Why An AEW Weekly Show is a BAD Idea!

So it looks like AEW is well on it's way to being WWE's biggest rival as TNA or IMPACT Wrestling as it's called now is merely a footnote in the scope of wrestling. AEW has BIG dollars behind it with the Khan Family and some very talented minds involved in the process, Cody Rhodes and 2 major coups behind it with Chris Jericho and the now renamed (although it was previously his name) John Moxley (formerly Dean Ambrose) adding legitimacy to the new brand and 5 star match collector Kenny Omega as an Executive, AEW is an up and coming force to be reckoned with that the wrestling world has never seen before since Hall, Nash and Hogan formed The nWo. With that being said, AEW is still a new federation (or territory, as they're called in the biz) and with that they can learn from the mistakes of past territories and I'm here to explain why an AEW weekly show is a BAD idea. Let's dive in.
So let me not be a doomsayer and say that AEW has enough talent and money behind it to make a weekly show work, BUT to paraphrase Malcolm from "Jurassic Park", "They're too busy worried if they could to think about if they should." and that's where this article comes from. Let's be honest and say that AEW would be stupid NOT to take advantage of the big dollars a weekly program would give them and the many eyeballs it would attract. However, let's be honest and say that AEW would be 1 of 3 weekly wrestling programs (Raw, SMACKDOWN! and IMPACT!) and since they're brand new they'd get lost in the shuffle. Now this isn't to say that they shouldn't try but with that much wrestling on TV your product has to be REALLY good. This isn't to say AEW isn't already good but wrestling is wrestling and there are only so many ways that can go. Like your typical police drama on TV, it has to set it's self apart from the other police dramas on TV already. Having some well known stars is a nice shot in the arm but once the name recognition wears off well your product be enough to keep eyes weekly?

Gone and completely forgotten.

This was "Detroit 1-8-7's" problem. Despite being heavily marketed in Detroit (my home town), and boasting Michael Imperioli (hot off Sopranos fame) as one of it's lead actors, it failed to make it's mark because it wasn't that good of a show, it was just another police drama. There was nothing in it that set it's self apart. The competition for wrestling programs is HIGH, people who are WWE people are WWE people for LIFE, people who are TNA people are TNA people for LIFE! They might follow individual wrestlers here and there but most people tune into what they're familiar with. AEW despite having Chris Jericho and Cody Rhodes and Kenny Omega and John Moxley are still the new kids on the block as far as most wrestling fans are concerned and the rest of the roster is gonna have to step their game up to keep AEW afloat weekly and that's a lot of pressure to put on people.

Speaking of pressure, AEW is wrestling, right? Not sports entertainment, so if wrestling is a sport (and I believe it is) let's treat it like an actual sport and give it a season. Basketball, Football and Baseball players would be remiss if their respective sport was weekly. They'd get bored of it and burned out pretty quickly. Why is wrestling different? One of the biggest issues with the WWE is someone getting hurt in the middle of a big angle (ala Finn Balor being the 1st Universal Champion) and that angle having to be scrapped altogether because the main player is no longer available. While that'll always be an issue, I think giving wrestlers an off season would minimize a LOT of those issues. Say if AEW was 3 shows a month, not everyone gets used, if you wrestled one show you won't do the next and so on. It gives wrestlers a time to heal, recover and it makes their appearance special and it keeps the brand special.



I remember as a kid watching "Dragon Ball Z" and sighing when I'd catch a re-run BUT when a new arc was advertised on Toonami, best believe I was ignoring my homework to watch it, because it was special, it was something I hadn't seen before. AEW can be the same way. People would be like "Oh snap, it's AEW time?! Last month was crazy! I really hope Hangman Page wrestles tonight." as opposed to "Is this gonna be a Darby, Cody rematch...again?". I'm exaggerating but AEW's roster is still small and lets' say they get a weekly program for 2 hours. That's long enough to cycle through the entire roster in 2 weeks. There needs to be something to make seeing an AEW match special and I'd say the rarity behind their appearance is a good way to do this. Let's make wrestling into a legit sport and give the fans and the wrestlers and offseason to catch their breath and miss these guys a little bit so when they come back, it'll be all the better.

Wrestling is NOT a TV show, wrestling is wrestling, so let's keep it wrestling. Yes, there's storytelling, but having to fill every single week with content will burn anyone out, especially if the story isn't exactly the main focus. Let's be honest, the match is the focus and should always be the focus. But everyone knows wrestling is scripted and in many ways "fake". The fake part comes from what they in the business call an "angle" a.k.a a reason for a match to happen, a rivalry. Some rivalries make sense, others don't so much but with the right angle it can. But with kayfabe so broken these days is wrestling, pure wrestling aside from gimmicks able to hold up week to week? Don't get me wrong, gimmicks these days have gotten silly but it's still more interesting than Guy In Tights#21. Having week to week content is gonna be a struggle, ESPECIALLY for a new promotion trying to find it's footing and already having to compete against The WWE.

Not to mention if this is a weekly program, pumping out content every week means it will somewhere in the future rely on some unfortunate tropes already in the wrestling world as in Heel Authority Figures and a few others that have been ran into the ground. I'm not being a Doomsayer either, EVERY wrestling promotion (aside from New Japan, because it's not weekly) has fallen into these tropes WWE (Vince & The Helmsley-McMahon Era), TNA (Dixie Carter), WCW (Vince Russo & Eric Bischoff). Cody Rhodes already has the experience of being a wrestler and while I trust him not to turn AEW into a vanity project, this is more than likely to occur given the trends we've seen in this business. But that's the pressure of having to pump out weekly content. Either way I really hope I'm wrong and AEW flourishes to greater heights. I'd really love to buy an AEW video game in the future and I LOVE that AEW is allowing cross promotion with NJPW. I hope they scoop up some forgot talent, Ultimo Dragon, Paul London and a few others (ya know, guys who can still go) and they become a force to be reckoned with. Anyways those are my thoughts, I'll catch ya'll later!