I love All Elite Wrestling. It is only because of the massive amount of love that I have so many criticisms. Not that my critiques have any weight. Tony Khan is, successfully, putting on an alternative product that has improved professional wrestling for the better. Many people may have critiques, but the critiques come from passion. People are passionate about the product, and when it falls short of what it could be, they feel like voicing their opinions.
The shows aren’t consistent, there’s not enough continuity to develop characters, and the ecosystem is constantly shifting for the best match in the moment, not necessarily the best lineage of matches. The same people are involved in stories, everyone else goes into booking purgatory, pay-per-view matches are ‘whoever is hot at the moment’ against whoever is currently putting on the best matches’ or random. There’s either stories that end up causing interference so the loser is protected, or there’s a good but predictable and non-impactful match.
I’m going to put my money where my mouth is, and I’m going to post about HOW I’d change it, not just dream bookings. There are real, practical steps AEW can take to set themselves up for success, and I believe I know some of them.
I have four main issues with AEW:
- The Championships and Rankings don’t make sense
- There is no structure to PPVs outside the name and general gimmick
- Weekly TV suffers from randomness or matches that don’t matter/make sense
- Characters are stuck in purgatory. After storylines, they usually just get taken of TV, and any development gets thrown away
I’m going to address these as two categories of issues, and do two posts. This one will focus on AEW’s Structure, and the next will deal with the Stories. Structure will deal with PPVs/special matches and Championships/Rankings. Stories will talk about short-term and long-term booking ideas to help develop characters and the product.
STRUCTURE
AEW does not have a structure. The PPV schedule looks somewhat finalized, but when and what happens at them changes too much. There’s always has a ‘casino’ something or other, but it changes (battle royale on the Double or Nothing PPV, battle royale at All In, ladder match at DoN, battle royale on TV, gauntlet on TV). Revolution had “The Face of the Revolution” ladder match but then stopped doing it. There’s now a Continental Classic with its finals at World’s End, but this is new, and AEW’s traditions have about a three-year lifespan outside of the Dynamite Diamond Ring.
The WWE, on the other hand, has the Royal Rumble, the Elimination Chamber, the Money in the Bank, and now the King and Queen of the Ring tournaments to offer fans some stability and expectations, and to give wrestlers the opportunity for some card-mobility.
Tony Khan might be trying to set up a new permanent structure, but with how much it changes from year-to-year, I’m not sure if it’s just what works at this moment. The winner of the Casino Gauntlet (a complicated match that’s been the cause of much debate, especially because of the match ending before Roderick Strong entering which then meant Roderick Strong got a title shot?) gets a title match at Forbidden Door, and the winner of the Owen Hart Tournament gets a title match at All In.
I think this is a good first step, but I also think it’s weird to not have the AEW title match be an interpromotional match on Forbidden Door. Then again, Forbidden Door was the time for crossover matches until AEW made a second yearly PPV with that same goal in WrestleDream.
There should be a Road to All In. They’ve used a similar terminology in some of their materials, and also there’s no reason the biggest show of the year shouldn’t have a full schedule of hype. The Owen Tournament determining the contender is in some ways good, but for only having one world championship, it’s hard to make the Owen Tournament finals not predictable.
The entire PPV and special gimmick match needs restructuring, but we can do that using what they have in place. Because this is a functional reworking, I want each of the special occasions to be able to:
- Have natural integration of stories and ‘stories’ (the ‘in-ring’ stories told through tournaments or over the course of a match).
- Allow people to move up in the card
- Allow disruptions in the established division hierarchy
CURRENT PAY-PER-VIEWS AND SPECIAL MATCHES
Let’s start with laying out a basic schedule based on what AEW already has:
- Revolution (Big 4)
- Revolution Ladder Match
- Dynasty
- Double or Nothing (Big 4)
- Casino Gauntlet
- [TV] Owen Hart Tournament
- Forbidden Door
- All In/All Out (Big 4)
- WrestleDream
- Full Gear (Big 4)
- [TV] Dynamite Diamond Ring
- World’s End
- Continental Classic Finish
We want to build hype to All In, as it’s the biggest event of the year. Because it’s stupid to have All Out and All In a week or even two weeks apart, one of the two major changes to the existing layout is that All In and All Out will be a two-night event. All Out will happen the night before All In.
I don’t love that the Casino Gauntlet leads to the PPV before All In, while a tournament immediately follows leading to All In. I’m a big believer that big money world title matches should have anticipation. And while I think it’s cool that there can be huge matches in the tournament (this year, MJF vs. Danielson could be a pretty big one in the Hart Tournament leading to All In), I think it’ll still end up making a lot of the tournament predictable. That’s why the other major change is going to be moving the Owen Hart Tournament.
The Owen Hart Tournament’s Finals are going to happen at WrestleDream, and the winner gets their title match at Full Gear.
Before we talk about other adjustments to the PPVs, we should talk about titles, since those are what are fought for on the big shows and are sort of the whole point (in character) for wrestling in the first place. And AEW is notorious for having a championship problem.
CURRENT CHAMPIONSHIPS AND RANKINGS
Not counting Ring of Honor, AEW has 7 Men’s Championships and 2 Women’s Championships:
- World Heavyweight Championship — The Big Prize
- TNT Championship — A “TV” title, meant to be defended on a weekly or near-weekly basis
- International Championship — A title meant to be defended at other promotions across the world
- Continental Championship — The reward of the Continental Classic, and every year is defended in the tournament. During the rest of the year, has slightly modified rules to be more ‘pure’ and focused on wrestling (no outside interference or people at ringside)
- FTW Championship — A personal title of Taz’s that is a hardcore championship now in AEW
- Tag Team Championship — A title for two people
- Trios Championship — A title for three people
- Women’s World Championship — The Big Prize
- TBS Championship — A “TV” title
There is also a rankings system, though it’s a bit odd. There is a top 5, and it goes in order from top to bottom of the top 5 who gets a shot at what title they want. Except maybe #1 always gets the World Championship match. I don’t know. It’s super complicated and doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.
The Women’s… I guess is like that? But not really. In general, it’s pretty shaky and weird. Fixing the women’s division is going to take some more time. While it will eventually shape up to look like the men’s, there are more steps: I’m going to describe that in a post of its own.
REVISED DIVISIONS
The World Championship is the big prize. Every other division has some sort of a purpose, and while some may be more ‘prestigious’ than others, any are valuable prizes in themselves. It obviously gets a division, and the division encompasses everyone. Even if someone is in another division or a champion,
Not all of them need divisions.
The TNT and TBS Championships are TV titles meant to be defended often. If someone wants a shot, they’d generally get it.
The FTW Championship isn’t necessarily a super big deal, and it can operate more as a hardcore, fun, whoever wants to try and take it can. It’s open to anyone, no rankings needed. A bit more of ‘champ’s choice’, I suppose.
The International Championship is tricky to me. It’s defended at other promotions, so on one hand, they don’t rankings, why should AEW wrestlers? But, it’s a title that’s meant to represent AEW, so I think it should be an earned opportunity. It will have its own division.
The Continental Championship is also a big deal, especially considering it’s the prize to their G2-equivalent. It gets a division of its own.
So there are two ‘mid-card’ divisions and a World Championship division, how does that work? Especially when the shows aren’t branded?
I think you leave it to ‘wrestler choice’ (or what the Booker says a wrestler chooses). Let them be able to switch divisions after each of the Big 4 if you want (and you can throw in a rule where they can’t if they’re in the top five or ten).
And the top five or top ten fight amongst themselves and try to move up.
If you wanted to get sicko with it (using Tony Khan’s terminology), you could give each division its own bit. The International Championship can include matches in other companies, so the top five contender could get bumped up to top four if he won a few matches in an outside company. And the Continental Championship, very regime and structured, could have most if not all of the matches be bordering rankings. Contender ten and nine will wrestler, or nine and eight, or eight and seven, or four and five, such and so forth. This would cause a lot of rematches, but that’s okay. And if you hate the idea, then take the rest of the division idea and kill the optional division rules.
The plan is to have three divisions to formally follow, some extra divisions for fun stuff, and an overall ‘World’ contendership hierarchy being established. Wrestlers who pick up a lot of wins defending the TNT Championship or climbing up the rungs of the Continental Championship end up with higher records. Wrestlers who put on good runs can transition into the World title picture, or be used for a filler title match if need be.
*As for Women’s Championships, while there will be more that goes into it, they need more titles. With only a TV championship and a World championship, there’s not a lot there to make talent bigger. I’ll go into more of it in a dedicated post, but at minimum I’d add a Women’s Tag Championship and at least one more dedicated women’s secondary championship.
Women could also find more use in men’s divisions if AEW wanted to pull the trigger on it. It gets trickier with divisions and trying to track it, but not that much trickier. A women’s secondary championship is necessary though, if for no other reason than to let the Women’s World championship look like a bigger deal. The TBS Championship isn’t enough of a spotlight to let women transition into the main event.
REVISED PAY-PER-VIEWS AND SPECIAL MATCHES
Now we can go back and structure the year. We have three main titles to compete for. That’s not to say that the others aren’t important, but three titles to chase and have big matches at big PPVs for. I said earlier there would only be two major changes, but I half-lied. In addition, there will be more big matches for the two mid-card belts that we’ve established.
Revolution
Revolution has the ‘Face of the Revolution’ match, which has been for a TNT title match in the future. Instead of being a TNT title match, it’ll now be for an International Championship match.
Dynasty
This is probably the most generic of the AEW Pay-Per-Views, but those are needed!
Double or Nothing
The Casino Gauntlet’s been a big Dynamite thing, but I like the idea of putting it on the PPV. It can become a yearly tradition that wrestlers from other companies will make an appearance at the Gauntlet, and some of those will wrestle at Forbidden Door (and, like how the Rumble sets up ‘Mania matches, the Gauntlet can set up Forbidden Door and WrestleDream matches). The winner of the Casino Gauntlet can still get a title match at Forbidden Door, but I also like the idea of bumping the title match to All In. This makes the Gauntlet itself a much bigger deal, and if you want to keep the tradition of ‘people who don’t enter get title matches’, you can (but why would you?).
Forbidden Door
The International Championship match should be a huge deal at Forbidden Door. While world title matches between other promotions can main event over it, but this should always either be an annual opener, or an annual co-main event.
All In/All Out
The big one- depending on whether your preference is to have the Casino Gauntlet lead to a match at Forbidden Door or here, there’s going to be a big AEW Championship match..
WrestleDream/Owen Hart Tournament
Same as Forbidden Door. The International Championship should be huge and such a massive deal.
This PPV will also have the Owen Hart Tournament finals, so that the winner can fight for the AEW World Championship at Full Gear.
Full Gear
Full Gear now has the big Owen Hart winner vs. AEW World Championship match. But there’s another big match taking place here: this is the last Continental Championship match before the Continental Classic begins, so the title match that takes place is going to be a big deal. An additional tweak to the Continental Classic is the top four contenders are guaranteed entry into the CC, two on each block (or if there are four blocks, one in each). A big match between Contender 4 and Contender 5 wouldn’t be out of the picture, then.
*Also, the way I see it, it’s not like #5 and down are automatically out of the CC, but they may have to go through extra steps like a qualifier.
[TV] Dynamite Diamond Ring
The only special match not on a Pay-Per-View.
Honestly, I like it. I like the bit of it being a battle royale and the winner of last year’s defending it against the winner of the royale.
If you wanted, you could lead to a title match of either secondary belt, or a bump in the rankings (count as 3–4 wins).
World’s End
The Continental Classic finale.
CONCLUSION
And that’s that. There’s some stuff I missed but I think it’s handled pretty fine, Anarchy in the Arena and Blood and Guts and such. Now, there are titles that make sense. Rankings that matter. A schedule that has room to breathe but includes big matches with stakes. Divisions to follow. Chasers to watch.
