Everyone in AEW is in the same place five years later | Wrestling Observer Live 

This is what I've been saying. There is zero development in this company

Remember…..some of us were trying to point this out, but we got called haters and WWE fanboys. When you cater to a small but vocal demographic, you can’t grow.

For anyone saying Bryan was on the AEW payroll, he's clearly off of it. He buries their creative every week and he's not wrong.

AEW stars are the most over the day they debut.

Bryan's honesty unleashed Sempervive. He's been wanting to say a lot of this.

I'm an AEW fan and yeah there's a lot of truth here. They need more to hook people in to watching, I think TK is afraid to move people up and down the card because he doesn't want to make anyone mad. The hard part is making the in ring stuff look good, they have that covered so this shouldn't be too hard of a change to implement.

The example you gave with swerve is what they did with Hangman. 2 year build to crowning him as champion and then let him go stale

AEW doesn't make stars, instead they do the opposite. They hire stars and then make them feel like everyone else.

Lets be honest: NO ONE involved with The Dark Order besides Brodie Lee had potential. The only reason any of them are still employed is because of their association with Brodie.

Been saying this for awhile now, there is very little character development in AEW

AEW tries to make everyone seem special. When everybody is special, none of them are

All of this stems from the booking which goes back to Tony & is immediately fixed if they hire a competent one. It’s that quick a fix.

Having 50/50 matches & “bangers” every week will only do so much to get talent over.

Poor Bryan doesn’t get that it won’t change as long as Tony is calling the shots…and I can’t see him stepping down any time soon.

Cornette has been saying the EXACT same thing about how they’ve booked Swerve, and he gets called a racist.

"They're going to make a lot of money soon." No. They're not. lol There's going to be a LOT of disappointed people when that TV deal happens.

It's almost like the show is made up of several groups of guys who only work with each other 98% of the time and the other 2% of the time, they get stuck in a program with Jericho for 7 months.

Darby is one that really comes to mind when i think of the same spot in 5 years thing. Especially given he was billed as one of the 4 pillars.

They had no plans for Swerve as World Champion. The only reason he has the title is to literally hand it to Ospreay at All In. It’s really sad and inexcusable.

AEW isn’t dead it’s a reanimated corpse. If Dynamite drops below 600K does anyone think TNT will give them a big renewal? Reruns of Young Sheldon would stay over 900k.

Swerve is taking a backseat to the Bucks' drizzling sh*t of a storyline. It's like when Cena and Johnny Ace was the top program in WWE and Punk was then the main champ. Only this is worse, because Swerve is getting wrung out on a weekly basis by a senior citizen, his pet dino and a high schooler palling around with his mommy.

Wow...the observor crowd is turning on aew ..welcome to reality

AEW belts 4 Mens, 2 women's, tag and Trios. ROH has the same. If you include FTW...17 championships but 23 belts

I know no one wants to say they are dying, but they are down half a million viewers from their peak just 2 years ago and can barely give tickets away to their live events. That's quite a problem.

FIX THE BOOKING

AEW once had IT before... They dropped the ball some time ago...

AEW is missing its oxygen and that oxygen is MJF

AEWs early success was helped by Vince being Vince. Now he's gone and they're struggling. They need to get the belt off Swerve and onto a heel for Ospreay to beat at Wembley. Give it to Takeshita.

Wardlow had all the making too be the guy AEW needed, but wasn’t the guy AEW wanted. The only difference between AEW and an Indy show is the owner has deep pockets

CM Punk tried to make some stars. Got really close with Ricky Starks but then that got derailed.

It's true that Jack Perry, Darby Allin, Mariah May, Orange Cassidy, Kyle Fletcher, The Acclaimed, The Gunns, Swerve, Willow, Toni Storm, Okada, WIll Ospreay, Serena Deeb, Deonna Purazzo, Daniel Garcia, Thunder Rosa, Hook, Samoa Joe, Takeshita and other injured talent like MJF, Britt Baker, Jamie Hayter, Julia, Eddie Kingston, Hangman, Wheeler Yuta, are all exactly where they were 5 years ago. Moxley was even IWGP champion then, it's crazy.

All AEW needs is a booker/writers who know what they're doing

Totally agree! #BringBackTheFallen. Love seeing fresh faces in AEW, but for casual fans who don't follow every update, it can be confusing to see wrestlers like Will Hobbs, Ricky Starks, and Miro disappear for months with no explanation. Maybe a quick storyline about a recovery angle or a backstage vignette could bridge the gap! #AEW #StorytellingMatters

Glad to see you can be objective about this. AEW is floundering right now, flat out. I'm not a hater, I've been to a live AEW show and I've seen most of the PPVs since the beginning. But there's nothing happening, no stars, no genuine heat/issues, and no movement. All the people that were pushed for their potential from their debut are basically already burnt out, its been years of unspent potential and it just fizzled out. They need to make serious changes fast and it's just an unavoidable reality at this point.

Orange cassidy is still in jeans with his hands in his pocket. In 5 years Undertaker went from purple to lord of darkness to ministry to American bad ass.

sounds like you guys been listening to Cornette lol

I was a huge fan and believer initially, but I'm long past the point of caring now. Tony CLEARLY does NOT have what it takes, and is too stubborn/delusional to make necessary changes.

Why wont they use Anna Jay to get Jungle Jackoff over? There is literally nothing else about him thats even remotely interesting.

The wrestlers that are exactly same spot are the tag teams: Perfect example: Private Party(sadly their career peaked in their first match against Young Bucks). Other examples:Death Triangle,,Top Flight

Remember, most of these guys are all off the indies. They learned the business by going town to town wrestling matches like they were never coming back to that town. It's why Orange Cassidy come out and does the same shtick over and over. It's why every match has a million leg slaps and chop exchanges. A lot of people wanted AEW to be more than what they are, so they watched with rose color glasses. But the reality is, the product has been the same since day one. Folks just notice at their own pace. Bryan is just catching up.

I'm a diehard AEW fan since January 2019 - I was all in. Never missed a single Dynamite, Rampage, Collision or PPV. Watched AEW Dark Religiously until Dark Elevation came out. Eventually at the end of last year I got burnt out and my final watch was Worlds End....since then, still kept up with the PPVs and finally recharged to where I've been trying to watch weekly again.... I've been able to watch Dynamite but haven't gone back to Collision or Rampage....and even Dynamite feels like a chore which is so sad to say. I remember feeling like I could consume endless amounts of AEW and the single day break between Dynamite on Wed and Rampage on Fri felt like an eternity.... But they are correct, regardless of what's going on week to week, the PPVs are always worth it. I do feel like they are being a little hard on Swerve, this is simply his first feud after winning the title so its gonna be a softball, but the story behind it is intriguing (him as a babyface having to atone for his heel past) Bucks inserting Christian in there of all people makes sense with the Wayne history. It's also Anarchy in the Arena as the Main Event a DoN. BUT his next feud needs to be a banger and he needs to be elevated and in the Main Event of the PPV after.

But what about the key demos?

Why is TK not building up Will ospreay and build the card week to week around him I will never know but this seems to easy to jack it up they need cut some of these matches down and do more production side of things interviews promos and segments like that

The fix for AEW is simple. But they need to get back to Pro Wrestling basics. Heels vs Faces, storylines that make sense, that have a beginning, a middle and an end and using a base roster of your biggest stars feuding and use the others sparingly. Whenever they get organic growth and stars get over ie. Britt Baker, they put them out to pasture 🤷‍♂️

Tony will never just be the owner and oversee things. If only he just let someone else book for a couple months and see if it improves

Bryan Alvarez being honest and openly critical about AEW's horrendous booking wasn't on my 2024 bingo card, but here we are.

This point was crystal clear last year when they tried to pull at 4 Pillars shit with MJF, Perry, Darby, and Sammy. With the exception of MJF, all the rest of those guys are in the exact same place they were 5 years ago for the most part. Sammy has been drowning in the Vortex of Jericho, Darby only just now got out from under Sting's shadow, and Jack Perry is no more a star than he was when he was riding Luchasaurus as a mount. Guys like Wardlow, Ricky Starks, Miro, and Malachi Black are all in neutral for no reason other than TK is incapable of making stars of his own. He leans on past stars so much that when he's forced to make a star in Swerve, he shits the bed with it because he has no other stars to put him against.

So, what you're saying is that Eric Bischoff has been right the whole time? But because he wasn't an AEW homer, he was hating for the sake of hating 🤷🏻‍♂️. Sure, Bischoff could have said things in a better way, but he hasn't been wrong

So character development is none existent in the past 5 years but they are not doomed, got it.

Aew has to develop talent, not just use it. I rarely use the word beefy, but that is exactly what I'd describe my bowel movement as. It was thick ,solid but not hard or anything, it was like Raw hamburger meat being pushed through a door, you coulda made a sandcastle with it. It expanded in the bowl but stayed intact...I saw popcorn in it and was like "I remember that" good times man.

Bryan has a great point! Peeps do seem like they're in the same spot.

Bryan finally realizing that Dave and Tony are bad for his own bottom line.

Finally someone’s seen the light! I stopped listening to you guys cause you were so Pro-AEW it was ridiculous. Call any wrestling company on their BS for stuff that doesn’t work and celebrate them for their successes. That’s all I’ve ever wanted in my wrestling pundits.

Wrestling is comic books come to life and thats the part AEW misses you have nothing if you don't have a story arc

Started watching wrestling in 2008, and thought there were too many belts THEN. The WWE/WH championships are the best wrestlers on Raw and Smackdown, sure! That's fine, but as a big John Morrison fan when I was getting into it I was actively rooting against him winning the IC/US titles because he had to lose twice to get the belt off him, and now I look back and realize those belts leave you in that spot forever unless you know it's an exception (Punk, Rollins, Jericho, etc.) That was in 2008. Now look where we are now.

Pretty much every single pro wrestling company has a "Too many completely useless belts" problem, and this is a problem that never goes away, and goes back years. WWE, AEW, NJPW, TNA, CMLL, AAA... When everyone is a "champion," no one is a champion.

Not only have their positions on the card not changed, their characters haven't evolved either. Most of the heel and face turns haven't really evolved the characters, they don't even adjust their move sets to reflect their alignment. You could literally have not watched for months and pick up a random episode and it's the same show it was back then.

Buried penta too. 😢😢😢

AEW doesn't get talent over, they get talent under.

I say this as a Deeb fan... Deeb before: Headlock. Deeb now: "You guys wanna see a headlock?" "I cant hear you. I saaaaaaid, you wanna see a headlock?" "C'mon , lemme hear you!" _(walks around the ring opening-and-closing hands gesturing for applause)_ _(starts cupping ears like Hulk Hogan)_ _(points at audience)_ ... ... Headlock.

Problem with AEW is that TK needs to step back and let someone else take over creative. For goodness sake you have Edge , Danielson, Dustin, Christian Cage, etc. Let these older veterans take over creative. Would love to see Christian Cage as the booker. TK time for you to step aside!!

I appreciate good faith criticism, but I don't know how you can say this when you've got Swerve as world champion

Good to see Bryan bacc, I’ve missed him

I'm an AEW fan, it's like nothing changes. It's weird cause the Bang Bang Gang has 9 TITLES!!!

I couldn't agree with this more

It's almost like you have a bunch of people who had never run a wrestling company before this.

I love how semperveve spends the entire clip defending AEW but then says it’s tough to watch in the end 😂

Yeah entirely too many belts... They should at least stop letting the ring of honour belts on AEW. Then maybe think about unifying some of the other belts

The common denominator has been Tony Khan. Until he relinquishes booking duties, nothing will change and the ratings will continue to go down.

The only way AEW gets a bigger money deal is if some other company is trying to outbid WBD. Zaslav isn't going to just give AEW a 50% raise out of the kindness of his heart.

Tony needs to give up the booking to someone who knows how to do it!

#CornetteWasRight all along!!!

I feel like AEW is a real-life video game

Let's face it, AEW has so many problems. Number 1: Too many championship belts. Half of them are ROH Championships, ROH hasn't had much exposure since Tony Khan bought the promotion from Sinclair Broadcasting. The ideal way to fix that is championship unifications all around, they done that with the AEW Trios and ROH Six Man Tag Titles. Its time to put ROH on the shelf, retire the ROH titles, a hellova run for the company of over 20 years and start focusing on AEW first. Number 2: Too many wrestlers on the roster, so much money is going out with these guaranteed contracts the same mistake that WCW did and one of the factors that ran WCW out of business, and not all of them are being used on the show every week, like 25% of the roster. What AEW need to do is a mass release of talent that aren't being used, its just wasting money. Number 3: Non-consistent storylines, just random stuff being thown in every week. Number 4: Over used matches and blood, the hardcore style matches, instead of every week those types of matches should be for big events and rare occasions. Number 5: Concepts that don't make any sense. For example the Continental Classic, what a lot of people thought was that three championship were combined and defended together, but that fell apart after what a month.

With all these belts, they just devalued what a championship is supposed to be doing for the company.

Anytime the signature graphic pops up with the graphic in the background showing who's all Elite is the only time they ever matter. WWE did not take the wrestler they wanted and that is their only win.

The problem that these MARKS can't seem to understand is great roster doesn't matter when the guy running the company and writing the checks is one in the same. And he's also the owner. And his creative is terrible.

Damn. It's a shame Corny and Last scooped you on these opinions. Glad to see you catching up.

I would argue Swerve is not in the same place, he's actually in a worse place than he was about a month before he won the championship. Also, for comparison, last year's attendance for this ppv was 10,500.

I like bashing AEW just as much as the next guy but how can you say Swerve is in the same place as a few years ago? The guy has transcended. Better promo’s, matches, character work and fan reaction. This dude was a heel and because his heel work was so good they inevitably turned him face

It’s interesting that Alvarez is increasingly negative on AEW and even arguing with Dave on it

I don't know about them getting an increased deal. Hasn't it been reported they've been offered the same or less? How could you offer an increase with hundreds of thousands less viewers than the original deal?

“If you take away all of his accomplishments, where is he at now, 5 months later?!” 😂 what..?

I don't remember Swerve being on every episode and having promos and matches and segments every show 2 years ago or even a year ago.

its hilarious seeing bryan week by week coming around to see the light, its hard to let go of the honeymoon AEW period where we all actually had hope it was going to stay awesome all this is culminating into a meltzer vs alvarez match for the wrestling "journalism" championship at ALL IN 2025 im sure #bookeroftheyear

There is no way Double or Nothing should be in Vegas this year. It was a topic last year about the declining ppv crowd there, not to mention they were dead. They are all not learning. You need to go to where the fans are. A 6 week trek thru small Canadian towns doesn't do it.

Alvarez now caring for "character and stories" when he and Dave spent the last 13- 15 years telling us that putting "bangers" is what matters which is what AEW is doing right now lol

I like Bryan's rants too.... He calls the bullshit out i love it

Alvarez is actually being honest and fair, unlike Meltzer who will no doubt claim that the 502'000 viewers for Wednesday's Dynamite was due to loads of competition on other channels. It wasn't. NXT beat them in ratings and the demo. AEW is putting on poor show after poor show. It isn't developing stars. MJF is the only star they've made (and even then he's doing the gimmick he's done all his career, so all they've done to make him is put him on national TV).

I still remember a clip of Bryan saying “AEW will announce their billion dollar TV deal on Dynamite this week” and that was over a year ago

This hurts to hear. But that’s what u get with unbiased reporting. Not all the news is great.

What about Jaime Hayter and Willow?

obviously there’s way bigger issues affecting AEW at the moment then this but i gotta say i don’t think it’s smart always hosting PPV’s in the same exact place every year. it becomes less special to the people there and you end up with diminishing returns. just because the PPV is called double or nothing shouldn’t mean you have to host it somewhere with gambling around. when WWE hosted Great Balls of Fire one year i didn’t see anyone running around with their gonads on fire, although Vince probably would have gotten a kick out of that.

Oh you’re finally catching on to the fact that TK books the company like shit and doesn’t grow anyone into a star and destroys the star power of anyone who joins the company?

Brian is finally getting it!

Bryan about to go full russo Era tna review. I'm here for it.

When you have 3 potential World Titles, Edge, Ospreay, and Okada, holding midcard titles while Christian is getting a World Title shot, you know you've done something wrong. Logan Paul is more deserving of a World Title shot than Christian.

Well this is a tough show to listen to now. Im out.

He’s basically saying aew needs a new Booker

The EVPs "fired" Alvarez for "Hating" on aew. Chico Alvarez gonna be show up at Double or Nothing to help out Team aew, only for Good Ol Uncle Dave to screw Team aew.