Welcome to The Bite. Another commentary is in the can… this one specifically timed for tonight’s PPV event and one that came about after some deep thinking of sorts.
Today marks the fifth anniversary of the inaugural Double Or Nothing PPV from All Elite Wrestling. I remember that show like it was yesterday… because I had watched it last night. And while I’ve done musings on this show shortly after it took place – said musings can be sampled here – I will say that five years later, the show has held up tremendously well. It had some great matches, some great moments, and a debut of a prominent former WWE superstar who would become the life blood – both literally and figuratively – of this young promotion. For an inaugural event from a young upstart promotion, the original Double Or Nothing ranks right up there as one of the best, establishing a formidable presence from the get-go, shaking up the paradigm of wrestling that had been stagnant for a very long time, and introducing the world to a new crop of faces that could very well be the future of the industry going forward.
With that one show, All Elite Wrestling became the new hot thing, gaining momentum, and picking up fans who were turned off by the increasingly stale and embarrassingly atrocious WWE product that had been presented around that time. The company had survived a global pandemic and built enough equity that those who were seemingly WWE for life gave the new promotion a shot. It’s one thing for someone like a Dustin Rhodes to plant his flag with AEW, but it’s another thing for someone like Chris Jericho – who stuck with WWE on-and-off and never considered a jump to TNA or anywhere else until the chance to wrestle Kenny Omega in New Japan – to be one of the forbearers and champions of the young promotion… and then you have someone like Jon Moxley; someone who had seen success in WWE, including a WWE title run, who decided to let his WWE contract expire due to general dissatisfaction over creative, and who ultimately decided to put his chips in with AEW. Add to that the international appeal of the Young Bucks and Kenny Omega, along with the superb salesman Cody Rhodes, and you had the ingredients to successfully push AEW into the stratosphere within the next decade.
Well… we’re at the halfway point of said decade. That hasn’t quite happened yet.
WWE, having undergone a change in both ownership and leadership due to a variety of factors we won’t discuss here, has seen its fortunes turned around drastically, entering a new era of creativity, productivity, and most importantly, profitability – making bank hand over fist the likes of which have not been reached since the Attitude Era… hell, at this point, WWE is making more money than they did during what was, up until recently, their hottest period.
AEW, on the other hand, is trucking along… and that’s probably being generous at times.
When the company first started in 2019, there was excitement in the air and people were really looking forward to what this new upstart had to offer. The first couple years were promising – which is quite telling when the better part of their first two years in existence took place during a global pandemic that forced the majority of the world to stay at home. And when large gatherings were no longer taboo, AEW events were widely attended affairs; some of them even sold out shows. They were making enough of an impression and an name for themselves that they managed to drag in former WWE champion CM Punk back into wrestling for the first time since 2014. By the end of 2021, it seemed as though AEW was poised to rise up to a higher level of mainstream popularity.
Except it really didn’t.
2022 began with a bombshell that Cody Rhodes, one of the founding fathers of AEW, was leaving the company and making his return to WWE. To say that Cody’s run in AEW was somewhat uneven would be an understatement and without going into too much detail, was such a departure from how the rest of the promotion was presented that the term “Codyverse” was coined… as if to say that what Cody offered stood out like a sore thumb. Fast forward two years later, Cody Rhodes not only made his return to WWE, but has had a tremendous run there, culminating in his clenching of the WWE Championship from Roman Reigns at Wrestlemania XL and pretty much becoming the top guy in that organization. One had to wonder whether that success could have been replicated in AEW or was it just a matter of Cody being a bad fit in what was a vastly different toybox.
So remember that CM Punk fellow who signed with AEW and was treated like a big time star? Yeah, so apparently, around the time he was hired, AEW either re-assigned or let go of Colt Cabana, a well-loved member of the roster who had issues with Punk over a prior podcast. Naturally, Cabana’s disappearance from AEW was presumed to be attributed to Punk not wanting anything to do with Cabana and thus demanded that Tony (Khan) fire him. Whether that was the case or not is irrelevant, but the scenario did indirectly play into Punk’s feud with then-AEW Champion, Hangman Adam Page, who positioned himself.
Punk would usurp Hangman for the AEW title and then a couple days later, would suffer an injury that would put him out of action for a few months. During which time, AEW would announce the creation of an interim AEW championship that was eventually won by former AEW champion Jon Moxley. Punk would eventually return to action to put his belt on the line against Mox’s title on an episode of Dynamite, which saw Mox squash Punk in a match barely lasting a couple minutes to become the undisputed champion… oh, and by the way, they had a PPV taking place in Chicago in a couple weeks and they booked a rematch that saw Punk win back the AEW World Title from Mox. After the PPV, Punk participated in the post-show media scrum and went on a tirade.
The tirade resulted in what would eventually be dubbed “Brawl Out” – a backstage scuffle between Punk, backstage agent Ace Steel, Kenny Omega, and the Bucks that would see all parties involved suspended until further notice. Also, as a result of Brawl Out, AEW was forced to announce the vacancy of their World Championship as well as their newly-minted Trios titles, which were won by Omega and the Bucks at the PPV. But more than anything, it pretty much trivialized anything that happened on the actual wrestling show since the only thing anyone would talk about when it came to All Out 2022 was the backstage fight that took place.
Some time later, the Bucks and Kenny would return to television while Punk… didn’t. Eventually a deal was made for a 2-hour Saturday night show on TNT, which would serve as, for all intents and purposes, the CM Punk show. He’d be the headliner of that show, but he’d also have some creative input on that show, including who would or would not be allowed on the show. Everyone (including Punk) thought this was a bad idea and it wouldn’t work, but TK was insistent. They tried it for a few months before All In happened. The big, monumental show from Wembley that drew AEW its largest audience and should’ve been one of the biggest achievements in the company’s young life… and instead, all anyone would talk about is a scuffle between Jack Perry and CM Punk. A scuffle that I won’t go into details here because it’s been discussed ad nauseum and also there’s a video you can look up (if you can find it, that is), but one that resulted in the termination (with cause) of CM Punk’s contract… which left him open to return to WWE, which he did a couple months later.
Backstage drama and turmoil were the dominant talking points of All Elite Wrestling among the pundits. That, and Tony Khan’s continuous insistence on being a Twitter Twit the likes of which would put noted Twitter Twit Dave Meltzer to shame. Whatever the case may be, nobody was talking about the product. And if they were, they’d be pointing towards dwindling attendance numbers and television ratings. Even though TK would paint a picture of positivity by claiming Warner was pleased with the ratings they were getting, one has to wonder if that were really the case. AEW’s television deal wraps up this year and as of this writing, there is no word as to whether a new deal has been signed or even drafted. Considering the monumental deals that WWE had attained these past few months – including a game-changing deal to move their flagship RAW show over to Netflix – one has to wonder if AEW’s next deal is going to as big of a deal as those on the other side and whether anything less than that would be considered a disappointment.
As mentioned above, today marks the fifth anniversary of AEW’s very first Pay-Per-View event. And for the first time since it first aired, I went back and re-watched the original Double Or Nothing show from 2019. And then I went back and read my original musings for the show that I had posted shortly after that show. I came to the conclusion that both the show and my musings still hold up. Double Or Nothing 2019 was a good first impression; a refreshing slice of wrestling that was drastically different from what WWE was offering at the time and also had no problem offering a little bit of everything for the wrestling fan to enjoy. The Cody/Dustin battle remains one of the best matches in AEW history purely on the emotional story being told (as well as the physical violence), Young Bucks vs. Lucha Bros in the first of many in AEW alone set the stage for their matches going forward, and the main event of Kenny Omega vs. Chris Jericho to determine who gets to challenge for the new AEW World Championship was every bit as compelling as their initial New Japan encounter, with the arrival of former WWE superstar Jon Moxley shortly afterwards to cement the reality that AEW was the “in” thing.
Watching this show – the very first that All Elite Wrestling had ever produced – gave me confidence that they were going to be just fine. And for the next few years, they were fine and most of all, their shows were appointment television and pay-per-views… until they weren’t.
For the second year in a row, I am skipping out on Double Or Nothing. I’m sure it’ll be a fine show. AEW, if nothing else, has always excelled in providing some great PPVs in their time. But the show simply isn’t compelling or exciting. It feels like whatever potential was there with that first show has long since evaporated. Young up-and-comers, originally thought to be poised for superstardom in a few years, are now slightly older up-and-comers with seemingly no room for upward momentum. The more established stars are still chugging along, though whatever shine their name evoked in the past is long since gone… and some of those stars won’t be sticking around forever. Hell, in a few months time, Bryan Danielson will have ended his career as a full-time wrestler and his loss would be a monumental one for AEW, leaving behind a massive void that no one in their right mind could possibly be capable of filling.
AEW needs something big to help them grow. They had all the time in the world to bring themselves to a higher level of respectability and marketability, when their biggest threat was pretty much spinning themselves into mediocrity. A couple controversies and changes in ownership and creative leadership later, WWE is suddenly the hottest thing in the world once again, firing in all cylinders, while AEW… well, they’re still hanging around. Like the younger sibling that wants to hang with the older kids, but whenever they try, it comes off as humorous.
People have suggested that Tony Khan take a step back and let someone handle the creative for a bit… and while that might help out somewhat, it’s not the be-all, end-all solution. There’s plenty of things that AEW needs to do in order to climb that ladder, to get themselves out of a rut that they were all but comfortable to remain in for the past 2 years. They no longer have the luxury of being the better option by default. There’s plenty of options out there. So many good options for good wrestling that the modern wrestling fan is practically spoiled with all the options available at their fingertips.
I don’t want AEW to croak. I want them to do well. For the sake of the talent who get to ply their trade and also for the sake of the competition to up their game. WWE wouldn’t be where they are today if they didn’t have to step up their game due to the existence of AEW. And while I don’t believe AEW is in any danger of closing down any time soon, they could very well be in a similar position to TNA; once a hot property gone cold, relegated to a small corner of the television world watched by a handful at most. Who knows what happens going forward? I sure as hell don’t; I’m just spewing out a bunch of words, whatever comes to mind… I don’t have any insight, I’ve just seen stuff like this happen before and the end results were anything but pretty.
Right now, the product that AEW is putting out doesn’t interest me. If it interests you and you’re still an avid fan, then more power to you. Like what you like and have fun. I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything here; I’m just saying my piece. And now that I’ve said my piece, I’m going to bed.
Later.
dtm666 