- 5 minutes ago
From interim titles that undermined champions to world title reigns that went nowhere, join Gareth from WhatCulture Wrestling as we dissect 12 specific moments where AEW's booking and storytelling logic completely fell apart.
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00From messy and baffling title pictures, to a certain Cody-verse that was even more bizarre than you remember.
00:08I am Gareth, this is WhatCultureWrestling, and here are 12 exact moments AEW booking stopped making sense.
00:17Number 12, The Interim AEW World Title Picture, June 1st, 2022
00:23On the June 1st, 2022 Dynamite, new AEW World Champion CM Punk was scheduled to wrestle Max Caster and the
00:32Guns alongside FTR.
00:34He just about gutted it through what was meant to be a low-stakes celebratory affair.
00:40It is rather infamous in retrospect, Punk shattered his foot and the complexion of the company by first jumping into
00:47the crowd.
00:48Silly Philly
00:49He vacated the belt on the subsequent edition of Rampage.
00:52But because Tony Khan wanted to strap Punk back up as soon as was practicable, he created an interim world
00:58title.
00:59And this idea was, well, disastrous.
01:02So firstly, it seemed to annoy the guy who got it, Jon Moxley, because it cast him as inferior to
01:09and a placeholder for CM Punk.
01:12Resulting in an infamous program teeming with political tension.
01:17This didn't do much for Mox.
01:19Even though he was one of the absolute best wrestlers in the world, it portrayed him as solid, reliable, dependable.
01:27Words you don't tend to associate with genuine superstars.
01:31The process of arriving at Mox was also quite baffling.
01:35Ahead of Forbidden Door, at which Mox represented AEW against New Japan Pro Wrestling's Hiroshi Tanahashi,
01:42Khan booked a battle royal to determine Mox's opponent for the number one contender spot.
01:47And that man was Kyle O'Reilly, who outlasted top stars such as Bobby Fish and John Silver en route
01:55to victory.
01:55Missing from that match was Hangman Page, who didn't get the chance to win his belt back.
02:01And Wardlow, who was white hot following his awesome rampage to avenge MJF between March and May.
02:08How do you not include those two in that match?
02:10Well, Wardlow was actually scripted to bury the idea of the interim title to explain why he wasn't in the
02:17match.
02:17What?
02:18Look, as great as Mox definitely was throughout 2022, this business stigmatized him as a safe pair of hands.
02:26It fueled CM Punk's top star entitlement, undermined Wardlow as a major prospect worth investing in,
02:33and diminished the value of the world title.
02:36Yeah, not good business.
02:37Number 11, Bryan Danielson's World Title Reign.
02:40Something clearly happened during Bryan Danielson's AEW World Title Reign that wasn't communicated.
02:47The easy, if perhaps unfair, inference is that he was far more banged up than he and AEW anticipated
02:55when the decision was made to plot his world title run last stand.
02:59Darby Allen had become number one contender by winning a Royal Rampage Battle Royal,
03:04and was indeed meant to dethrone Bryan Danielson in a Seattle Derby at WrestleDream.
03:09Could you imagine?
03:10He was made to look like an idiot when the booking plans changed, though.
03:14It was thought a better idea for a heel Moxley to dethrone Bryan and later drop the belt to Darby.
03:20So Darby put his shot on the line against Mox at Grand Slam and lost.
03:25This weird shift also wasn't helped by Moxley's experiments with cryptic Malachi Black style promos.
03:32In the meantime, Christian Cage won a casino gauntlet match at All in London,
03:37securing essentially a Money in the Bank contract.
03:40Wait, didn't AEW think WWE was bad?
03:42Surely the idea wasn't for him to cash in on fellow heel John Moxley.
03:47He was either going to ruin Darby's big moment, or fail in the pursuit when challenging Danielson.
03:53Perhaps when Luchasaurus had finally tired of his bullying.
03:56Yeah, that would have made more sense.
03:58Luchasaurus was suffering terribly unfortunate health issues at the time,
04:02so if that was the plan, clearly AEW could not proceed.
04:07In another odd development, Nigel McGuinness and his return from injury,
04:11a great story that AEW didn't even need to write,
04:15was complicated by Nigel's insistence that Bryan was a coward who might not even make it at Grand Slam.
04:21That match, right there, was a worthy last chapter that didn't need any bogus episodic TV crap to build.
04:29Now yes, it did make narrative sense for Bryan to work Jack Perry,
04:33who had been favoured in the booking.
04:35But I mean, who really asked for that?
04:36No, no you didn't.
04:38Here and thereafter, AEW's booking fell off a gorge,
04:42was airlifted back up, struck a tree, and then went back down again.
04:45Now for a touch of positivity, eh?
04:47What's your favourite Bryan Danielson moment in AEW?
04:51Was it his big world title win at All In?
04:54Was it something else?
04:55You let me know in the comments down below.
04:57Yes.
04:58Number 10, The Early Days of the Death Riders, October 30th, 2024.
05:03The Death Riders stable, ultimately, was a major success.
05:07In this era that we're living in, the booking draws more heat than any fictional heel.
05:14The idea of Hangman Page finally putting a stop to hokey crime sprees and relentless heat angles
05:19drove the smash success of All In Texas.
05:23It also helps, and should not go unmentioned,
05:24that Jon Moxley finally realised his potential as a top heel with a couple of months to spare.
05:29We got there in the end.
05:30Bad and or repetitive booking with a great payoff is the new long-term storytelling, folks.
05:36Initially, the stable was abysmal and nonsensical.
05:42Here's an example for you.
05:43One that thwarted the early promise of an overarching, interconnected plot designed to
05:48restore the feeling.
05:49Remember that?
05:50Jon Moxley broke Zay's hand because he was disgusted that the private party member had stagnated in the same spot.
05:58Zay was everything wrong with AEW, a company that itself was languishing.
06:02Zay, together with Mark Quen, very quickly, too quickly, I could say,
06:06dethroned world tag team champions, the Young Bucks.
06:10Surely, private party should have cut a promo on the Death Riders,
06:13telling them that they had not forgotten about Moxley's violent attack.
06:17They should have asked the Death Riders to call them stagnant now,
06:19or the private party should have then feuded with Claudio Castagnoli and Wheeler Yuta over the belts.
06:24But nope, this thread was just dropped.
06:27Instead, the two squads simply ignored one another.
06:31Daniel Garcia, another early defender of AEW, won the TNT title and then did not do a great deal with
06:40it.
06:40Shouldn't this have drawn the ire of Pac?
06:42Shouldn't Garcia have asked Pac, who in his mind was superior to anybody else in AEW,
06:47where his singles title was?
06:50It was as if private party and Daniel Garcia just sculpted away,
06:54defending their titles in random matches.
06:57And neither reign, unsurprisingly, was particularly good.
06:59This was haphazard in the extreme.
07:02Nothing fit together at all.
07:03Number 9, CM Punk's Collision, June 17th, 2023.
07:08CM Punk's Collision is a strange thing to hold nostalgia for.
07:12It only happened two years ago, for one, and, well, was it that good?
07:16It was refreshing, sure.
07:18A welcome shift from the often frenzied, numbing pace of Dynamite,
07:23on which too many angles are not registered for long enough.
07:26But how good was it really?
07:27Beyond the overlong main event matches, the storytelling was a bit baffling.
07:32One long, unkept promise.
07:34CM Punk unveiled an AEW world title with a spray-painted X on it,
07:39proclaiming himself to be the real world champion.
07:42Naturally, fans expected a unification match against recognized world champion MJF.
07:47This, astonishingly, was never formalized, nor even planned.
07:52So why did Punk, who asserted a degree of creative control, do this?
07:57It was difficult to interpret as anything other than a political power play.
08:00Which, factoring in the rumors of certain talents being banned from the building,
08:04might sum up CM Punk's Collision, generally.
08:08Why, oh why, did Tony Khan approve it?
08:11You don't tease or hint at matches that you have no intention of delivering.
08:15Like, that's the first rule of promotion.
08:17You can't just expect everybody to magically get along.
08:20Now that might sound snarky, yeah.
08:21But honestly, it's not untrue.
08:23Khan booked his show in the summer of 2023 with total naivety.
08:28It was almost cruel to his fanbase.
08:30But eventually, at least until 2025, scorned fans just taught themselves not to get excited.
08:36Which is a bit sad.
08:37Cloaked by a darkened cloud the entire time.
08:41A happy ending to the unresolved CM Punk vs. The Elite feud was never remotely likely, was it?
08:46The early days of Collision were beyond untenable.
08:49It was a source of anxiety, not escapism.
08:52Number 8.
08:53The TNT title picture.
08:54April 27th, 2022.
08:56Eddie Kingston should have dethroned TNT champion Miro at All Out 2021.
09:02Kingston was the rarest of wrestlers in the modern scene.
09:05All Soul, a living folk hero.
09:08And his output that year was phenomenal.
09:10Tony Khan instead gave the nod to Sammy Guevara,
09:13who defeated the Redeemer on the September 29th Dynamite.
09:16Now this was an understandable decision and noble failure.
09:20Guevara was a day one project who for a time was very over as a charismatic,
09:25obnoxious heel.
09:26The TNT title was both his reward and an instruction to the fans that if they connect
09:31with a wrestler, that wrestler's career will progress.
09:33In other words, your long-term investment actually matters.
09:37What a world.
09:38If the Guevara push was a justified tactic,
09:42the Scorpio Sky push was just irritating.
09:45Guevara, in his second reign, dropped the belt to Sky on the March 9th, 2022 Dynamite.
09:50Guevara won it for the third time proper at Battle of the Belts on April 15th.
09:55Look, the idea of one Scorpio Sky reign was inexplicable enough,
09:59since he was a mere solid hand in the mid-card scene,
10:03whose work never really approached best match in AEW history level.
10:07He then embarked on his second, after winning back the title on April 27th,
10:12before then dropping it to Wardlow on July 6th.
10:15This was all kinds of awful, folks.
10:17Sky was a barely over heel whom Khan saw more in than most.
10:21Guevara, an increasingly unlikable babyface.
10:24Nobody wanted either man to reign with a belt that lost its prestige at an alarming rate.
10:29A blur of hot potato nothingness with minimal fan interest.
10:33The what are we doing here of it all was compounded by the fact that AEW's roster of 2022
10:39was teeming with countless better options.
10:43Tony Khan is a patient, loyal booker.
10:46But this, this was idiotically stubborn business.
10:49Number 7, the Full Gear 2023 Show Long Angle, November 18th, 2023.
10:55There is a lot to unpack here, my friends.
10:57MJF and Adam Cole became friends in the late spring of 2023.
11:02They formed the skit-loving team, better than you, baby.
11:06The most succinct way of describing, which is just about entertaining and charming enough
11:10to get away with itself.
11:11Yeah, that was the peak.
11:12The decline was astonishingly bad.
11:15Adam Cole shattered his ankle at Grand Slam in September 23,
11:19which somehow didn't necessitate a TV write-off.
11:22The injury was so bad that Cole ended up missing over a year of action.
11:25The injury was so bad and complex that a dead man's bone was inserted into his foot via
11:30experimental surgery.
11:32Yeah, that's bad.
11:32AEW was, and is, meant to be the vaguely sports-oriented promotion in the US mainstream.
11:39At a minimum, its world should make sense in the context of a sport.
11:43Typically, football players with destroyed legs are not allowed to enter the field, right?
11:47On the 4Gear pre-show, MJF was attacked by the guns, and in a hook, was sent away in an
11:54ambulance.
11:54With his knee in agony, he could not defend his title against Jay White.
11:59So, who stepped up?
12:00The even more injured Adam Cole.
12:03Yep, the even more injured Adam Cole, who, A, was even more injured than MJF.
12:08B, under no circumstances would ever get cleared to compete by a conscientious, fit-for-purpose
12:14medical team.
12:15And C, was plotting to betray MJF, and had no idea that MJF would make his heroic return
12:20just in time for the main event.
12:22Illogical barely captures how overthought this whole thing was.
12:26And that wasn't even the worst of it.
12:27But oh boy, we will get there, right after I remind your lovely face to hit that subscribe
12:32button if you haven't already.
12:33You'll get so many more fantastic Watt Culture Wrestling lists, series, news videos, and more.
12:39It just makes sense, unlike some of these pieces of AW booking.
12:43Right, back to it we go.
12:44Number 6, The Devil Storyline
12:47September 27th, 2023
12:49Adding to the previous entry on Full Gear, in September 2023, Jay White was attacked by several
12:58mysterious figures.
12:59One was wearing the Devil mask worn by MJF at All Out 2022.
13:05It was implied that this must have been MJF, but it was very obviously a red herring.
13:10Jay himself didn't even seem that bothered, to be honest.
13:13Few were, really.
13:14A couple of characters accused MJF of being the Devil, Roderick Strong most notably and
13:20most obnoxiously.
13:22But MJF was adamant that he absolutely was not.
13:26This saga was just horrendous.
13:29The hokiest tripe that AEW ever served up at such a prominent level.
13:35It utterly killed MJF as a babyface.
13:37People gravitated towards him because he was an entertaining a-hole.
13:41They didn't care about those old evil deeds catching up to him.
13:45Hell, they would have preferred to see him do more of them than this.
13:50At one point, this was a Vince Russo-sized disgrace to the idea of a sports-oriented,
13:56high-quality wrestling league.
13:59The storyline was all over the place narratively, since the only person to care about it for a
14:05month of inactivity was Roddy.
14:07The logic was equally dismal.
14:10The Devil was able to hack into the mainframe to deliver his glitchy messages, and even put
14:16on a dazzling light display when his masked men made their entrance for matches, in which
14:22their opponents never immediately removed their disguise.
14:25Right.
14:26This was dumb and goofy at the time, and was somehow worse when the perp was revealed to
14:32be Adam Cole, baby, at World's End.
14:34Cole, the Devil, plotted to betray MJF and distracted him from the master plan when at Roddy Strong's
14:42place, pulling slow-motion happy faces while making sandwiches and riding around on mobility
14:47scooters.
14:48Yeah.
14:49I mean, positively satanic stuff, yeah?
14:52Number 5, The Codyverse, November 13th, 2021
14:56Cody Rhodes was savvy and bold enough to realise that by late 2021, he had effectively been sidelined
15:03to accommodate CM Punk and Bryan Danielson.
15:06Mired in the upper mid-card, and through his own decision-making, unable to vie for the
15:11world title, there was nowhere to go but out.
15:14The widely derided Codyverse booking was the first sign that there was nothing of purpose
15:20for him to really do.
15:22He traded wins with Malakai Black over the summer, as Tony Khan bottled jobbing out his rapidly
15:28expanding roster, and the exact same thing happened with Andrade El Idolo, too.
15:33In truth, this is less stopped making sense and more political booking with zero drama.
15:39Until the bizarre events of November 2021.
15:42At full gear, a perma-bleeding Cody teamed with Pac to defeat Malakai and Andrade in a
15:48weird, tweener-tinged match.
15:51Pac teaming with Cody made sense.
15:54They were locked in singles feuds with their opponents on the night.
15:58But what drew Malakai and Andrade together?
16:00Well, as alluded to on screen, Malakai was married in real life to Andrade's fictional
16:05valet in WWE.
16:07That was cute insider knowledge masquerading as a story, really.
16:11Then at some point, after inexplicably waiting well over a year, FTR decided they wanted to
16:17attack Cody for saying F the revival on being the elite several years prior.
16:21This led to an eight-man tag on the November 24th Dynamite.
16:25FTR, Andrade and Malakai defeated Cody Rhodes and his loyal, trusted friends, Death Triangle.
16:33MJF loaned his Pinnacle stablemates to make this deal happen.
16:37You know, just in case this storyline was missing yet more extraneous detail.
16:41Convoluted and just very wasteful.
16:44WWE's far simpler approach won out with Cody Rhodes.
16:47Number 4, Don Callis tries to recruit Chris Jericho, August 16th, 2023.
16:53Chris Jericho, sorry, um, AW had an idea for the inaugural All-In London in 2023.
17:02It just so happened that Jericho got a match bound for a cauldron atmosphere and critical
17:08acclaim against the best in-ring wrestler in the world, Will Ospreay.
17:13Fancy that.
17:13But the process of getting there and slowly turning Jericho babyface was so convoluted
17:19that he instead turned even more heel.
17:22Moreover, the very idea was dumb before the botched execution.
17:27Most fans would rather Jericho have gone away for a while rather than received him as a hero.
17:32Don Callis, Ospreay's manager, tried to persuade Jericho not to retire.
17:37Itself an unconvincing storyline tease, they held secret meetings in a bid to hash out an
17:43alliance.
17:44Eventually, Jericho, spurning his Jericho Appreciation Society stablemate, made the decision to align
17:50with the heel Don Callis.
17:52Callis, expecting a rejection, had actually intended to betray Jericho, as an oil painting
17:58uncovered by Jericho revealed.
18:01Why then did Callis make such an effort in the first place?
18:04To recap, Jericho teased turning babyface by appealing to the crowd, asking them to believe
18:09that he was still good enough.
18:11The Callis betrayal was meant to pile the sympathy on Jericho, turning him face.
18:16But Jericho had seconds earlier made the decision to continue his cheating ways with Don's help.
18:22All of this happened ahead of a match against the Essex England-born Ospreay, who was going
18:27to draw the majority of cheers at Wembley regardless.
18:30Now, in AEW's defence, they had existing continuity to worry about.
18:35Ospreay and Callis were presented as heels in Canada at Forbidden Door in June, so booking
18:39him in London two months later was always going to require some careful thought.
18:44This was overthought, to a stupid extent in the end.
18:48But Jericho got his 4.75 star rating from The Observer, so who cares, eh?
18:54Me, I cared.
18:55Number 3, The Blackpool Combat Club, General.
18:58August 23rd, 2023.
19:01The Blackpool Combat Club seemed like a winning idea.
19:04Brian Danielson and Jon Moxley drafting in Wheeler Uta and perhaps others to reshape AW in
19:11their own violent image, while continuing to escalate their now very bloody stiff matches,
19:17before inevitably feuding with and elevating their protégés?
19:21Oh, it sounds great.
19:23No, not great, actually.
19:25It was more an identity, a lifestyle than a faction.
19:29All less generously, an excuse for Mox and Danielson to just indulge their tough guy leanings.
19:36When they actually did engage in stable warfare, the results were underwhelming.
19:40They feuded over concepts in emotionless sagas.
19:45They defended the art of wrestling against the evils of sports entertainment versus the
19:51Jericho Appreciation Society in 2022, which, without any believable hatred, just dragged
19:57on and on against the elite a year later.
20:01There was lots of vague, unengaging chat about professionalism amid the usual anarchy in the
20:06arena and blood and guts faction feud template.
20:10Mox barely cut promos throughout this run, too, preferring instead to mow down mid-card
20:15opposition in increasingly random and pointless matches.
20:19This moody, tweener role made for such bland television.
20:24This was a foolish use of the great man, and things got plain dumb narratively the longer
20:30it went on.
20:30By August 2023, with CM Punk's exit causing several migraines, the BCC played heels against
20:37career rivals Best Friends and the Lucha Brothers, as Danielson played face against Ricky Starks
20:44at the exact same time.
20:46The matches were outstanding, yes, but the booking made zero sense.
20:50Everything the grifters spout about AEW was sadly true during that dumbass summer of 2023.
20:57Big sigh.
20:57Number two, the Babyface Superteam Device, June 28th, 2023.
21:03It used to be that AEW's hold on alliances was very tight and logical.
21:08If you had a loyal friend, they would back you up in a fight.
21:11If that friendship was strained, they might be reluctant to help.
21:15This was so well observed in the early days of Dynamite that the decision whether or not
21:20to back up a fellow Babyface was a key phase in a wrestler's character development.
21:25Hangman Page specialised in making these decisions.
21:29AEW installed a much-needed rule, exercising a promotional advantage over Vince McMahon's
21:35WWE.
21:36Babyfaces should have friends.
21:39Eventually, though, this fritted away.
21:41The conglomeration, which for a time was very charming, granted, accelerated a certain
21:47booking crutch.
21:48The Babyface Superteam, a good early example of which unfolded on the June 28th, 2023 Dynamite.
21:56Ah, that summer again.
21:57Orange Cassidy, El Gio Del Viquingo, and Keith Lee defeated Daniel Garcia, Daddy Magic, and
22:04Cool Hand Ange.
22:06As many of these matches are, it was loads of fun in and of itself.
22:10But Tony Khan subsequently became fixated on this type of match.
22:15Wholesome, strange, bedfellows, babyfaces defeating a team of heels.
22:19This quirk is a cool novelty for live crowds, and a neat way of adding levity to the TV show
22:25in the midcard.
22:26But what does it truly achieve?
22:28Very little.
22:29And what's more, when the time comes for a babyface to get saved, their new pals desert
22:34them.
22:34Orange Cassidy made dozens of friends in these sorts of matches throughout 2023, but they
22:40were nowhere to be found when he needed them the most.
22:42This vacuum business adds up to a whole load of nothing.
22:47AEW never feels quite as empty and trivial as when Khan books this kind of stuff for no
22:53real purpose.
22:54Like, how many of these matches do you actually remember?
22:57Not many, I bet.
22:58Number one, the death of the ranking system.
23:01April 2024.
23:02It used to work, and it used to be bloody great.
23:06Remember when Darby Allen was on the rise in the early days?
23:09Simply seeing his face near the top of the rankings graphic was a visual hint as to how
23:15close he was to making it.
23:17Hangman Page hovering near the top only to get displaced was a clever device.
23:22The fans were told to worry about, but never give up on him.
23:25Now, with no fixed narrative structure in place, the idea and value of contendership is under
23:32constant, deserved scrutiny.
23:34Now broadly, AEW gets it right, more often than not.
23:38Consider the Hangman Page comeback of 2025.
23:40He won the Owen Hart Cup, was protected in the booking elsewhere, and won a major match
23:45against MJF at Revolution.
23:47He was built brilliantly and with conviction as the world champion elect.
23:52There is no flawless, wholly logical method to booking pro wrestling and determining who
23:58is positioned where.
23:59Indeed, the rankings wasn't that either.
24:01But the dismantling of the system has spawned far too many bad and nonsensical habits.
24:08Hologram embarked on a double figures winning streak without even challenging for the lowly
24:12TNT Championship.
24:14Everyone gets a shot at that.
24:15Challengers pin champions in a direct, potentially damaging, WWE-style way far more than they did
24:22in 2019 and 2020, let me tell you.
24:24Toni Storm has taken pins from Megan Bain and Athena this year, in two examples of an accelerated
24:31development.
24:32And it's just as well Toni is too big a star for this to matter.
24:35Because Toni Kahn has recruited too many star acts, wins and losses don't matter as much
24:41as they once did.
24:42FTR, who win a great deal on their beloved collision, should have received infinity more
24:48tag title shots than they have over the years.
24:50And FTR even made a mockery of this quirk on TV in 2022.
24:54The eliminator match has replaced the intricate map to the top.
24:58And it lacks any real heft.
25:00Who hasn't earned the chance to defeat a champion at this point?
25:04I think I did at some point and I don't even work there.
25:06Alright, rant over.
25:07Now carry on your YouTube journey by tapping on another WhatCultureWrestling video right here.
25:13That is time well spent if you ask me and makes a ton of sense.
25:16Have a good day.
25:17See you later.