00:00There has been a lot of talk about the health of AEW and where it's standing is in professional
00:05wrestling right now. So going into their biggest show of the year, I thought pretty good time to
00:09take a look at where All Elite Wrestling is in the entire wrestling landscape and just in their
00:15lifetime as we look at AEW's overall health going into All In.
00:30So AEW has their biggest show of the year All In. There has been a lot of talk about where AEW is at
00:38right now so I thought you know what this is a pretty good time to look at the overall health
00:42of this company and right now it is moving in the right direction. This company is now and forever
00:50will be the work rate company right like that there is no denying that this is a company where
00:56like the whole the best wrestle. I don't know if they have um exclusivity to the best wrestlers in
01:01the world but they certainly feel like they have it to the best matches in the world and that has
01:06always always always been the case. But we have gone through a bit of a stretch with this company
01:12where it has kind of felt that there have been a few comparisons along the way but the one that I
01:17think really strikes me it is either mid-2010's WWE or late-2000's TNA where none of the stories
01:27made sense but you would tune in to watch the matches and it would be fine because you would get
01:31the one minute kind of video presentation of what they were going for storytelling wise even though
01:38like they have to edit out a lot of things and change a whole lot of different things um you would
01:42at least get the snapshot of like oh that's what they were trying to do and then you'd get an
01:45awesome match out of it. That is kind of what AEW turned into for about like 18 months there um
01:51I don't know what flipped I don't know if there has been a change in who is doing the creative if
01:59Tony Khan um read a book or if he just ran the whole roster through chat GPT and was like hey can
02:06we build a actual wrestling show off of these guys and it was like yeah bet let's go boom and and threw it
02:12all out there but something has changed and the creative feels very very dialed in right now there
02:19was a long time where AEW kind of got caught up in the um kind of got caught up in the wrong thing
02:26it is something just to bring it back to me um follow me on this journey I promise it goes somewhere
02:31I hope it does um that part of the joke will make sense in one second I have ADD um diagnosed and
02:38now medicated for it and so one of the things that is a symptom of that sometimes is that you can
02:44focus on the tiniest little detail and just like okay I need to have such attention to detail on this
02:50thing and then miss five other ones the best example of it for me is a weird one cleaning the
02:56bathroom the window or the window the mirror will be absolutely filthy and disgusting but I'll be
03:02goddamn if I didn't clean the fuck out of the light switch okay like that that is where I was at
03:07and AEW they they had a clean light switch for a while where it was oh we're not just going to
03:12have random camera guy in the back we're going to explain who the camera person is and why there's
03:16a camera person here and we're going to explain different um uh things that tie us all together
03:21here for all these different reasons and forget actual like character progression and stories and
03:26stuff like that but the the attention has switched and the focus is now back on where it needs to
03:33I don't know where that switched but I do know where the first switch came and it does really feel
03:40like it was the Adam Cole MJF build right like the whole these guys hate each other well now they're
03:47teammates and now we're doing all these vignettes um that there were some people who were turned off
03:51by the vignettes but then the whole turn of Adam Cole turning on MJF and Adam Cole is the devil and he has
03:59these guys who are attached to either Adam Cole or MJF and you have this thing and it was just at that
04:07point everyone almost collectively you could hear the whole wrestling world roll their eyes at the
04:12same time and the build went nowhere and then MJF comes back and kind of feels like a baby face but
04:20then quickly turns into a heel again and we just flipped the whole dynamic and they tried to explain
04:24it like four times to make it make sense and it didn't and it just felt like at that point it was
04:29one of those things where like you hear on the Monday Night War thing and all those things Hulk Hogan
04:35talking about how like you can make a lot of little mistakes but those one big mistake and then all of a
04:41sudden everyone's kind of taking a look at you and again we're not talking about the scale of what
04:44WCW was but that felt like their Halloween Havoc where like the mat I mean the matches were fine
04:52but like the for Halloween Havoc 98 where it was Hogan Warrior and the match sucked and then they
04:57went it went too long while being bad and they couldn't get the finish of the pay-per-view on
05:01and so it was at that point in WCW where everyone was like well that was dumb and you start to get
05:06that wait are they dumb in the back of your head and now everything goes through that filter and it
05:09was kind of the same in AEW where you could overlook a lot of like well that's silly but then once the big
05:15silly thing happens then it's like well wait a minute all of this is kind of silly and they could not
05:21just get the nose turned up on this thing at any point like I said it has switched now but it has
05:26been a bit with them trying to get out from that creative direction there so things are going in the
05:33right direction but now they do need the measurables to catch up right attendance is up slightly but it is
05:40still well away from what they were it a lot of the attendance figures feel small company-ish and I
05:49remember like when AEW started and you're going to these big arenas and it is national television
05:54it's like oh my god I am watching Bryan Danielson against Kenny Omega for 60 minutes at the where
06:01the U.S. Open is at Arthur Ashe Stadium on national television there's 20,000 people and they're
06:06watching like it is crazy that these amazing wrestlers get this big type of a thing and so that
06:11was one of the draws of AEW is that all these guys who I've watched in video clips from Reseda,
06:15California in a room that is about the size of this office spare bed um now I'm seeing them on
06:23national tv in these big arenas and now now I'm watching them on national tv in similarly sized
06:29arenas where they're wrestling on indies you know like it it had a small time feel to it and now they
06:33did a pretty good job in some instances of making those small arenas feel different feel unique they
06:39go to theater houses and um uh esports stadiums and stuff like that like they did a good job of
06:46kind of making the best out of a bad situation but there was nowhere high that there was a bad
06:49situation and still when you look at ticket sales it's not great right now they still have the ticket
06:55sales of a small company and I do think that will turn as the creative turns as the momentum turns that
07:04will kind of be the last thing that catches up is that and tv ratings again the tv ratings are
07:08going in the right direction but they're not where they were even a year ago so this is it is something
07:16that you need to really I think um stick with this course because we have heard before how like bad
07:25creative it takes a while for it to really set in in the measurables right in the dollars and cents at
07:30the ticket gate merchandise sales all of that I think it's the same for building that momentum
07:35back up you know again a lot of attitude era references on the show today but like WWF their
07:411997 was spectacular and in like late 96 into 97 um a lot of that stuff was really really good
07:50but they're getting bludgeoned by WCW whose show isn't even as good but it's just it was the cool thing
07:56that we all latched on to and so we were there and so it took a while for WWF to really hit that
08:02stride and have kind of the the measurables catch up to what we were all seeing with the creative
08:08direction and everything I think that's the same here where it would be a mistake to panic to see
08:14some of the things maybe not growing the way you would want it to with a refined approach because it
08:19is going to change this is an approach you need to stay patient with and need to grow with but like
08:23Conrad said in the chat there are still improvements that need to be made the women's division is
08:29entirely underutilized um like again there's one singles match on all in as of the time of this
08:37recording anyway and then a gauntlet match that's it it is just it's not close to what the messaging
08:42was at the time where we were getting Britt Baker and Thunder Rosa in those death match style things
08:47and everything like that like they need they need more of that now on their main programming
08:52and just in general there's a lot of talent that is underutilized and I've said before I think that's
08:57where a partnership with New Japan can come in I think that's where a partnership with CMLL could come
09:01in and really start to get this talent into a lot of different spaces so AEW was in a bad spot when you
09:09think about brawl in brawl out with CM Punk and then kind of screwing up the Adam Cole MJF storyline
09:17and making two of your most dynamic performers who you focus basically a year on making them both feel
09:24insignificant in a matter of moments it was a lot self-inflicted wounds a lot of them but it was a lot
09:29for them to come back from and it does feel like they are righting the ship and I I just have this
09:34feeling that by this time next year when we're talking about all in 2027 uh or all in 2026 sorry
09:41certainly probably McMahon Stadium in Calgary um when we are talking about this big show I think we
09:47are talking about a happy healthy AEW that again is in actual hockey and basketball arenas instead of
09:56esports stadiums and uh to close it out like Conrad saying that I I don't think they won't be I I don't
10:03think they will be making chicken salad from chicken shit at this time next year but they need to
10:09stay patient and need to keep going on the road that they are going on
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