AEW is just getting started with not only a new TV show coming to TNT but also a few pay per view shows under its belt, including All Out, an event that had been hyped up with the main event match between “Hangman” Adam Page against Chris Jericho to name the first AEW World champion. The match itself was good but were these two the best choice to main event All Out to decide the first champion of the promotion?
The point was made even on the show itself as it was the 48-year-old Jericho facing the 28-year-old Page. The match itself was good. But neither guy is in a World title range to main event this show, are they? Jericho’s best days are behind him. He has been doing the same thing for years in making these “comeback” appearances usually between things he does with his band. He has a similar appeal as Mic Foley in the “how can we miss you if you are never gone?” kind of appeal. His matches in japan were decent enough but were more one-shot appearances in Japan to drum up support from the American and international audiences more than anything, and with Page, again, it was announced on the show itself. He has never been in the main part of the card at all and is mostly known for his run in Ring of Honor where he was not exactly the talk of the town.
It’s one thing to give young guys new opportunities and make them bigger stars, but it is another to literally put your friends on the top of the cards whether they actually have earned it or not. And I don’t mean winning a preshow battle royal from the first pay per view show.
AEW seems to have more of a “They’re not the WWE” fan following and that in itself is not terrible, but they also seem to be doing the same mistakes a lot of other places have made and getting away with it because of this image the created of being “for the Wrestlers”. Fans seem to overlook these kinds of mistakes and it won’t end well. Remember when TNA was formed and run by Jerry Jarrett and he said that it wasn’t all about his son and Jeff then “won” the belt and was the face of promotion for a number of years? How long will AEW go with Cody Rhodes and his best friends put themselves on the top of the cards before fans don’t go to the shows anymore? When are other wrestlers going to wonder if the only people to get success in the “wrestlers company” has to be good friends with Cody above anything else?
Maybe the TV show on TNT will bring about some kind of change in that pattern. Isn’t change what AEW has been trying to do all this time? This way, things aren’t going to change and it will be just more of the same. Only we can’t blame Vince McMahon for this one doing what others have already done before.
