frustrated and want to love the product, they don’t feel listened to. That’s valid. Yet, what’s also valid is that while AEW exists and keeps trying, there remains the chance to turn things around.
Start listening or find a compromise.
More From LWOS Pro Wrestling
Header photo – AEW – Stay tuned to the Last Word on Pro Wrestling for more on this and other stories from around the world of wrestling as they develop. You can always count on LWOPW to be on top of the major news in the wrestling world. As well as to provide you with analysis, previews, videos, interviews, and editorials on the wrestling world. You can catch AEW Dynamite on Wednesday nights at 8 PM ET on TBS. AEW Rampage airs on TNT at 10 PM EST every Friday night. AEW Collision airs Saturday at 8pm Eastern on TNT. More AEW content available on their YouTube.
