Death Riders and Jon Moxley evoke strong emotional responses. Detractors, as well as AEW fans alike, post-Dynasty posted a range of feelings on social media. A trend of dissatisfaction appears to have grown since Revolution.<\/p>\n
At its worst, most unacceptable, and heinous were death and sexual assault threats made toward Tony Khan. At the other end of the spectrum were apathy and disinterest. Plenty in between shared their anger and frustration that Swerve Strickland is not the AEW World Champion again.<\/p>\n
In response, numerous AEW fans countered with their disappointment at others\u2019 outrage. The sentiment is that fans complaining are fickle, impatient, cannot cope with long-term storytelling and\/or hate that their fantasy booking remained fiction. Yet, steamrolling the outrage doesn\u2019t flatten why some fans feel disconnected from the title picture.<\/p>\n
Two things can be true at once. Death Riders is a success in some respects and a failure in others, depending on your perspective. As a fan and writer who is deeply passionate about AEW, I\u2019m enthralled by everything else in AEW right now. AEW is turning a corner as I\u2019ve written about here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Yet, Death Riders remains a wrench that, for some fans like me, remains stuck in the machine. It\u2019s halting meaningful progression. This is what many are frustrated with.<\/p>\n I\u2019m apathetic. I\u2019m waiting for the endgame, optimistically ready for AEW and its wrestlers to move on from its past trauma.<\/p>\n Outrage is a currency online<\/a>, available to everyone. Not just the grifters and prophets of AEW\u2019s doom. Death Riders, from a metrics standpoint, aren\u2019t killing (metaphorically or literally) AEW.<\/p>\n Strangely, the skewering of opinions and facts is more frequent than when Moxley bleeds or lets opponents pierce his skin. Rather, like the Spike spot during the street fight, this technique of misdirection tells a narrative while obscuring the bigger picture.<\/p>\n We still view the company\u2019s success as interconnected to the World Champion. Ratings stability, MAX numbers, UK viewership figures, and DVR numbers are disregarded by some. Yet, an increase in attendance figures at shows and PPVs, plus two successive strong PPV buy rates, demonstrate improvement.<\/p>\n In terms of weekly ratings, there are some noticeable spikes related to Death Rider segments. Speaking of Spike, that gruesome spot was touted as a DVR draw, according to Fightful Select.<\/p>\n In the past, Tony Khan has emphasised how data impacts his booking. Given that Khan owns a sports data analytics company, it would be na\u00efve to suggest Khan doesn\u2019t consider the numbers. The issue isn\u2019t the numbers or business for many.<\/p>\n The disconnect doesn\u2019t relate to the numbers. It\u2019s more personal and subjective.<\/p>\n What works for some isn\u2019t for everyone. Especially some AEW sickos and lapsed fans who find Moxley and crew\u2019s characters, matches and motives creatively boring or grating. Especially when compared to the rest of the product.<\/p>\n As an online wrestling fan, I know mine and others\u2019 perceptions are skewed by our knowledge, deep love of the sport, and subjective tastes in wrestling and storytelling. All these elements impact how we often think beyond the match. We\u2019re emotionally invested in the product, but some take or communicate this passion in unhealthy and unacceptable ways.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a fear that opportunities are being missed. This isn\u2019t just something that started at Dynasty or Revolution. It\u2019s been present since World’s End.<\/p>\n The criticism of fans wanting their fantasy booking to materialize overlooks that such collective feelings reveal just as much about some fans\u2019 perception of a promotion and its direction as their hopes. In December, I wrote a what-if article exploring what could happen if Moxley lost the AEW World Championship<\/a>. This was based on observing and interacting with fans actively discussing a change of direction for AEW.<\/p>\n I concluded that some fans wanted something different. Each opponent, Hangman Page, Jay White, and Orange Cassidy, offered something fresh.<\/p>\n We want something new. Something that I believe will come. However, Khan is perhaps staying the course with a foreshadowed title change after All In<\/a>.<\/p>\n Over time, building tension and desire for an inevitable colossal payoff is textbook. What\u2019s halting that emotional investment is history.<\/p>\n AEW has allowed some sparks to burn out instead of encouraging raging fires by refusing to change direction. We\u2019ve had repetitive booking tropes. See Chris Jericho’s inability to elevate up-and-comers.<\/a><\/p>\n Post-chase failures to develop main event characters in satisfying ways, like with Hangman Adam Page<\/a> and MJF<\/a>. With so many potential top stars elsewhere on the card, the fear is that promising\/rehabilitated wrestlers and acts will be victims of stagnation or sacrificed in favor of this overused AEW main event trope.<\/p>\n Repeating a key point from my match point for Strickland vs. Moxley at Dynasty<\/a>, The Death Riders’ mission has been accomplished. In the ring, plenty of AEW wrestlers across the card have stepped up. AEW in 2025 feels united on camera and with less backstage drama for many online fans.<\/p>\n All of this has happened around and beneath Death Riders, not because of them. Some believe Page, Strickland, or Will Ospreay should beat Moxley because, creatively, they are more interesting characters. Characters who can steer into a future rather than wallowing in AEW’s past.<\/p>\n I love Jon Moxley, even though I\u2019m numb to his current character and mission statement. The problem is that this is the fourth time Moxley has been relied upon as a transitional champion.<\/p>\n Moxley has become a construct rather than a character to bridge the gap between crises in AEW. Pandemic, injury, and drama involving CM Punk.<\/p>\n I stand by my previous writing that Moxley is more than the greatest transitional champion of the modern age. Moxley embodies the alternative<\/a>. Yet, Moxley\u2019s character, through repetition, has become diminished. This paradigm shift is old hat.<\/p>\n The crisis Moxley now leads AEW through is artificial and self-inflicted. With Strickland or Bryan Danielson, things were moving past September 2022. Moxley and Death Rider\u2019s mission statement keeps us in a bulldog choke fixed in that spot again.<\/p>\n Moxley\u2019s character reopened freshly healed scar tissue. The Death Rider\u2019s rhetoric, that AEW wrestlers are complacent inmates running the asylum, mixes persistent criticism of the company with kayfabe for a third time. Following The Blackpool Combat battling The Elite to determine AEW\u2019s future, last summer\u2019s Elite Corporate Takeover<\/a> is now being reinserted into proceedings.<\/p>\n The words of critics and CM Punk from his Ariel Helwani interview<\/a> turned into a narrative. It demonstrates the double-edged sword of how AEW is \u201cunder attack<\/a>\u201d. Acknowledging criticism makes it legitimate, even when it’s false.<\/p>\n Since September 2022, AEW\u2019s battle to find an identity for its heart and soul remains artificial. AEW\u2019s identity was never lost.<\/p>\n AEW is \u201cwhere the best wrestle\u201d week in and out. Where characters act like flawed, realistic humans rather than WWE superheroes and villains. Moxley\u2019s caricature of a post-Attitude Era WWE top heel is bland compared with the nuanced layers of a Strickland or a Page or a Storm.<\/p>\n Beyond ignoring the reality, AEW is acting like the WWE of the past by insisting that its initials and history take centre stage over its wrestlers. That\u2019s why some sickos are fed up. AEW needs to heal and move on.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t waste what we have.<\/p>\n More From LWOS Pro Wrestling<\/strong><\/p>\n Header photo \u2013 AEW \u2013 Stay tun<\/em>ed to the\u00a0Last Word on Pro Wrestling<\/a> for more on Death Riders 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.\u00a0 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<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Death Riders and Jon Moxley evoke strong emotional responses. Detractors, as well as AEW fans alike, post-Dynasty posted a range of feelings on social media. A trend of dissatisfaction appears to have grown since Revolution. At its worst, most unacceptable, and heinous were death and sexual assault threats made toward Tony Khan. At the other […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4960,"featured_media":133750,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4677,6,2192],"tags":[4133,8864,8719,9081,4395,8520],"class_list":["post-133661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aew","category-north-america","category-wrestling","tag-aew","tag-aew-dynasty","tag-brawl-out","tag-death-riders","tag-jon-moxley","tag-swerve-strickland"],"modified_by":"Chinyere Okafor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4960"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133661"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133661\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133748,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133661\/revisions\/133748"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Skewering Success for Death Riders<\/h2>\n
Creative Disinterest<\/h2>\n
Stuck – Historic Bulldog Choke<\/h2>\n
AEW Still Hasn\u2019t Moved On<\/h2>\n