AEW TV 2026 discussion

[JGPuk84]

8 hours ago, BomberPat said:

they made such a point of saying that Hangman is a "man of his word", while never having it officially part of the stipulation or on the match graphic that he wouldn't challenge for the belt again, that the end result can't be anything but him going back on it, it's just a question of how they get there, and if they can get there without making a section of the audience feel like they've gone back on a stipulation - thus far, AEW have pretty consistent on honouring stips.

It seems like they want another "Hangman in the wilderness" story of him doubting his purpose, and I wonder how many times they can go back to that well. This is a stipulation that would have made sense at the end of the Swerve Strickland feud, and could have been gotten out of by having other babyfaces rally behind him and convince him to challenge Moxley to end the Death Riders' reign of terror. I hope this doesn't mean that we have a summer of Death Riders 2.0 to look forward to.

I really like the "man of his word" nature of the stipulation. My suggestion is similar to what has been said earlier in this thread. Swerve mirrors Hangman's obsession with winning the title, but that for him it pays off (probably beating Osprey at World's End). At some point during the reign, you have Hangman appear to have moved on from being World Champion. He's happy teaming with Omega and rebuilding his friendship with the Bucks. He sees Swerve and says, "you know I'd beat you for that title" (in a relaxed friendly manner) and then from that point on, it just eats at Swerve until he only has a new obsession - to take Hangman's word and prove him wrong once again. To push him so far, that he proves he isn't a man of honour, that he is just as broken as he still is and prove that he hasn't moved on from being obsessed with the World title. (Basically a version of the Killing Joke - in trying to break Hangman).

Broken people thinking that the World title will fix them.

They probably won't go that far, as this is proper pretentious bs, it probably will just be a normal heel turn, but it feels like there is so much there you can do with the history to fuel the next phase of AEW that it made me excited for what could happen. 

Edited March 18 by JGPuk84
Rewording

[LaGoosh]

9 hours ago, LaGoosh said:

If Ospreay goes 10 minutes with Blake Christian I'm gonna be so mad. I want an immediate Hidden Blade murder.

I am so mad.

Rough show. Pretty much everything on it was bad.

[RedTwoster]

Remember that viral clip a few years ago from a Bonfire Night in which they accidentally set every firework off at once? For me, that was Revolution. Dynamite highlighted exactly why they’d have been better off spacing out some of the returns, moments and matches they crammed into that show. Everything would have been better for it - including Revolution. 

AEW needs a creative reset. Sometimes Tony Khan can burn bright, but more often than not these days he’s trotting out mediocre programming that is often easily fixable. I think we’ve passed the point in which it’s hard to deny that the solution is anything other than appointing a new head booker. There’s someone out there who would be able to take this exceptional roster and Khan’s resources to do something amazing - who can clean up the rough edges of AEW to give it more consistency. He needs to find that person, or people. 

[LaGoosh]

The thing is AEW have always been very tight lipped about how the creative process is managed. Tony Khan basically takes credit for everything but we know there are other people in some kind of creative team: Will Washington, RJ City, Sonjay Dutt to name a few. I don't think removing Tony Khan is the answer and that'll never happen obviously. I think he definitely has his strengths as a booker and is better than most who have been in the spot. However what often feels like the case is that the broad brush strokes are good but things fall apart in the finer details, consistency and implementation. Like it's easy to look at even this pretty rubbish episode of Dynamite and by just moving a few things round, trimming a few bits, cutting some others, putting in a bit more set up to build to later pay off that it could have been something at least half decent. If they could get someone in to take a look at the plan for each episode after it's been written and then reformat it to be a more coherent and better paced show I think they'd be fine.

Often I think that after these mammoth PPVs everyone is fucking knackered and it takes them a few weeks to recover. Even the fans seemed knackered - what a crap crowd!

Edited March 19 by LaGoosh

[Supremo]

A tale as old as time. The better the pay per view, the flatter the follow-up episode of Dynamite. Thankfully, no-one will notice since Revolution is still ongoing.

Dynasty being the week before Wrestlemania is interesting. Last year, they put on one of the best ever episodes of Dynamite to undermine Mania. You assume they’ll do the same here. A big arena show in Canada, with Edge and Christian going for the Tag Titles and presumably Kenny Omega facing MJF for the World Title. Should be brilliant.

Unfortunately, there is another Canadian AEW wrestler. And given the way Tony likes to book symmetrically, it would make sense for him to return on the same pay per view as he last appeared.

Edited March 19 by Supremo

[DavidB6937]

Yeah that crowd absolutely didn't help. If they'd been a bit more invested then I think it wouldn't have felt quite as off as it did, but yeah what a strange episode to follow up the PPV with.

They really struggle with a couple of sweet spots:

1) PPV build ups - quite often you're going into a show fairly cold/middling as a viewer

2) Building momentum after a decent PPV - this should be a key one and it rarely happens

I don't know how/why but it's something that seems so simple and logical on the surface that they miss out on so often.

[LaGoosh]

12 minutes ago, DavidB6937 said:

Yeah that crowd absolutely didn't help. If they'd been a bit more invested then I think it wouldn't have felt quite as off as it did

AEW didn't do them any favours having the returning hero Will Ospreay getting beat up by a complete fucking nobody for 10 minutes then following it up with a pointless tag match. Once Ospreay started selling for Blake Christian the crowd died and never came back.

[RedTwoster]

23 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

Tony Khan is the answer and that'll never happen obviously. I think he definitely has his strengths as a booker and is better than most who have been in the spot. However what often feels like the case is that the broad brush strokes are good but things fall apart in the finer details, consistency and implementation. Like it's easy to look at even this pretty rubbish episode of Dynamite and by just moving a few things round, trimming a few bits, cutting some others, putting in a bit more set up to build to later pay off that it could have been something at least half decent. If they could get someone in to take a look at the plan for each episode after it's been written and then reformat it to be a more coherent and better paced show I think they'd be fine.

I think that’s what they need - essentially a right hand person, who takes the broad vision Khan has - which, to be fair, I think is a decent one - and cleans it up. 

More often than not, you could take any given AEW show and make a few small changes that would improve it enormously - often it’s as simple as changing the running order. 

There are of course bigger changes they could make - more screen time for their female wrestlers, less titles and shorter PPVs as examples - but even those would be relatively easy to implement. 

I do also think Tony Khan should completely detach himself from ROH. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that AEW started becoming less consistent when he bought that company. Let someone else book it, and treat it the way WWE does NXT. If you can use it to season AEW’s versions of Trick Williams, Sol Ruca or Oba Femi, it’s worth having.

[BomberPat]

AEW's complete inability to follow-up on good PPVs with good TV needs to be studied, this was the worst Dynamite in months.

There are two kinds of comeback match I would have accepted from Will Ospreay - a dominant squash, or a match where he showed he was missing a step and still a little cautious, against an opponent prepared to exploit that vulnerability. We got neither, because he had to have a ten minute competitive match with Blake Christian instead. To get my usual pop in at the agenting of these shows, there's absolutely no way that Blake Christian doing a handspring cutter should have been signed off on in this match, after Ospreay had done his handspring move.

It's frustrating because the post-match call-out of Moxley, and then PAC jumping him, and the brawl going on through the Bang Bang Gang's entrance was fantastic. That was the part that mattered. I'm rarely someone to argue for angles taking precedent over wrestling matches on a wrestling show, but why do the match at all? The question of "can Will Ospreay still fly like he used to?" was answered when he did a mad flippy dive during a sodding run-in at the PPV, and the Blake Christian match did nobody any favours anyway, why not just do "we will hear from Will Ospreay" and get straight to the good stuff?

Then we get into the mess that the Death Riders are in. I guess they're just back to being dastardly heels now? After a couple of months of being sometimes heel, sometimes babyface, depending on what Jon Moxley feels like doing this week, we're right back to where they were last summer. When wondering about what Hangman's next move could be, I did raise the prospect of getting another summer of Death Riders heel dominance, and I'm hoping that's not where this is heading, and instead Ospreay will just put them in the ground for good. I saw that AEW have filed to trademark "Continental Cup", and I'm hoping that means the Continental Classic remains but they bin off the title as the prize. Ospreay beating Moxley for the Continental belt and then unifying it with the World Title at Wembley, maybe? Omega/Ospreay for all the gold would be a good All In main event.

I hated the tease of the Tiger Driver '91. I hated that whole story, that Ospreay has this kill move that he's just afraid of using because it might injure people, deciding he wouldn't do it any more, but then teasing it every time he gets into a proper feud. I hate the story, because nobody was ever, even in kayfabe, actually written off with an injury from that move, so it never had the gravitas they tried to force on it, and most of all, I hated that it's a move with the exact same set-up as the Stormbreaker, so every time he hooks someone's arms there's this awkward moment of, "oh, is this? Oh, maybe not? How much are we supposed to care?". So I'm about as happy to see that story evoked again as I am with the prospect of another Death Riders run.

I hated Gabe Kidd vs. Darby Allin. Starting a match with a literal car crash is bollocks. I shouldn't need commentary to remind me, ten minutes into a match, that these wrestlers were in a crashing car a few minutes ago, as the precursor to a plodding hardcore match. Nobody buys Gabe Kidd's mad man schtick, it's actively painful to watch. The Dogs, as an act, are dead in the water, because all they ever do is lose to Darby Allin and Orange Cassidy. Gabe has had 15 AEW matches, and 6 of those have been losses to Darby Allin, Orange Cassidy, or both. Clark Connors and Dave Finlay, who couldn't be bothered showing up to help their mate on this show, aren't exactly doing any better. Back to the car crash, though - it's dogshit. Proper arse end of the Attitude Era stuff to fuck about with vehicle stunts. Triple H dropping a car on Stone Cold was stupid, it's just as stupid when Darby Allin does it. It's also impossible to care, because it's the fifth or sixth time we've seen Darby crash a car, be hit by a car, be dragged along the road by a car, be bundled into the boot of a car - who gives a shit any more? 

I hated that with this roster, somehow RPG Vice were in the main event.

 

Most of all, I hated that there was zero meaningful follow-up on the pay-per-view, and AEW are consistently awful at that. 

The story coming out of the pay-per-view was that Adam Page can never challenge for the AEW World Title again, and we don't get so much as a pre-tape from him on this show, nor do we get anyone else speculating about what that means for him. The story, and there's nothing to keep you guessing or even thinking about it here. 

Nothing from Takeshita. Nothing from Brody King. Nothing from the new Women's Tag Team Champions, or either of the other two Women's Champions. 

 

[LaGoosh]

Why they didn't just book Ospreay vs Yuta and have Ospreay destroy him after 5 minutes of Yuta stooging I have no idea.

Killing off the buzz of Ospreay's return in four days, quite the feat!

[ReturnOfTheMack]

I hope Darby and Kidd fued forever, means I only have to switch off for one match per show.

[Supremo]

There are far too many MYSTERIES in pro-wrestling these days, but if you must do it trust Toni Storm to do it the best. This is brilliant.

Cracking crime scene. Loads of clues for maniacs to make YouTube essays about. Like L.A. Noire. Upset about your mate getting whacked are you, Mina Shirakawa?

Anyway, I’ve figured it out. Look at Toni’s arms. She’s spelling it out!

Shayna Bazler is the culprit. Call it in. Case closed.

[HarmonicGenerator]

Add me to the list of people watching agog at the returning hero Ospreay going 50-50 with half of the fucking Swirl. Rubbish.

Gabe Kidd in his straitjacket reminded me of Madman Manson of mid-00s BritWres fame, except we’re meant to take Kidd seriously. More rubbish.

Mina attacked Toni, right? I hope so. Toni can then dispatch her quickly and bin off the team that’s been dragging her down since the autumn.

[LaGoosh]

Toni Storm is out long term from injury, apparently. Tragic!

[Chili]

10 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

Toni Storm is out long term from injury, apparently. Tragic!

1st reaction, for fucks sake. 2nd reaction, please take this as a sign to invest in the other women to a higher level and what an awesome return Toni will have down the line.