[Tom Guycott]

Originally Posted by Supreme Olajuwon I’m asking what you think they should be doing to grow their audience.

Originally Posted by Supreme Olajuwon I like AEW but I’m definitely not above criticizing it. But in a time where literally almost every business is stalled because of a global pandemic, I don’t think it’s fair to criticize them for not growing beyond their current fanbase.

Originally Posted by Supreme Olajuwon If in 3-6 months they’re still where they are, then I will totally agree with you.

At least you're talking like you got sense instead of coming at me out of some emotional haze:

I realize that a lot of what I'm going to say will come off as "Cornette-ish", and part of that is because even with expletive filled tirades, he is often more concise in how I feel about shit, and takes about two sentences and a smartass joke in what I would cover in about a paragraph and a half just to get to the same juncture. I will try to hit the more evergreen points and not jump on anyone in particular, but the focus of the endeavor as a whole from watching.

The first problem is the juxtaposition of what they intitally promised: "a sports based presentation", and what we get is consistent high spots and people cutting each other off in promos. It's similar to when TNA started, and they essentially assumed all the "lapsed fans" disillusioned with WWE and that stopped watching after WCW folded would migrate back, but consistently did shit to make themselves WWE-lite... except here, AEW is catering to fans who are already watching. They were already on the boat when Bullet Club was huge. They were habit watching WWE. They were super into what was going down in NJPW and RoH and MLW and AAA and even NWA, if you can find it.

Second, they try to cram too much into that time. It's like they try to feature as many people as they can, and all those guys have to "get their shit in". On top of that, they veer too heavy into the words of Cody Rhodes ("tired old tropes") with faces and heels supposedly not being a thing (super ironic with stuff like the recent white suit/black suit vs Tommy End)... so most of the roster are supposed to be tweeners? In his short career, Will Hobbs has already given Big Show a run for his money with changing sides.

People killed WWE for YEARS with their steer towards 50/50 booking, but yet everyone in AEW is "competitive" from curtain jerking nobody to EVP to recent WWE castoff acquisition. There is no real visual heirichy. Let me pull an example from WCW for what I mean by this - I used to hate Konnan back then. I had zero idea about the Max Moon shit or that he was essentially Mexican Hulk Hogan before that. And for the sake of my statement, I will omit the part where his whole "stereotypical 90's gangbanger" gimmick rubbed me the wrong way. Different issue for a different day.... WCW consistently presented him as jobber to the *real* stars, and he only got wins over the other jobbers on WorldWide. What made it worse was that he'd promo, and his talking ability is great, but he'd do nothing but talk shit, and it usually came before he got his ass kicked. Nearly every time he got on the mic, he was about to get beat up or run away; not even cheat to win or doing something to get heat. So the perception was that he was just some shithead coward who couldn't back up what he said in any way and was only marginally better than Jerry Flynn or Roadblock. This is how AEW presents nearly their entire roster. The stars are only marginally better than the not-stars. Unless you're one of the EVPs, of course.

They run angles where they *need* you to watch clips on YouTube to get what's going on, or even who somebody is sometimes. The internet is a powerful tool, but in the case of a television show, you shouldn't need an auxiliary compendium to know what is going on half the time. [addendum: It's kinda like when Destiny first came out: the game had very little in the way of in-game lore - you had to go to Bungie's website and read shit outside of playing. You shouldn't have to stop playing the game to go read a blog about the game you're playing to understand what's happening in that game... same with AEW. You shouldn't have to watch YouTube clips. That content should be included on the show you're already watching.] This is similar to WWE's Hulu version of RAW, where there's shit missing from the program in the supposed interest of time. Cutting entrances and pageantry is one thing, but editing promos, shortening matches, and completely cutting segments from the broadcast doesn't provide continuity. Same with AEW. It's one thing to chuckle at in inside joke from BTE that is on the show because you're a fan and you watch both, but quite another to not know person X is feuding with person Y because they spilled grape juice on them in one of the sketches. Or that spilled grape juice is a big enough of incentive to have a barbwire deathmatch next week on Dynamite. WWE *used* to subscribe to the notion of "every show is someone's first time". Even they moved away from that, and everyone else seemed to follow suit. Now everyone's attitude is more like "IYKYK". And if anyone had to look that up, that should illustrate my point here perfectly.

That leads to what you have in the way of a "build" for feuds. They start with "big" matches with stipulations, and work their way down to a regular 3 count bout. Adding to that frustration, they want to jizz out everything at once. Something that could be padded and planned and teased and executed to draw people in and make folks care over the course of about four months takes place in the span of like three shows. It's like they don't want to let shit breathe because they're afraid folks have short attention spans and will wander off elsewhere... which ironically means they cater to people with short attention spans that will wander off elsewhere if they don't have people diving through the ropes in every match or everyone powering through 800 finishers that should end a match or having a backstage fight and/or segment that breaks down into chaos pretty much every week.

I know I said I didn't want to single anyone out, but a great encapsulation is one Orange Cassidy. Whether you think he is awesome or stupid, the overall issue is that his ENTIRE gimmick is one big in-joke. Be it fans that actually like him or like him ironically, it wasn't like he tapped into some intangible charisma like a Darby Allin, or when Adam Page was doing "Cowboy Shit!" to the adoration of crowds... he's just doing a thing that's "funny" to people who already find it "funny". And if you were sitting in a room watching AEW and someone who has never watched or hasn't watched wrestling in years came in while you were watching him go through is sloth routine and effortless shin kicks with zero context (like context was ever given to begin with), do you *really* think that will draw this potential new viewer in? If your answer is yes, you have either been living in the same vacuum they live in themselves or you just want to be contrarian and not admit that they aren't nearly as perfect a production as they seem to think they are.

The first step towards improving ANYTHING though is to stop pretending that it doesn't need improvement. People saying "it's good" doesn't mean that it can't be better. Even by a little bit. Like I said originally, fans aren't going to hijack AEW because they're already filling the desires of the audience they already have had since the original ALL IN event. While WWE is trying to present itself as some sort of hybrid reality TV only tangentially related to wrestling in pursuit of the larges global reach possible and forgoing a lot of the wrestling fans that got them to the dance to begin with, AEW have propped themselves up in the opposite direction and built a tree fort style castle around the niche smark army ready to tell them that EVERYTHING they're doing is fine just so they can come climb into the clubhouse too.