The Phantom Rant: AEW…Another Title Belt…Why?
Greetings conversationalists all across the world wide web. It is I the one and only “Phantom Lord” Joseph Davis and this is The Phantom Rant. As always I am coming to you from New York City and I said I would try to be back at a regular time and interval and here I am. It’s been an interesting week since I last wrote so lets get to the column shall we?
The big story is AEW is adding yet another championship to it’s bloated title roster. I like to think I’m open minded about AEW. I see the good and the bad. But why is Tony Khan wasting time and money on another title belt? On Dynamite, Tony Khan along with Tony Schiavone announced the re-birth of the National Championship. But what is puzzling is Tony Khan is tying the lineage of this new championship to the historic one of the NWA’s National Championship way back when they had Georgia Championship Wrestling on TBS.
I’m sure this is news to the NWA, who are still very much an active promotion and actively have own their National Championship feel a little jaded to say the least. Mike Mondo…who just won the title is stating he obvious. The National Championship is an NWA property and AEW can not leech off their history. To be honest, I agree with him. The National Championship…which was an NWA Championship from 1980 to 1986 when it was unified with the NWA United States championship. It was brought back by the NWA in 2018 and had been prominent in the promotion ever since. It’s what you would call the upper midcard title. The title you go for just before you reach the next level and hit the main event scene.
My concern with AEW introducing this new championship is where the hell are they going to put it? AEW right now has a very crowded title scene (this does not count Ring of Honor’s titles which are shoehorned into the company). They just recently had a unification match between Kenny Omega and Kazuchika Okada to unify the AEW International and AEW Continental Crown championships. Okada is the AEW Unified Champion because of this. I honestly believe Tony Khan has so much on his proverbial plate that he forgets about this stuff. In the WWE, Vince used to do that all the time because he and everyone involved thought we the fans were idiots. Tony Khan is supposed to have more respect for us than that.
I’m not trying to bash the guy. As I’ve said in the past, I’m sure he’s a pretty chill guy to know in person. But AEW has so many damn problems right now and the solution is not another championship belt. Now this title’s selling point is it’s supposed to be defended all over the place. AEW,ROH, CMLL, NJPW, Indies on good terms with AEW, ect. Isn’t that supposed to be the point of the International Championship that you just merged with another title a few months ago? If you want that title to be a showcase title to be defended everywhere, Kazuchika Okada is NOT the man to be your champion. The guy gets paid millions of dollars and he does the bare minimum once a week. Now don’t get me wrong. I can’t fault him for doing the bare minimum considering how much money he’s being paid. But if you want a title that will be a touring championship, you need someone who’s willing to work those extra dates and I highly doubt Okada is going to do that.
Now the big question is since they are intent on making this title…who should win it? At AEW Full Gear in a couple of weeks they will have a Casino Guantlet match to determine the winner. And it’s been announced that the new champion will defend the title at ROH Final Battle on December 5th. Last week when I ripped apart the Death Riders, I said Claudio Castagnoli should be on his own and should be the Unified Champion or something. Well I guess the something has come up. I still want to see The Death Riders disbanded. But I like Claudio and he deserves some time to shine on his own and he is the most logical choice I can think of to win this new absurd title AEW has created.
AEW as I said has so many more problems than needing a new title. This week’s AEW apparently was once again sub below half a million in viewers. Once again we don’t know what the HBO Max numbers are to add to that. Well it was at least one because I watched Dynamite on HBO Max this past week. A new title though I doubt is going to drive new viewers to watch. Right now it is only the sicko’s watching and that number is dwindling each week as even the sicko’s get sick and tired of the same old…same old.
I really didn’t want to bash AEW so much in this column. It just boggles my mind how a company can make so many self sabotaging mistakes like they do. I could do a whole thing on the WWE and how they make the same mistakes (maybe I will next time). So AEW is not alone in this sort of thing. As a fan, I just want to see AEW succeed. It pains me to say they are doing below 500,000 viewers a week and having to do shows in mid sized theaters because that looks way better than a quarter full arena.
Well on that note I guess I am done for this week. Blood & Guts is next week and that should be a spectacle. Well there’s two matches on the show so I’m curious to see how they pull off the regular one and the women’s one that was thrown together by what ever stuck to the wall. As long as I see the end of The Death Riders…I will be happy.
As always you can leave feedback down below, on Twitter or email me at phantomlordnyc@gmail.com