Three major mistakes AEW made in 2022

Three major mistakes AEW made in 2022

Tony Khan and AEW have made their fair share of missteps in the year 2022. Events like the Media Scrum, the overcrowding of the roster, and poor booking decisions all come into play when discussing the major errors of this past year.

All Elite Wrestling is far from the saving grace of pro wrestling and fans need to honestly assess the good and bad when it comes to the product. The quality of matches and the wrestling itself may be the biggest strength of this promotion. Although, in terms of sports entertainment, and storytelling sometimes, it leaves much to be desired.

Without further ado, here are the three major mistakes of 2022 for AEW!

1. The Media Scrum Situation

Following CM Punk and The Elite’s monster championship wins at AEW’s “All Out” PPV in September, Tony Khan faced managing one of the most chaotic backstage scandals in the company’s short three-year history.

AEW is notable for having its after-show press conferences following each PPV known as the Media Scrum. This gives fans a real fight feel and coveted backstage content of their favorite wrestlers. Punk had just won the big one in his home city of Chicago by defeating Jon Moxley for the AEW World Championship.

The star proceeded to unravel on stage to Khan’s shock. There was a previous backstage incident involving Punk and The Elite (Kenny Omega and the Young Bucks) which left a sour taste in his mouth, enough so to air those grievances to the masses.

Punk ate many pastries while ranting about The Young Bucks spreading fake news to the dirt sheets about a prior situation of him cutting ties with helping Colt Cabana financially.

“Now, it’s 2022. I haven’t been friends with this guy since at least 2014, late 2013, and the fact that I have to sit up here because we have irresponsible people who call themselves EVPs, yet they couldn’t f***ing manage a target and they spread lies and bulls*** and put into the media that I got somebody fired when I have f*** all to do with him,” Punk said. “I want nothing to do with him. I do not care where he works or where he doesn’t work, where he eats, where he sleeps. The fact that I have to get up here and do this in 2022 is f***ing embarrassing.”

Quote via All Out Media Scrum

The fallout of this Media Scrum illustrated Khan’s struggle to control and manage his own locker room. In the end, all four were suspended and forced to concede their belts, making All Out more of a meme than a major event.

Ultimately, egos should have been managed, and order of authority should have been set.

2. The Roster is Overcrowded

The roster has over 100 wrestlers between AEW, Ring of Honor and AEW: Dark. Khan has an affinity with signing all the big EX-WWE stars — it’s comparable to his latest toy of the month.

Keith Lee, Buddy Matthews, Swerve Strickland, Jeff Hardy, William Regal, Toni Storm, Samoa Joe, Athena, Claudio Castagnoli, Saraya, Renee Paquette and Jeff Jarrett were among the 28 different wrestlers that made their debuts in AEW this calendar year. This led to an overcrowding of stars on the roster which put guys like Andrade, Miro, Christopher Daniels, Kazarian, Lance Archer, Matt Sydal, Scorpio Sky and Shawn Spears on the proverbial backburner.

What Khan is doing now is very reminiscent how WCW and TNA, at times, could be by signing every big name on the market and stacking their roster.

AEW is at their best when they take the time to develop young stars into homegrown talents. Two weekly shows and three total hours TV time is not enough air space to accommodate an influx of wrestlers. Now, Ring of Honor is headed to a streaming service no one cares about and AEW Dark is relegated to YouTube, and nobody gets their wrestling fix in on YouTube anymore, it’s 2022.

3. FTR kept out of AEW Fight Forever video game

This one just hurt my brain here because it seems like it comes from personal bias from Kenny Omega as to why FTR is not in the video game. They debuted in May of 2020 for Pete’s sake, and other guys that debut after them will make this game. Cash Wheeler and Dax Hardwood deserve so much better.

The top guys and most decorated tag team of 2022 continues to be underrated and undervalued. Some of the best matches in this company’s short history featured FTR, how do you exclude them and still properly tell the story of AEW?

We have the classic battles of FTR and the Young Bucks, the trilogy of masterpieces vs the Briscoes, and even some of the incredible work on the singles front for Dax Hardwood. In fact, Hardwood vs. Wheeler may have been one of the best singles bouts in the company’s history to some.

The team opened up about their reaction to the news of not being included in the game back in August.

“For us, the only real issue is we were kind of blindsided by it,” Wheeler told Louis Dangoor of GiveMeSport WWE. “We found out, not how you would expect. And when you find out something like that, something major like being taken out of a video game, your mind automatically assumes the worst. For us, it was like, ‘is this something we need to worry about? Should we read between the lines here? Were we not told for a reason? Now that we are aware and we are out, what is that reason? Is it something we should worry about?’ We got an answer, it made a lot of sense, a very logical answer. Okay, cool, as long as we don’t have to worry about it, non-issue and that’s what it was.”

Quote via GiveMeSport WWE/YouTube

There are other mistakes critics may harp on when it comes to AEW, but to me the biggest issues are how backstage incidents are handled, the overcrowding of the roster, and the weird omission of AEW’s top tag team from their video game — a video game that is over two years into development.

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