My younger brother and fellow The Overtimer writer, Tardell, has been taking in a lot of AEW Dark and following the promotion lately. He digs some of what he sees in Dark but shares the same concerns and thoughts towards the company’s overall creative and business direction.
AEW Needs to Do Something with Its Roster Bloat
One of the main issues is that All Elite Wrestling seems to have some mondo roster bloat. It had a great feed for the roster by pulling from the indies to fill out the trunk and torso while some notable names not in WWE at the time filled in the head.
Early on, it had Jericho, Cody, and Omega as its main attractions and that’s probably where it should’ve stayed as far as native, day one big names. Adam Page was already on his path to the main event and you could see Darby Allin being nudged in that direction slowly but surely.
Soon MJF joined and the head hadn’t gotten inflated but we’re just about at maximum capacity. Oh, Moxley’s here? Well…you know, what we can squeeze him in because he would fit what we’re doing here.
Then AEW did the most WCW, TNA-era IMPACT thing and started signing more names that had just left WWE.
The Bloat is Mainly Near the Top
Now, AEW needed drawing names at the top early on and they had just enough when they had one show and the initial roster. If anything, they could’ve continued building themselves over a four or five year period and made a few more stars.
However, that pesky need to poke the bear popped up. It happened with WCW and it happened with early IMPACT. Doing your own thing and ignoring the competition goes a long way in giving a company time to build at a rate where most fans won’t mind.
Then you have the desire to compare itself against WWE. Every company with significant backing that manages to get a little national TV just has to acknowledge WWE.
It’s hard not to acknowledge WWE since it’s the most successful company in the world but an attempt at running as if you’re the biggest and WWE doesn’t isn’t direct competition would be a plus for the growth of the company.
That brings us to the major signings. After someone leaves WWE, it’s not really necessary to scoop up their castaways. It’s not recommended after attacking WWE either.
You don’t insult the chef and proceed to just stuff your to-go box with the food they made. That’s just tacky. Then again, you did pay for the food but it kind of dents the argument of “Their cooking is bad and they should feel bad.”
There Should’ve Been a Hiring Freeze on Talent
In bringing in those new signings the glass ceiling gets even thicker. When IMPACT signed the talents that would become Main Event Mafia, the initial line up was made up guys who had been in WWE and WCW’s main event.
These guys were all former World champions. “Main event” was in the faction’s name—of course they were going to be in the mix of the uppercard.
That resulted in guys that IMPACT had worked on for years either having to take a backseat or never getting their shine. The company had the room to groove to make homegrown stars that you could say were TNA Originals of the highest caliber but the wave of new signings threw that progression off.
It took IMPACT seven years to reach that roster crisis, AEW did it in three. You’d think these former WWE superstars would help and mix with the AEW Originals but their star power is much higher than most of the roster and most of the main eventers.
Time in WWE gave them all more name recognition globally for a longer period of time. Also—going back to IMPACT—the WWE to non-WWE conversion isn’t a 1:1 conversion. Going from AEW to WWE or IMPACT to WWE as a main eventer is most likely to result in an undercarder.
A WWE main eventer is going to be a main eventer or special attraction anywhere.
Ultimately, most of those fresh from a WWE run don’t need to scooped up. Get those who can fill in certain roles or spots on the roster. If floaters that can move between the undercard and main event regularly are needed: get them.
If there’s enough people in the undercard, freeze hiring. As a matter of fact, there’s a bunch of talent featured on AEW Dark who haven’t made it to Dynamite or Rampage or aren’t featured that much. AEW has enough people on the roster.
As for the concrete main event, it’s top heavy. There are credible contenders to the World title and guys who are obviously main event talent but are doing something else that isn’t exactly a major focus of the shows.
Those talents should be put in positions where they’re making the company money. However, there’s only one belt to really vie for…but there’s also two shows.
AEW Might Need to Run the Brands
One solution to this is just a freeze on new hires for AEW and allow the current contracts to run out as needed. Talent coming up from the Nightmare Factory can be picked up but stars who were just released or are roaming the indies—maybe put a freeze on it for a period.
The other solution is for AEW to run with brands. The first way—and AEW already has it built in—is to split the company into Dynamite and Rampage with their own dedicated titles and Rampage picking up a second hour. The two brands can split Dark or make Dark Elevation the B-show for Rampage.
I mean having two B-shows kind of points to the roster being pretty chunky anyway.
On a related note—when Rampage came along, it was an unnecessary show. Dynamite was enough for AEW’s size at the time. A second show in modern wrestling is grounds for separate brands.
You’ve got that much talent that you need a second one-hour show? Make that its own brand and reorganize the roster in the process.
Ring of Honor Could be the Second Brand
The other solution—and along the same lines—is to present Ring of Honor as the second AEW brand and give that brand Rampage. While AEW has a ton of money behind it, two national TV deals, and so on—presentation-wise, it’s not comparable to WWE.
Actually, it occupies a spot between IMPACT and WWE while being closer to WWE because of the flexibility of its funds. Ring of Honor was closer to IMPACT while not exactly being as modern TV wrestling as IMPACT.
I guess the “underground” or “alternative” aesthetic of Lucha Underground meets IMPACT would be close enough for the Sinclair-broadcasted period of ROH. That’s the biggest issue with using Ring of Honor in this role.
Sure, the brand and initials could be ascended but ROH isn’t up there with AEW. It took decades for it to grow to the size it did which is just about the size that IMPACT has been sit at for a while.
Making ROH appear balanced will take some work: moving the right talents over to make a new main event picture and a new roster, making the in-ring style palpable for prime time or live prime time television, seeing who in ROH is already pushable—there’s a lot of work to be done.
Let’s not forget that ROH is privately-owned by Tony Kahn. There were talks of it being developmental but the Dark duo of shows pretty much serve that purpose.
On the bright side, ROH does have its own established schedule of events. Either some of those could be absorbed by AEW or the company could alternate months with the free brand running a special.
What do you think? Will AEW need to split the roster eventually? Could ROH be ascended and be presented as a national wrestling brand? Or is this a case where we shouldn’t call AEW fat, it’s just big-boned and the roster is fine as is at the moment?
Let us know down below!
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