AEW need to wish for a Star this Christmas – By Wrestle G

Hello NoDQ.com readers and welcome once again to the thoughts and opinions of me Wrestle G. Now I have to start his column on a sombre note. I wrote recently in my last column I’d been dealing with some things, and they seemed to be moving forward. Well sadly they didn’t move forward in the way that I would have liked, and I very sadly lost my mother in the middle of October. As you can imagine I wasn’t quite able to be getting columns out so I’m sorry I took another bit of an absence. My Mam was my biggest fan, and I will miss her terribly.

I really however now want to throw myself into my writing and wrestling. I want to be the best and most productive person I can be to the wrestling media space and start to build my own reputation and legacy. And I can see no better place for me to do that than right here at NoDQ.com and I thank Aaron Rift for his patience with me these last few months.

So, let’s get right into it.

All Elite Wrestling needs an All Elite Star

Let’s make one thing clear before we begin here, this isn’t an AEW Bashing column coming up. I love watching AEW and some of my favourite performers are there. This is much more an analysis on what people’s expectations are for the promotion and the compromises need to be made to get there.

As a name and moniker for the company I think All Elite is pretty accurate. Up and down the roster we see performers who are at the top of their field technically. While logic isn’t always the friend of the matches, I would be hard pressed to find many people who could genuinely claim that the performers in AEW don’t live up to the billing of ‘Elite’ even during the days of Dark and Dark Elevation you would witness performers innovating on a weekly basis. At present AEW is serving up a weekly buffet that a lot of fans of pro wrestling could only dream of seeing on such a consistent basis.

So, it struck me as to why AEW is having issues with attendance and ratings when the calibre of performer they have is so high. As with anything you have to go and look at wrestling history to see the winners and losers across the many wrestling wars and wrestling eras. From the Territory days through the Monday night wars to todays ‘Elite’ wars. When you look back through wrestling history there is one very big red flag as to why AEW hasn’t broken through to challenging WWE numbers and that intangible is Star Power. There are in my opinion only a few wrestlers in history who have broken through to genuinely bringing new eyes EN-masse to the business. Let’s take a look at them:

Gorgeous George

In the 1940’s Gorgeous George became the catalyst for wrestling being on the TV. While the arenas and wrestling production might have been much more basic than what we see today, Gorgeous George at only 5 ft9 put peroxide in his hair, glammed up his wardrobe and became wrestling’s first ever cross over star. You would be hard pressed to find people who remember a great deal of significant George matches. But he was new and different and stood out and his charisma drew people in. When your career ends and you have influenced both James Brown and Muhammad Ali then you are a very special case.

Bruno Sammartino

Moving forward we then had Bruno Sammartino, now I will preface this as, I accept Bruno wasn’t a worldwide, national star. And his legacy gets a major boost from the revisionary tendencies of the WWE. But I’m adding him in here because of his ability to sell out Maddison square garden regularly along with his connection to the different communities that made up New York City. Sometimes it’s not just a case of a wrestling match bringing people together, sometimes you need a star who has a built in following and that following them shouts about them from the roof tops to bring others in for the ride. Bruno had the Italian Americans bursting through the doors of MSG for years and years.

Hulk Hogan (as a babyface)

Hulkamania was really the first movement to sweep the globe. There wasn’t a toy shelf worth its salt that didn’t have a red and yellow Hulkster toy on it from the late 80;’s through early 90’s and his blonde moustache was waking kids up on Saturday morning TV with the Rock ‘N Wrestling cartoon on both sides of the Atlantic. Other wrestlers and events had filled arenas in the past, but it felt like Hogan being on a card could have filled any arena in the world at one point. Another thing Hogan’s run did is package wrestling into moments. I know body slamming Andre has been done to death, but it was an image that conveyed a story in just a few seconds. While Flair was putting on 60-minute clinics with Steamboat these works of art weren’t connecting with a national or worldwide audience in the same way Hogan rotating his hand and cupping his ear were.

Hulk Hogan (as a Heel)

Hogan did it again in 1996 and became probably the first to build business even higher than he did the first time, with a complete character reinvention. Hogan is the only person to ever beat Vince at his own game. You can throw Bischoffs name around all you want, without Hogan it simply doesn’t work. Sting would have done a good job in the role, but he wouldn’t have had viewers flocking to see it. Hogan had all the Hulkamaniacs in the stands from his WWF heyday and brought them all to see his new coat of paint. A remarkable trick to pull off.

Stone Cold Steve Austin

The Person on this list that really changed a culture and changed how the entire industry looked and felt. In many ways it’s AEW as a company that wants to change how people consume wrestling in terms of style and attitude. But Attitude is what Austin brought and ushered in an entire new era. He didn’t just bring new people into wrestling he took wrestling into popular culture. The Best to ever do it in my opinion and he did it with a connection to a crowd and generation who had shifting views. We’ll come back to this shortly.

The Rock

Cross popularity between wrestling and the mainstream is rare as this list shows. But it’s even more rare for two of the top stars to be working the top of the card at the exact same time. The Rock and Austin made each other and boosted each other in a way I don’t think has ever been matched during a feud. And when Austin couldn’t compete any longer the WWE had a ready-made replacement who was still able to sustain the huge business. The Rock is undoubtedly the biggest wrestling star who’s been successful outside of the ring and in other media. And probably the wrestler who is able to use wrestling as a crutch when his other careers stagnate. He’s able to take the comfort of wrestling crowds to boost his confidence and popularity, he just has that sort of hold on it.

John Cena

There is a big caveat to this one, in that John Cena is on this list because of longevity rather than anything else. During the first 10 years or so of Johns run on top the business was down, arenas tarped off, ratings slipping, very poor card underneath him at times. But he persevered until such time the Rock returned, and Cena proved he could hang with him, both in the ring and on the mic. Once he did that, he finally got his recognition, and he was able to breakthrough into the mainstream towards the end of his run.

Roman Reigns

Record gate receipts, record breaking title runs, a flirtation with movies and about to be one of the standouts for the Netflix experiment. Roman Reigns is probably the least profile on this list and yet he feels the biggest deal when he arrives back on scene.

AEW’s Conundrum

Now I appreciate the list above is known by a large quantity of wrestling fans as big stars. But I don’t think we ever consider just how important they are to wrestling. Without those men above ratings discourse and attendance discourse is pointless. Every Wrestling federation would be performing in front of average crowds.

And therein lies the challenge to AEW. History shows us that you can’t just have a philosophy to make the most money and be number 1. To be number 1 you need a star, or stars and that star has to be able to connect with the mainstream. There are two ways you can go about this; you can create that star, or you can hire that star. At present it would be extremely difficult for AEW to prise any of the current stars away as Cena, The Rock, Roman all locked in. Steve Austin seems pretty roped in on a legends deal as well. The top star free agency well is dry.

So, the only other option is to create a star, and this is the hardest thing to do in wrestling. It takes a perfect mix of:

* A wrestler with the required charisma
* A wrestler who can work
* A wrestler who connects with the zeitgeist
* A wrestler who has the right booking at the right time.

All these things have to fall into place at once. I look around the roster of AEW and sadly at the moment I don’t see who it might be. Ospreay is the best in ring talent in the world right now, but his Britishness might be a barrier to breaking through, at present I just can’t see him sitting on the couch with Jimmy Fallon publicising AEW events. Jon Moxley doesn’t have the compromise in him to do the things a top guy needs to do, and I think we saw that with his interview with Steve Austin when he held the WWE Championship. Hangman and Kenny Omega suffer from being just a little bit too nerdy (and I don’t mean that in a derogatory way), but Hangman is slowly breaking out of that. MJF is too much of a natural Heel to ever have that sustained babyface run.

Other guys have had their chance in WWE for prolonged periods and not been the breakthrough top star so we can discount them as well. There’s only one guy I feel has the tools needed to maybe be the Cross Over draw that would take AEW to the next level.

Swerve Strickland

It will be tough, and it may not happen. But out of anyone in the locker room at the moment I feel Swerve is the one who can take the ball and give it the best shot. He rose to the top of the card organically, he’s shown he can get it done Bell to Bell, he has a presence about him that few others have in AEW, and I think he appeals to a wide demographic of fans who if they turned the TV on would be intrigued to see more. He has a pretty consistent character and most importantly he believes and wants to be in AEW.

Signing his new contract was a great statement intent for the company and for Swerve that they have someone who can be trusted and that wants to be the man. The way he held up his end of the match at All In at Wembley really cemented him in my mind as a top guy even in defeat.

Look, I have laid the case for how hard it is for someone to reach the heights of the guys in my list. But I firmly believe it is needed for AEW to ever even think of toppling the machine that WWE is. They may continue to be a lifestyle promotion and that is absolutely fine, I will continue watching and I’ll continue to support. But I just feel like Tony khan would love to have a proper crack at being number one. He will need his Hogan to do it, and it will be interesting to see where they come from…..

Thanks for reading, I’d love to hear from you in the comments below about who you think has the potential to be the next big thing in wrestling or if you think there will ever be another one again.

You can also follow me over on Twitter via @Wrestle_G I’d love for you to drop a follow and carry on the conversation.

And again, thank you for your patience while I’ve been going through some stuff. It really is appreciated.

Until next time,

Cheers,

G