10 Things That Didn't Go The Way AEW Wanted
Missed signings, misjudged character presentations, productions issues, and the overhype problem.
Transcript
00:00 I sometimes get confused. There is so much wrestling on TV, of course not every segment
00:05 can be for everyone. Some things you're gonna like, some things you're gonna like
00:08 not so much. It's just the nature of the beast. That's why it's perfectly okay
00:12 to think AEW is awesome, which it is, but also understand there's always room for
00:16 growth. They know that as well. Of course they do.
00:19 All Elite Wrestling has done a good job with such thinking so far as well, because look,
00:23 I'm Simon from WhatCulture, hit that subscribe button, and this is 10 Things That Didn't
00:27 Go The Way AEW Wanted.
00:30 10. Missing Out On Ben Carter
00:32 Go watch the 22nd of September 2020 episode of AEW Dark. You will see Ben Carter and Lee
00:38 Johnson have an absolute peach of a match. Those guys can go.
00:42 Carter had already taken on Ricky Starks before this, which was also solid, but it was round
00:46 2 when he showed what he could really do, and you know that's accurate because it
00:50 rhymed. It is just go, go, go for 10 minutes and how they don't stop I'll never know,
00:54 until Ben actually scored the win. And the only reason I am that surprised is that Johnson
00:59 deserverly was signed, whereas so far Carter hasn't even though he would also get to
01:03 tangle with Scorpio Sky.
01:04 And do not get me wrong, AEW wanted him, or so it seems. WWE flew in and offered him a
01:10 deal with NXT UK, which is something he could do even though the world stopped. He has been
01:14 smashing it ever since, and look, he's only 23 years old, Carter is gonna be just fine,
01:20 as is AEW.
01:21 9. The Christian Cage Problem
01:23 Right, this annoyed me then, and it still annoys me now. Christian is great. Underrated
01:29 from the start, I appreciated that Tony Khan went out of his way to promote him as a huge
01:33 surprise who was going to debut at Revolution 2021. Khan would even say this was a Hall
01:38 of Fame worthy announcement, but when Cage did arrive to bolster the roster, there was
01:42 a contingent of people who felt Tony had overblown this and that it was a disappointment.
01:46 We're gonna have to agree to disagree. And look, I do get it, if you wanted to take your
01:50 expectations and decide this was gonna be The Rock or something, sure, that's not an
01:54 equivalent, but from his sheer run of classic matches alone, I was pleased to see Christian
01:58 being spoken about in such glowing terms. Also, just to be that guy, Khan's job as a
02:03 promoter is to promote. Just a thought.
02:07 8. Britt Baker The Babyface
02:08 Yep, this was the idea at first, and why the flub wouldn't it be? If you were looking to
02:13 build a division around somebody, Britt Baker ticked all the boxes. She looked like a star,
02:17 she worked like a star, she was a dentist. There were plenty of elements that would lead
02:20 anyone to believe this would be our direction of travel, but no.
02:23 It took a random promo on Chris Jericho's boat where Baker took a shot at Tony Schiavone
02:28 and his barista work to showcase a different side, and that was that and away we went.
02:32 It really gave the fans something to latch onto, which Britt didn't really have as a
02:35 good guy, but how many times have we seen this happen? I mean, way back in the day,
02:39 people were telling The Rock to die. AEW picked up on it quite fast, the irony being nowadays,
02:45 if you did want to make her a babyface, it will totally work. Because let's face it,
02:50 nobody loves her.
02:51 7. Jeff Hardy Misspeaks
02:52 In 2022, you've always got to remember that anything and everything you say will somehow
02:57 get on the internet, that is just the way. So when Jeff Hardy got released from the WWE,
03:01 it seemed obvious he would go to AEW. He's a massive name, brother Matt was there, and
03:06 having the Hardys back together as a team is money, nobody was going to be shocked by
03:10 this.
03:11 During an interview with YouTuber Jared Myers after one of Jeff's concerts, however, Hardy
03:14 got way ahead of himself. He outwardly said he was headed to All Elite Wrestling, even
03:19 though he was still in his 90-day release window. That's a big no-no. Whoops. Jeff
03:23 then had to backtrack and say these were his hopes for his future and nothing was official.
03:27 Although let's be honest, if you don't think all wrestling companies are having chats
03:30 before legally they should be, well take a sit down, embrace yourself, and maybe think
03:35 again.
03:36 6. The Arrival of The Dark Order
03:37 Seriously, The Dark Order today are awesome. They couldn't be any better, which is why
03:42 it's almost comical now to see how they were treated when they debuted. It set the
03:46 internet on fire. It just seemed like even the hardcore AEW audience were at a loss with
03:50 this one when the Super Smash Bros did arrive in 2019. And while Excalibur did his best
03:55 to establish these guys, even Jim Ross seemed confused. That ain't gonna help.
03:59 Eva Luna and Stu Grayson also had a bunch of masked minions, which I think moneyed the
04:02 waters even more, but that's why these guys to me are an inspiration. They took their
04:07 licks, they took their criticism, and became one of the most popular acts in the company.
04:12 And it's not too shabby at all.
04:14 5. The Butcher, The Blade and The Bunny
04:16 Which was basically the same story for these three, almost literally. The tandem ran through
04:20 the crowd to attack Cody Rhodes who had just won a match, so this was an impactful entrance,
04:25 or at least it was meant to be. Because yet again Excalibur tried to get them over as
04:29 good old JR pondered exactly what was happening, and the real issue was that the live crowd
04:33 was deadly silent. You need that big reaction to send the message that something huge had
04:37 just gone down, and I tell you, we did not get it.
04:39 But again, let us look at today. The Butcher and The Blade are everybody's favourite
04:43 tag team, and The Bunny has established herself in singles competition. You can't always
04:47 smash it, but as long as you come good eventually, we can all forget the past and just enjoy
04:52 the present.
04:53 Also, The Butcher and The Blade have a second career selling meat. They are my heroes.
04:56 4. The Domino's Pizza Fiasco
04:59 Talk about bad timing. I mean it was crazy anyways, as Chris Jericho was taking on Nick
05:03 Gage on Dynamite in a proper deathmatch, and my word I swear, they tried to kill each other.
05:08 There was glass for goodness sake, and the fact we were doing this on Wednesday night
05:11 TV blew everybody's minds. No one thought we were going to go as far as we did, especially
05:16 when Gage got a pizza cutter and started sawing away at Jericho's head.
05:20 It was then time to cut to the commercials, and can you believe it, the first thing we
05:24 saw was an advert for Domino's Pizza, and this wasn't lost on the fans, everybody
05:28 on Twitter went crazy. No one knew this was going to happen as it was just a fluke thing,
05:32 but as you can imagine, Domino's wasn't happy with this at all. It's not really
05:36 the image they wanted out there.
05:38 Thankfully after a press statement it all calmed down because come on now, when it comes
05:41 to wrestling there has been far worse stuff than this, but yeah, it certainly wasn't
05:46 ideal.
05:47 3. The Brodie Lee Debut
05:48 Let us make things clear right away, Brodie Lee is a damn hero. Just go and listen to
05:53 any interview he did or how others talk about him, the man made wrestling a better place.
05:58 It's why when he debuted in AEW there was some excitement in the air, because everybody
06:01 knew he had more under the hood and that WWE hadn't really let him show that, so it was
06:06 time to shine.
06:07 Nobody thought he was going to be the leader of the Dark Order either, and the Vince McMahon
06:11 inspired character he first embodied certainly raised some eyebrows. You either loved it
06:15 because you were a nerd and knew what we were doing, and that would be me, or you had no
06:19 clue and it kinda felt a bit weird, and that's mostly because it was really, really weird.
06:23 Much like the Britt Baker situation though, once we had tried this for a while and decided
06:26 it wasn't really clicking, Lee stepped into his own shoes and my word it was the best.
06:31 I'll never forget his BTE skits or his TNT title run, which are genuinely AEW highlights,
06:36 and maybe if we hadn't have tried something to begin with, we'd never have ended up
06:40 where we did.
06:41 2. Cody Rhodes Madness
06:43 We have talked about this loads, but as a catch up, I love Cody Rhodes, I think he's
06:47 very inspirational, and nearly everything he did in AEW was at the very least intriguing.
06:51 Unfortunately, what happened towards the end of his run in the promotion is a very vocal
06:54 portion of the audience decided they didn't feel this way, and they were going to boo
06:58 him regardless of what he did. This soon meant that no matter what went down, even if it
07:03 was heroic, he would get a certain amount of backlash and there was no way this was
07:07 intended. Again, it was fascinating and great to discuss online, but it totally switched
07:11 around what was meant to be going on here.
07:12 It is a shame as we started talking about this aside from other more positive endeavours,
07:16 isn't that half the fun of wrestling I suppose? It's nuts and we get to act like it's nuts,
07:21 and then by the end of the day, everybody goes nuts.
07:24 1. That Explosion
07:25 Revolution 2021 was focused around the fact that Kenny Omega and Jon Moxley were going
07:30 to do a barbed wire deathmatch and fans were pumped. Not only did we have a top tier world
07:35 title contest, but at the end there was going to be fireworks. And that's not exactly what
07:39 happened. In case you don't know, instead of an explosion when the wrestling was done,
07:43 we got a bunch of sparklers. And the truth of the matter is that whoever rigged this
07:46 didn't do a good job. That's it.
07:48 It also saw Eddie Kingston run down to help his fallen friend and then have to act like
07:52 he'd been blown up even though nothing happened, and everybody was deflated by this, including
07:56 Tony Khan. Thankfully the doom and gloom predictions of this being the end of AEW were not accurate,
08:01 because this was some focus ever going way overboard. You are allowed to make mistakes
08:06 both in sports, entertainment and life, just make sure you learn and rectify them.
08:10 Know of any other things that didn't go the way AEW wanted? Make sure you let us know
08:14 in the comments below and don't forget to like the video, share the video and subscribe.
08:17 Then head over to whatculture.com where you can read articles like this with your eyes,
08:21 make sure you follow us on social media and tell us how much you love us, although it
08:24 will probably be the opposite, and we have a ton of other videos here on YouTube, go
08:28 and watch just one.
08:29 My name is Simon from What Culture, remember that you are in my heart and you are in my
08:33 soul always, and I look forward to talking to you again very very soon.