Five Things AEW Needs To Do Better

Let’s be honest, since its launch just under a year ago, AEW: Dynamite has arguably been the best weekly wrestling show in North America, maybe even the world.

Each Wednesday night when you sit down to watch an episode of Dynamite, you are almost guaranteed to see some fantastic in-ring action, breath-taking promos and jaw-dropping moments.

AEW has shown, thus far, that they really do listen to their fans. For example, fans weren’t initially keen on the Dark Order, so higher-ups went back to the drawing board, and the faction is now one of the best things about the promotion.

While AEW has largely done a lot of things right so far, the promotion is not without its flaws. In this article, we are going to take a look at the five things that AEW needs to do better, if it is to become a flawless show.

Do you agree with our suggestions or do you think we’ve missed something out? If so, let us know on Twitter.

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5. The Inner Circle

The first episode of Dynamite ended with Santana, Ortiz, Jake Hager, Sammy Guevara and Chris Jericho standing in the ring over The Elite. This was the beginning of The Inner Circle faction.

While there is no denying that the faction has been involved in some of the more high-profile feuds on Dynamite, I think that AEW needs to do a lot better with its booking of the stable, in particular with regards to wins and losses.

Inner Circle is supposed to be the most dominant and high-profile faction in AEW. However, the group has never won a five-on-five tag team match. That would be like The Shield never winning a three-on-three tag match. To really put the stable over, AEW needs to show that no other five men have better chemistry than The Inner Circle.

In particular, the booking of Santana and Ortiz has been rather questionable. The men formerly known as LAX in Impact Wrestling came in to AEW as one of the best teams in the world, but have only won four out of their eleven straight two-on-two tag matches on either Dynamite or PPV.

What makes that even more shocking is that three of Santana and Ortiz’s two-on-two tag wins came in the first few weeks of Dynamite. The pair have actually not won a straight tag team match on either TV or PPV since the January 20 taping of Dynamite.

The Inner Circle are often part of some of the most memorable and noteworthy moments on any given episode of Dynamite. However, for a promotion that is so focused on wins and losses, AEW needs to do a better job at establishing the team as credible contenders in the ring.

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4. AEW Dark

For what it’s worth, I really don’t mind the idea of a free-to-watch YouTube show once per week. It’s a great way to get people into watching AEW if they aren’t familiar with the promotion or the wrestlers involved.

Also, AEW has done a great job at using Dark to establish certain wrestlers. For example, Scorpio Sky’s climb to a TNT Championship match with Cody was build up solely on AEW. However, therein lies the problem.

It seems as if AEW assumes that every single person who watches Dynamite also watches Dark, as well as their other YouTube content such as Being The Elite and the women’s Deadly Draw tournament. However, that is certainly not the case.

Take the example of Scorpio Sky, AEW had him go on an undefeated streak from June until August on Dark, picking up seven straight singles wins on the YouTube show. However, Sky has not picked up a singles win on Dynamite since the launch of the show. In fact, the only time Sky wrestled on Dynamite during that June-August period, he lost in a six-man tag match.

Because AEW doesn’t tend to really recap Dark in a lot of great detail on Dynamite, fans who just watch the weekly TV show and don’t follow Dark, might not be as invested in Sky as they should be. For example, if I just watched Dynamite and had therefore never seen Sky picking up a win in singles action, I wouldn’t believe for a second that he was a legitimate challenger to Cody.

All it takes is for AEW to integrate Dark and Dynamite together more. Sky cut a brilliant promo on Dark a few weeks back, and that would have been perfect to recap on Dynamite to build towards his match with Cody. However, as far as we can tell, AEW likely assumed that we’d already seen it, when many of the viewers hadn’t.

Moreover, AEW Dark seems very much like a stat-padding show without any real stakes. It seems like AEW puts people like Shawn Spears and Scorpio Sky on the show when they don’t have any plans for them, allowing them to pick up meaningless wins over enhancement talent. It would be great to see AEW give the matches on Dynamite more stakes.

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