LOLAEW History

Founded in 2019, All Elite Wrestling (AEW) promised to revolutionise the wrestling industry and create a strong alternative to WWE. Despite being backed by a son of a billionaire and signing some of the biggest and most talented individuals in the business, AEW's existence has been plagued by gaffes. The following is a list of some of the noteworthy blunders over the years.

## **2019**

* **May 25th** - Despite gearing its product towards a 'smarter' hardcore audience, AEW decides that the first match on their first ever show should be a men's casino battle royal featuring grossly overweight indie talent, WCW throwbacks, amputees and comedy acts. Spots from the match include Michael Nakazawa dousing himself in baby oil to escape the clutches of his opponents, Jimmy Havoc stapling a cigarette to the forehead of Joey Janella, Marko Stunt doing the floss dance, Shawn Spears being eliminated by a man with no legs, Sonny Kiss repeatedly sticking her ass in Tommy Dreamer's face, a random appearance from Orange Cassidy despite not being an entrant and Jimmy Havoc stapling Tommy Dreamer's testicles.
* **September 25th' *- Even before launching their weekly TV show, AEW finds itself in hot water with their UK fanbase. In May 2019, Cody Rhodes had boldly stated that AEW's UK TV deal with ITV was better than WWE's, who had recently moved from Sky Sports to BT Sports. Months went by without any details being released until ITV and Tony Khan announced in late September that Dynamite would not be shown live, but instead air on a four day delay. Khan would tweet out that he was*** *'announcing a live viewing solution soon for the UK*'', which ended up being a deal with FITE.TV where viewers would have to pay $4.99 a month to watch live commercial-free AEW content.
* **November 18th** - Tony Khan and Randy Orton get into a Twitter argument which results in the latter referring to the AEW boss as *''Jacksonville Dixie''*
* **November 27th** - In what would become a running theme in AEW, Butcher, Blade and The Bunny have a crowd-killing debut on Dynamite. After Cody Rhodes squashes a local competitor, the trio would appear from under the ring and attack him to complete silence from the fans who had no idea who they were. To add to this, the commentary team seemed to be on completely different wavelengths. Whilst Excalibur knew exactly who the team were, Jim Ross hadn't been clued in, remarking *''Who is it?''* and *''We've never seen these two men on AEW before have we?''* whilst the attack took place.
* **December 18th** - An episode of Dynamite ends with a Dark Order beatdown featuring a 'creeper' delivering some of the all-time worst looking punches to Dustin Rhodes. The segment is panned online and is so bad that it garners Twitter responses from the likes of Mark Henry, Sean Waltman, Trish Stratus, Tama Tonga and Randy Orton. Even Jim Ross would address it on his podcast, stating - ''It was poorly-executed...hopefully nothing like that will ever occur again.''

## **2020**

### January - September

* **January 8th** - Riho and Kris Statlander have a AEW Women's Championship match which is mired by the presence of the Nightmare Collective. The match starts with Brandi Rhodes on commentary, who right away buries Statlander's alien gimmick. Brandi is so annoying that the usually upbeat Excalibur becomes genuinely frustrated with her. As the match reaches its conclusion, former FMW wrestler Len "Dr. Luther" Olsen debuts from under the ring to join Brandi's faction...to silence from the crowd who had no idea who he was. To top it off, the match has a screwy finish when Awesome Kong trips Statlander, allowing Riho to get the pin. This stinker of a segment receives online backlash from fans and is the beginning of the end of the Nightmare Collective in AEW.
* **March 18th** - The leader of the Dark Order, the long-teased "Exalted One", is revealed to be Brodie Lee - the former Luke Harper. Nearly everything about his new character appears to be a shot at his former boss, Vince McMahon. During his debut, he mentions an *''out-of-touch old man who didn't believe in me.''* In the weeks that follow, Brodie features in segments which refer to various Vince tropes - *''Some of the segments saw him kick out fellow Dark Order members during a meeting because one of them sneezed, which is a famous Vince story about his hatred for sneezing. There were references to McMahon eating at Morton’s Steakhouse and stories of McMahon liking to be the first one to eat.''*
* **March 25th** - With the pandemic forcing AEW to shut down touring operations and broadcast out of Daily's Place, Matt Hardy and Chris Jericho have a bizarre segment on Dynamite which sees the former, in his Broken character, teleport gradually to the ring. This flies in the face of the *''serio**us, sport-based product''* Tony Khan had promised when AEW started.
* **August 27th** - Big Swole takes on Penelope Ford and Rebel in a 2-on-1 handicap match which, despite being just four minutes long, is one of the worst matches in AEW history. Just seconds into the bout, Penelope Ford drops Swole whilst in a fireman carry's position. Rebel tags in and proceeds to half-heartily deliver a running knee in the corner, take forever getting to the top rope, then sell a top rope frankensteiner too late. After hitting a weak looking moonsault, Rebel grabs a crutch and accidentally hits her own partner with it, the force of which somehow leads to Rebel falling to the canvas and rolling out of the ring, allowing Swole to pin Penelope for the win.

### All Out 2020

* The first match of the show is a horrible 'Tooth and Nail' cinematic match between Britt Baker and Big Swole which sees Swole win after stabbing Baker with a syringe and knocking her out with anesthesia. The match had originally been schedule for the pre-show but after fan backlash, Tony Khan caved and moved it to the main-show.
* Sammy Guevara faces Matt Hardy in a "Broken Rules" (Last Man Standing) match, with the stipulation being that if Hardy lost, he would leave AEW forever. In the opening minutes, a spot involving both competitors jumping off a scissor lift and through some tables below went horribly wrong when Hardy's head missed the tables and impacted the concrete floor below. With Matt knocked out, referee Aubrey Edwards threw up the "X" sign to end the match, but was overruled by an AEW doctor who gave him the all clear to continue despite Matt being noticeably unsteady. With the match restarted, the finish comes shortly after with Matt knocking Sammy off some scaffolding and through a platform to win.
* After the match, Matt's wife Reby - in a now deleted tweet - shares a series of texts she sent to Matt, along with the message - *''Let me be absolutely fucking clear. There is NOTHING entertaining about a concussion. Shame on everyone in that goddamn building.''*
* Matt Sydal makes his AEW debut during the Casino Battle Royal, with his first move seeing him botch a shooting star press by slipping off the top turnbuckle and crashing to the mat below.

## **2021**

### Revolution 2021

* In the main-event, Kenny Omega defends his World Championship against Jon Moxley in a much hyped Exploding Barbed Wire Deathmatch, in which the ring was meant to explode after the 30-minute time limit expired. The match itself lacked any of the drama and production of the originals associated with Atsushi Onita. The ending, however, would go down in infamy. With Moxley tied up in the ring, Eddie Kingston runs in to protect him. With lights flashing and the timer counting down, the commentators dramatically play up the impending blast...which ends up being a weak-looking explosion with sparklers, which Eddie sold like death. Fans at the venue audibly boo'ed and the ending was universally ridiculed. After the show went off the air, Moxley responded to the live crowd by saying - *"Kenny Omega may be a tough son of a bitch, but he can't make an exploding ring worth a shit!"*

### March - December

* **March 17th** - Cezar Bononi and Luchasaurus open up an episode of Dark with one of the worst matches in AEW history. The bout most notably features a moment where both competitors simply stop doing anything and stumble around the ring trying to remember their next spot. Despite being pre-recorded, the botch somehow makes it into the show. The episode is eventually pulled and re-uploaded to Youtube with the botch taken out, but not before clips of the match are shared and subsequently mocked online.
* **May 5th** - A special episode of Dynamite features the Inner Circle taking on the Pinnacle in a "Blood and Guts" match, AEW's version of WarGames. The Pinnacle prevails after Sammy Guevarra surrenders in order to prevent MJF from throwing Chris Jericho off the roof of the cage. However, MJF throws him off anyway, but AEW's poor camerawork exposes the 'metal' surface Jericho landed on as just a shoddily constructed crash pad covered by painted cardboard. The commentators still sold the incident as if Jericho had struck solid concrete.
* The ending is mocked online, most notably by WWE star Shotzi Blackheart who posts a GIF of a woman falling backwards onto a soft bed. Jericho takes this to heart and in a later interview states - *“I could say some names. There’s a couple of chicks in WWE who said some stuff and they should probably not have said that. They probably weren’t trained any better and in six months they’ll probably be asking us for a job anyways and I’ll remember that. So, we’ll leave it at that.”*
* **May 28th** - AEW does their own take on the classic "Sting disguises himself with a Sting mask" bit on an episode of Dynamite. Ethan Page and Scorpio Sky issue a warning to Sting and Darby Allin, only for a number of masked Sting lookalikes to head the ring. One of them eventually takes off their mask, revealing himself as the real Sting. The problem here was that unlike WCW and TNA, AEW had not produced any Sting masks for sale, so the mask that Sting wore appeared to be a plain costume store white mask hastily drawn on with black pen.
* **June 1st** - Shanna, who had been with AEW since 2019, is quietly removed from the roster page as her contract had not been renewed. This came after a string of incidents involving the French wrestler. Unable to compete due to the pandemic, Shanna had tweeted the French president in late 2020 asking him to completely close France's borders to Muslims following a terrorist attack in Nice the previous week. She followed this up by liking tweets from far-right politician Marine Le Pen. Despite the controversy, she returned to AEW later that month. Competing mostly on Dark, her final match would be in April against Leyla Hirsch, a bizarre fight which would see Leyla get in Shanna's face after the match, resulting in Shanna kicking out at her before the two had an awkward stand-off. When Shanna was inevitably let go, a report from Fightful added - ''there were some issues with her and other wrestlers in the company, namely extras and how they felt treated by her.''
* **July 28th** - A no rules match between Chris Jericho and Nick Gage falls fowl of incredibly bad timing as, during picture-in-picture, a spot involving Jericho getting his head sliced by a pizza cutter happens at the exact time a commercial for Dominoes Pizza plays on TNT. In the days following the show, Dominoes threaten to pull their advertising from AEW programming, releasing a statement saying - *“We share the concerns expressed about this incident and the content of this TV-14 rated program, and are assessing our advertising presence on it going forward.”* It's reported that WarnerMedia’s ad sales team have to step in to mend fences with Domino’s and its agency partners in order to stop them boycotting AEW altogether.
* **October 27th** - A match on Dynamite between CM Punk and Bobby Fish is marred when Fish decides to kick out of the GTS just milliseconds after the three count. This would be the first of many controversies involving Punk in AEW. In a later interview, Fish explained his actions - *“It’s KENTA’s move and you didn’t even have the decency to change the name. Regardless, the confusion at the end of our match was the fact that he did what’s called ‘the office’ or an ‘iggy.’ This is some inside baseball stuff here. He did that before the three count was over.''*
* **November 13th** - During their Full Gear PPV, AEW announce the signing of veteran wrestler Jay Lethal. The following Wednesday he faces Sammy Guevara for the TNT title in a losing effort. Lethal is immediately dropped to AEW Dark, making only sporadic televised appearances over the next few months. In his first six months, Lethal wrestles just six TV matches, losing all but one of them. This would be just one example of many of Tony Khan signing a wrestler without having a plan for them.
* **December 29th** - Mercedes Martinez returns to AEW after a failed stint in NXT by dressing up as a stage hand and attacking Thunder Rosa during her match. She would unmask in the ring and - in typical AEW fashion - receive a muted response from the crowd who had no idea who she was. It would be over a month before she actually stepped in the ring for a match and after a short programme with Rosa which saw her turn babyface, she would disappear from TV.
* **December 31st** - After Big Swole reveals in an interview that she left AEW due to a lack of diversity and structure within the company, Tony Khan posts a defensive tweet that lists wrestlers of colour who had won on TV that month as well as publicly criticising the former employee - *''I let Swole’s contract expire as I felt her wrestling wasn’t good enough.''* While most wrestlers kept quiet over all this, Lio Rush - in a now-deleted tweet- responded - *"If nobody, says something, I will. Because this is fucked up and now I'm pissed."* Rush was pulled from TV right after this, being replaced by Jay Lethal in the ongoing feud between Dante Martin and Team Taz. A few weeks later he would leave the company altogether, announcing that his contract was expiring even though he'd only been in AEW for nine months at this point.

## **2022**

### January - May

* **January 4th** - AEW announce the signing of Jake Atlas, who had recently been released from NXT. The very next day he has a taped match on Rampage which ends abruptly when he suffers a torn ACL. During his time off, Jake is arrested for domestic violence after allegedly assaulting his boyfriend during an argument. Although the case is later dropped, Atlas is quietly released from his contract and is never seen in AEW again.
* **April 6th** - The Hardys, in only their third match together in AEW, have an embarrassingly bad tables match against Butcher and Blade. It was in fact an elimination match, but the rules weren't explained to the viewers at home or the crowd beforehand, leading to confusion. Within minutes Butcher and Blade hit a double team move on Jeff Hardy on a table which doesn't break, yet the announcers have to pretend this constituted an elimination. Throughout the match both Hardy's look & wrestle like two broken-down men, including a spot where Jeff slips on the back of Butcher whilst attempting poetry in motion. The finish comes when Jeff, who had already been eliminated, put Blade through a table with a Swanton Bomb off the top of a ladder.
* **April 8th** - Tony Khan makes another bizarre tweet - *''An independent study has confirmed that much of the staunch anti-AEW online community aren’t real individuals, it’s a staff running thousands of accounts + an army of bots to signal boost them. Look closely, these aren’t real people. Who’d pay for such a \*wildly\* expensive thing?''* The tweet is mocked online, most prominently by WWE star Becky Lynch. Despite various requests, the independent study is never publicly released by Khan.
* **April 13th** - After competing a few times on Dark and receiving positive reviews from fans, Marina Shafir makes her televised debut on Dynamite. Almost immediately her aura is ruined when AEW replace her somewhat-unique classical violin theme with generic orchestral music. She squashes Skye Blue in under three minutes to complete silence as she hits a series of awkward MMA-style moves and submissions, all whilst staring at Jade Cargill's 'baddies section' at ringside. AEW realise their mistake as the next week on Rampage her music is changed back for her TBS title match against Jade, a bout most remembered for a spot where Jade tries and fails to put Shafir through a table.
* On the same episode of Dynamite, Satnam Singh also makes his TV debut in typical AEW fashion. After Samoa Joe had defeated Minoru Suzuki to win the ROH World Television Championship, the lights went out. When they came back on, Satnam - along with Jay Lethal and Sonjay Dutt - attacked Joe and left him lying. The fans in attendance were practically silent during the attack, not only because they didn't know who Satnam was, but because the storyline between Joe and Lethal had played out entirely on ROH's 'Supercard Of Honor' PPV a few days prior and not on AEW television. Amidst online criticism, Tony Khan attempts to share the blame with an unnamed AEW producer - *"To be honest, the person who brought up turning the lights off has over 30 years of experience in pro-wrestling...We had all these people in the room and somehow not one person when that idea came up brought up the negatives and then when we did it, all of a sudden all of the negatives were very obvious."*
* **May 4th** - Baltimore plays hosts to a bizarre Dynamite main-event which sees interim ROH Women's Champion Mercedes Martinez take on the lineal ROH Women's Champion, Deonna Purrazzo, in a unification bout. The match has next to no build, with neither woman having interacted with one another on-screen. Mercedes hadn't wrestled in AEW for nearly two months and just four times in total since joining in December, whilst Deonna - who was signed with Impact Wrestling - doesn't even get to cut a pre-taped promo before the match. To the surprise of nobody, the match is played out in front of a dead crowd who are confused as to who they should cheer or why they should care. After Mercedes wins, she disappears from TV for another month, while Deonna's next AEW appearance isn't until the January 3, 2024 edition of Dynamite.
* **May 13th** - On an episode of Rampage it's announced that Hikaru Shida had been ''injured'' during a street fight and was unable to compete in the Owen Hart tournament. This wouldn't have been a big deal, except nobody had told Shida this beforehand, which led to her taking to Twitter to express her frustration with the company - *''Well….I already had 4 matches after the street fight and just finished the greatest fighting musical show. But I seem to have been injured…Japanese wrestling is nothing for them. I’m so sorry. And sorry couldn’t be in the tournament too.''*

### Double Or Nothing 2022

* In the months leading up to Double Or Nothing it's alleged that MJF is unhappy with his contract, feeling he is being underpaid for his work compared to other talents in the company. The day before the PPV, MJF dramatically no-shows a meet-and-greet event at the company's fan-fest, forcing AEW to offer refunds to fans. Later that day it's reported that MJF had booked a plane ticket out of Las Vegas and could potentially no-show the PPV altogether.
* Despite all the rumours, MJF shows up to wrestle. He gets squashed by Wardlow in the opener and is carted out by 'paramedics' who wrongly apply an oxygen mask backwards over his nose. Months later, Wardlow admits in an interview that the match was completely overshadowed by the backstage drama - *"That should be considered one of the best nights of my life and it really wasn't...it's kind of sad that everything built up to this big night and there was so much that ruined it.''*
* The main-event sees 'Hangman' Adam Page take on CM Punk for the World Championship. Whilst the match ends up being pretty good, it's mostly remembered for Punk botching the Buckshot Lariat not once but twice. Both times Punk attempts to flip off the ropes but ends up stumbling and falling to the mat.
* In what would become a running theme throughout the year, the show was panned by some for being far too long. The final match card featured thirteen bouts with a PPV run-time of over four and a half hours.

### June - September

* **June 1st** - Just days after winning the AEW World Championship, CM Punk decides to jump into the crowd during his entrance before a six-man tag match. However, he doesn't jump far enough and breaks his foot on the guardrail. He ''wrestles'' the match (botching numerous moves along the way) but his injury requires time off. Instead of relinquishing the title, Tony Khan hosts a tournament to crowd an 'interim' world champion whilst Punk is gone, a decision which would come back to haunt the company.
* **June 15th** - Wardlow, who was coming off a hot streak with his victory over MJF at Double Or Nothing, has his credibility dented when he competes in an insanely stupid 20-on-1 ''Class Action'' Handicap Eliminator match. The match consists of Wardlow steamrolling through a bunch of security guards, however the rules are not explained, leading to utter confusion. Five guards get knocked off the apron and are announced as being eliminated by the ringside announcer, leading to Jim Ross questioning how the match even worked. Wardlow powerbombs some other guards and stacks them up in a pile, leading to all of them being eliminated despite only one man's shoulders being on the mat. The match is so nonsensical that the crowd actually begins laughing.
* After Wardlow wins, he attempts to get Mark Sterling but is interrupted by Dan Lambert, who orders former UFC champions Matt Hughes and Tyrone Woodley to attack. Wardlow then cuts a cringey promo in which he says they're 'fellow, hard-working mid-westerners' who are 'cut from the same cloth' as him. Hughes and Woodley turn on Sterling and gift him to Wardlow who powerbombs him to thankfully end the segment, however this entire angle severely hampers Wardlow's push who before this looked set to become a big star.
* **July 20th** - An overbooked "Barbed Wire Everywhere Deathmatch" between Chris Jericho and Eddie Kingston features some incredibly comedic mishaps with a Shark Cage that was used to hold the Jericho Appreciation Society. As the match reaches its conclusion, Tay Conti gets the keys and goes to open the padlock...except she couldn't get it open. After struggling for an eternity, members of the JAS simply slipped through the bars to escape, rendering the cage concept pointless. To add to the comedy, after Jericho wins via interference from Sammy Guevara, all three men (who are visibly calling out spots at this point) awkwardly stumble through a rushed show-ending sequence which sees Sammy hold up Eddie, only for Eddie to reverse it, sending Jericho into Sammy and Eddie throwing Jericho onto a barbed wire pad. This debacle is not only panned by fans and critics alike, but is also an underwhelming conclusion to a feud between Kingston and Jericho which at this point had been going for nearly seven months.
* **July 24th** - Just a day after dropping the ROH World Championship at 'Death Before Dishonor', it's reported that Jonathan Gresham had requested to be released from AEW/ROH - *''Gresham, who lost the ROH world championship to Claudio Castagnoli in the PPV opener, was apparently upset over a “lack of communication” leading to the show. He also reportedly took issue with the amount of time they were given for their title match. It all combined to create a general feeling that he was being disrespected. A meeting with Tony Khan apparently included Gresham cussing him out.''* This comes at the same time Tully Blanchard, who had been managing Gresham on television, had also requested his release.
* **August 25th** - It's revealed that Eddie Kingston had been quietly suspended from the company after assaulting Sammy Guevara backstage. At the August 10th taping of Rampage, Sammy cut an in-ring promo on Eddie where he called him a 'fat piece of shit.' It's alleged that when Sammy came back through the curtain, Eddie was waiting and attempted to punch him. The match between the two - which was scheduled to be at All Out - was cancelled and the promo never aired (but still found its way online).
* **August 26th** - To hype up an episode of Rampage, AEW spend all day promising exclusive backstage footage of CM Punk following his world title match against Jon Moxley. Fans speculate it could be an emotional promo or a hint of a heel turn. Instead, it ends up being a pointless 20 second clip in which Punk says nothing of value except vaguely suggesting he re-broke his foot, something which goes nowhere as just 9 days later he's back wrestling Moxley for the world title again at All Out.

### All Out 2022

* The first match of the pre-show is a mixed tag between Ruby Soho, Ortiz, Sammy Guevara and Tay Melo which features two horrific botches. The first sees Ruby dropped on the top of her head by Sammy after being kicked whilst in a tree-of-woe. The second sees Tay accidentally break Ruby's nose whilst hitting her finish.
* The opening match of the main show is a seven-man ladder match for an opportunity to face the AEW World Champion (completely bypassing AEW's redundant rankings system). The match features a number of botches, including Dante Martin entering the match only to immediately get hit by a falling ladder during a choreographed spot. The ending sees masked men attack all the competitors whilst helping a mystery entrant - a man in a devil mask - grab the chip to win the match. The ending is met with confusion by both fans in the arena and at home, but is explained on the following Dynamite when MJF reveals he was the devil.
* The main event sees CM Punk beat Jon Moxley to regain the AEW World Championship, just 11 days after Moxley had squashed Punk to win the unified championships. During the match, Punk tears his tricep hitting a suicide dive to the outside which later requires surgery. This is the second time in three months Punk goes down with an injury.

### September - December

* **September 19th *-*** On an episode of Dark: Elevation, after Nyla Rose squashes a local talent, Marina Shafir is handed a microphone and proceeds to cut one of the worst promos of all time. She initially praises the Albany crowd for welcoming her family when they emigrated from Moldova, saying '**'***you know me*'' to the audience, before bizarrely doing an about-turn and screaming''*you don't know me*'' over and over. She stumbles over her lines, repeating herself on more than one occasion, all whilst wearing a straw hat which took away any sense of seriousness that should've been projected. The promo is mocked online and to this date is the only in-ring promo she has performed in AEW.
* **September 23rd** - During the finish of a no-DQ tag match between Sting, Darby Allin and the House Of Black, Julia Hart takes a bump off the apron but overshoots a table which had been placed behind her, leading to her smashing the back of her head on the concrete floor. Julia reportedly isn't injured, but this is the last time House of Black are seen on TV for a couple of months.
* **September 28th** - A week after her debut, Saraya cuts a terrible promo on Dynamite whilst introducing herself to the AEW audience. She tries to evoke the WWE women's evolution but botches her line, saying - "*I was the revolution here and I'm gonna be the revolution because I AM the revolution!"* She also takes a shot at her former employers when she says *- “It's so good to have a boss to actually finally listen to me.''* Saraya later reveals in an interview that she was asked to say the line and that she actually has no hard feelings towards anyone in WWE.
* **October 5th** - Amidst online rumours he was unhappy in AEW and would be open to going back to WWE, Andrade does an interview with Mexico’s Mas Lucha where he reveals he has no backstage heat with anyone...except Sammy Guevara. He alleges that after a match, Sammy complained about being hit too hard. This leads to Sammy cryptically tweeting - *''You are a jobber. A favor hire. Be grateful bitch.''* The two get into a Twitter argument which Andrade signs off by saying - *''Ok I’m a liar - see you on Wednesday!! I'll tell you to your face again!!!''* When both men arrive at the arena for Dynamite, it's reported that Andrade punched Sammy twice before being held back by security. Andrade is sent home and isn't seen again in AEW for over eight months. Meanwhile, Sammy not only works the main-event of the show but gets the pinfall for his team.
* **October 12th** - After months of programming which had seen Daniel Garcia put in the middle of a feud between the Jericho Appreciation Society (JAS) and the Blackpool Combat Club, with the leaders of both factions (Jericho & Danielson) vying for him to pick their side, Garcia makes his decision and betrays Danielson to rejoin the JAS. Before this moment, Garcia had been getting increasingly good reactions to the point where he was main-eventing Dynamite's and getting chants of ''you're a wrestler'' from the audience. After this, however, his push is immediately quashed, as he proceeds not only to take a backseat to Jericho but also lose virtually every big match he's in for the next few months.
* **November 2nd** - On Dynamite, Jay Lethal defeats Darby Allin with the help of a mystery man dressed up as Sting. After the match, the man gets in the ring and reveals himself to be Cole Karter...to complete silence. Karter, who had wrestled as Troy "Two Dimes" Donovan in NXT before being released for a failed drugs test, had largely competed on Dark up until this point and thus next to nobody recognised him when he unmasked. Bizarrely, just moments later, Jeff Jarrett makes his AEW debut by smashing Darby with a guitar, completely overshadowing Karter's appearance. About a month later, Karter loses to Darby on an episode of Rampage and immediately disappears from television.
* **November 23rd** - AEW air a segment on Dynamite where Jade Cargill and the 'baddies' confront rapper Bow-Wow before a concert in Miami. The two had been 'feuding' on Twitter for weeks due to Bow-Wow's interest in becoming a professional wrestler. The next week on Dynamite during a 'TBS Championship celebration' Jade is interrupted by Bow-Wow who says he'll be seeing her *''soon baby...real, real soon.''* This is the final time he ever appears in AEW. A couple of months later, Jade says in an interview - *"I don't know what happened with it. Something was supposed to happen, it didn't happen, and we moved on from the situation"*
* **December 14th** - On an episode of Dynamite, Chris Jericho suffers an upset loss to young wrestler Action Andretti, who had previously wrestled a few dark matches for AEW but never appeared on television. The win is dubbed the 'The Biggest Upset in Wrestling History' by AEW and Andretti is officially signed to the company. A few weeks later, Jericho goes on Marc Maron's podcast and brags about putting him over - ''*It’s one of the greatest moments we’ve had in AEW history because no one knew this guy, and by the end, we made a new star*.'' Andretti's next TV match is over a month later, on Rampage, picking up a win over Daniel Garcia. The next week on Dynamite, he's pinned in a tag match, losing to Jericho and Sammy Guevara. After this he quickly becomes a jobber, losing not once but twice to Sammy on Rampage before taking losses from the likes of Juice Robinson, Kyle Fletcher and Zack Sabre Jr. After this he spends most of the next year either competing in ROH or being part of a trios act with Top Flight, only broken up by a two week storyline where he attempts to get the managerial services of CJ Perry only to be beaten by Miro.

## **2023**

### January - May

* **January 13th** - A street fight between TayJay, Ruby Soho and Willow Nightingale is most remembered for a terrible botch near the end of the match when Willow powerbombs Anna Jay off the stage, completely missing a table and resulting in Anna landing back first on the floor. Weeks later it's revealed that Anna suffered dislocated ribs which took her out of action for over two months.
* **January 16th** - Jade Cargill lets slip in an interview that she wasn't taught how to use a chair before being asked to use one on national TV, remarking that it was in fact CM Punk who had to tell her how to hold one. Despite this, her chair shots still looked incredibly weak.
* **February 15th** - AEW files to trademark a name for a new wrestling show. However the filing is misspelt, leading to the trademark - 'AEW COLLISON' - something which had to be fixed a few days later.
* **March 24th** - Fancam footage of a house show match between Anna Jay and Britt Baker goes viral for how slow and uncoordinated both women are. It's so bad that AEW tries to scrub the footage from the internet with a series of takedown orders.
* **April 29th** - After a segment on Dynamite in which Britt Baker is given a black eye by the Outcasts, someone within AEW has the genius idea of taking a selfie Britt had posted on her Instagram and selling it as a t-shirt on their official website. This is met with almost universal outrage and the backlash is so severe that even mainstream outlets like Fox News and Sports Illustrated cover the story. Britt responds by attempting to spin criticism of the shirt as misogony - *“To me, it’s showing the internal narrative that people are saying about women—and that’s that we’re not as strong or as tough as the men, and that’s the real problem here.''*
* **May 18th** - Minutes before a subpar rating for Dynamite drops, Tony Khan takes to Twitter to point out that Dynamite was actually doing very well in the ratings...the Cagematch ratings, that is. Once again the tweet is ridiculed online. However it ends up having real world consequences as just a couple of weeks later, the owners of Cagematch are forced to make changes to how events are rated on their site due to *''rampant tribalism and reactionism after wrestling events'*'

### Double Or Nothing 2023

* The night starts off with a six-man tag on the PPV kick-off, in which the Hardys and HOOK defeated The Firm (Ethan Page and the Gunns). Per the stipulations of the match, Matt Hardy gained control of Page's contract. Despite the fact that the storyline between Matt and Ethan had been dragging on for over seven months at this point, the angle is dropped just weeks later when Ethan disappears from TV. When he eventually returns months later, the contract stipulation and Ethan's involvement with the Firm is never mentioned.
* The main-show begins with a 21-man casino battle royal which sees Orange Cassidy retain his International Championship. It was during this match that a tweet by Bryan Alvarez would go viral, as it showed Cassidy celebrating his victory in front of hundreds of empty seats on the hardcam side. The attendance would be a big talking point, as the number of paid attendees would be around 9,000 - much lower than the 14,500 who showed up the previous year in Las Vegas.
* The battle royal began a string of gimmick matches on the show. Next, Adam Cole defeated Chris Jericho in a Unsanctioned match with Sabu serving as the special guest enforcer. The match was heavily panned for its slow pace, constant outside interference and anti-climatic finish which saw Cole choke Jericho out with a chain leading to a referee stoppage.
* Sabu's appearance during this match would be brief, mostly pointless and highly embarrassing, as he engaged in a slow chair duel with Jericho before putting Manard and Parker through a table by diving onto it, something which was no-sold by all the announcers except Jim Ross. Months later Sabu would say in an interview - *“To tell you the truth, I was unhappy with it because it wasn’t the spot I wanted to do. I wanted the guys to be head-to-head, feet out laying across the table, but they were laying on top of each other. I wanted to do a leg drop to both of them through the table...So, I just did a splash. It got over, but I wasn’t happy with it.''*
* The next match saw FTR retain their tag titles against Jay Lethal and Jeff Jarrett with Mark Briscoe serving as the special guest referee. This match was an overbooked mess, with Briscoe being taken out by a accidental guitar shot from Jeff, only for replacement referee Aubrey Edwards also to be taken out by a guitar shot, this time from Karen Jarrett. Despite outside interference from Karen, Sonjay Dutt and Satnam Singh, Briscoe would eventually recover to count the pinfall for FTR.
* Up next would be Wardlow retaining the TNT Championship in a ladder match against Christian Cage. Like the previous two matches, it was marred by outside interference. After attempting to interfere on Christian's behalf, Luchasaurus tried chokeslamming Wardlow's manager, Arn Anderson, only for the enforcer to bite down on Luchasaurus' thumb, leading to the bizarre sight of Anderson bleeding from the mouth. Much like Sabu earlier, Luchasaurus' involvement would be brief as he was put through a table by Wardlow and not seen again.
* The crescendo of all this overbooked nonsense however would happen in the very next match between Jamie Hayter and Toni Storm for the AEW Women's Championship, a smoke-and-mirrors affair featuring hardly anything but outside interference. Before the bell even rang, Jamie was attacked by Saraya and Ruby Soho behind the curtain and on the ramp. Hayter would demand the match be started anyway, however the bout would last all of just three minutes as spray paint to the eyes, a hip attack, an exposed turnbuckle and finally a Storm Zero would finish Jamie off and see Toni become a two-time champion. The 'match' was panned for being a glorified TV angle and was made more bizarre by the fact that despite suffering what seemed to be a kayfabe shoulder injury on TV a month prior, it was revealed just a few days before the show that Hayter was legitimately injured.
* Mercifully, this was the turning point of the show as after this, most of the remaining matches were fairly clean and featured chicanery...until the main-event. The Anarchy In The Arena match between the Blackpool Combat Club and the Elite got off to a contentious start when the lead singer of Violent Idols, who were performing Jon Moxley's entrance, seemed to be donning blackface. The match itself was a chaotic mess with the action being almost impossible to follow, as the camera crew attempted and sometimes failed to keep up with all of the spots. The ending comes when Konosuke Takeshita, who hadn't wrestled in AEW in over a month, turns heel on the Elite.

### June - August

* **June 25th** - At the media scrum following Forbidden Door, Chris Jericho picks up a water bottle and whacks it with a baseball bat straight into a journalist in the front row who suffers lacerations as a result.
* **July 19th** - The Golden Elite and the Blackpool Combat Club battle in the third annual Blood and Guts match. Despite being nearly an hour long, the finish comes abruptly and leaves viewers at home baffled. Wheeler Yuta, being choked by a chain on the ropes, doesn't verbally submit yet the bell rings anyway signalling the Elite had won. With around 10 seconds of the broadcast left, word got to the commentators that Moxley had verbally submitted on behalf of his teammate. No replays were shown of this.
* **July 26th** - After a particularly horrid match between Britt Baker and Taya Valkyrie on Dynamite, the director cuts to a shot of a fan holding a sign that reads - *''Book the women's division better.''* The next day, Saraya likes a tweet saying the entire Outcasts storyline had been a waste of time. On the same day, veteran indie wrestler Lufisto, who wrestled a dark match for AEW in April 2022, alleges the women's locker room has a toxic culture - *''It's cute how people blame booking for a bad women's division. Talent with too much power; talent denigrating each other; talent trash-talking potential employees so they never get in as soon as they walk in...It starts here.''*
* **August 12th** - After an episode of Collision, CM Punk cuts a promo to send the fans home happy. Seeing a 'Hangman' Adam Page sign in the crowd, Punk remarks - *"Earlier today I went to a local supermarket and I figured out why they call him Hangman. It’s because the pegs in the toy aisle are full of Hangman action figures because nobody wants to buy them. He’s a peg warmer, unlike me who moves merchandise and pops ratings and sells toys.”* This immediately stirs up more rumours of backstage tensions between Punk and the Elite.
* **August 14th** - It's reported by PWTorch that at the recent Collision tapings, Nick Nemeth - a friend of the Bucks who had previously called CM Punk *"literally the softest* *man alive"* on his now-deleted Twitter account - had a tense encounter with Punk in a hallway, though they ended up shaking hands before parting. It's also revealed that Matt Hardy and Head of Talent Relations Christopher Daniels were turned away from Collision on the insistence of Punk. PWTorch state that - *"The feeling backstage among wrestlers not in a position of power with a big contract is to lay low when it comes to Punk because you don’t want to be on what is essentially his enemies list."*

### The Build-Up

* **August 15th** - It's reported that at a Collision taping, CM Punk and Jack Perry got into a argument about a pre taped spot that would involve Perry using a glass sheet. Punk and others, including Tony Schiavone, reportedly told Perry not to use a real glass pane, and with Punk as the de factor leader of Collision bookings, this meant the segment was withdrawn. A heated argument ensued between Perry and Punk.
* **August 18th** - Cash Wheeler is arrested on an assault charge. It emerges that the warrant has been out since July and AEW were not aware of it.
* **August** **23rd** - The scheduled match for All In London featuring Swerve Strickland and A.R. Fox against Darby Allin and Sting is changed, with Christian Cage now replacing A.R. Fox. In a bizarre post-match angle, Fox was blamed for losing a tag match with Strickland against Allin and Nick Wayne which led to Allin and Wayne saving Fox from a Strickland beatdown, despite the fact that Fox was involved in a number of violent attacks on them. It turns out that behind the scenes, Fox was not able to wrestle in the UK, hence the change to the card. Similar visa issues also led to Fenix being pulled from the card despite being advertised for the Stadium Stampede match.
* **August 26th** - A fan meet and greet event in London has numerous fans unhappy as their chance to take a photo with an AEW wrestler also includes two other random fans. No refunds, keep the line moving.

### The Event

* **August 27th** - Mere minutes before the biggest ticketed show of all time, Jungle Boy Jack Perry takes a bump into a car windshield and then looks directly into the camera and says "real glass, cry me a river!" (see August 15) What happened next is unclear but all accounts agree that on returning to the backstage area, Perry and Punk got into a brawl that was violent enough to cause a stack of tv monitors to fall on Tony Khan, who would later make a public announcement saying that he feared for his life. Perry and Punk are both suspended, cancelling the proposed main event of AEW's All Out which would have been Punk vs Starks.
* **August 27th** - It also comes to light that on arrival to the UK, there was no company transport waiting to pick Punk up from the airport. It's believed that Punk thought this was a personal slight against him, until it's revealed later that the company did not provide private transport for anyone.

### The Aftermath

* **September 2nd** - Tony Khan makes a live announcement before Collision to explain that CM Punk has been fired 'with cause' from the promotion. Khan receives a mixed reception from the Chicago crowd who as they filtered in the building had been leading dueling chants of "CM Punk/Colt Cabana",
* **September 13th** - Following a freedom of information request to the local council, it's revealed that attendance at All In, was not the reported number of 81,035 and was actually around 72,265. Of course it's common for wrestling companies to do inflate attendance figures, but the announcement sent people running to Wikipedia to edit the List of professional wrestling attendance records, bumping All In from the third biggest match of all time to the seventh. One person who wasn't able to quickly scrub the previous number was Will Ospreay, who apparently hadn't been smartened up and had got the worked number tattooed onto his arm.

### September - December

* **September 16th** - On an episode of Collision, AEW have an embarrassing production botch when the feed cuts backstage to Keith Lee and Lexy Nair, only for a stage-hand to step in front of the camera and announce ''*Collision, Take 22*'' before the interview starts.
* **September 20th** - During an International title match between Jon Moxley and Rey Fenix, Moxley is concussed following a dive to outside from Fenix. Moxley opts to continue while at the same calling an audible for Fenix to win the match, raising questions about just who is in control in AEW. Things go from bad to worse when Fenix spikes Moxley on his head with an split legged piledriver, only for referee Rick Knox, who was unaware of the audible, fluffing the pin and refusing to count to three. In a moment of madness, Fenix hits Moxley with a second botched piledriver before the pin was finally counted. In the aftermatch, pro-wrestler-cum-analyst Stevie Richards made an in-depth video explaining what went wrong and bringing heavy criticism to all parties. The video was removed from Youtube after a copyright claim from AEW.
* **September 23rd** - This weeks Dynamite opened with Eddie Kingston defeating Claudio for the ROH belt in a feud based on the history of the two performers and Kingston's long standing grudge that Claudio didn't support the indies when he was called to WWE in the mid 2010s. A few days later, Eddie "sticking up for the indies" Kingston cancelled all his independent dates. Again.
* **October 10th** - Throughout the show viewers are treated to a series of pre-taped segments with Toni Storm, in her new early twentieth century gimmick, chewing the scenery in a black and white silent movie. The segments were supposed to coincide with the ads on TV, With Storm acting in response to what was happening in the ads. Yet for those watching on FITE and other platforms, the segments were just tediously long and incomprehensible. October 10th was also the much hyped showdown between NXT and AEW, both scheduled for Tuesday. While WWE loaded up their card with the likes of Cena, Becky Lynch and the Undertaker, Tony Khan had taken to twitter earlier in the day to call Shawn Michaels and HHH "Bald Asshole". When the ratings came back on Wednesday showing that NXT had trounced AEW, Khan was reduced to liking posts on twitter from fans saying that "Dynamite was the real winner".
* Khan continued his twitter antics with a widely mocked post still attempting to salvage some kind of moral victory : "This week, 2 active decades-long ratings streaks from 2 great legends were ended With all due respect, until this week’s head-to-head AEW on TBS vs WWE on USA, neither John Cena nor Undertaker had ever been on a WWE show with under 1 million total viewers + under 400k in the demo". A bold strategy Tony, but the pay off just drew attention to the fact that all the big stars on AEW tv (including new signing Edge) were on a show with even less viewers.
* **October 25th -** To promote Dynamite, Tony Khan promised a gift for Sting.."This will be an historic gift...Nothing like this has ever happened to a wrestler in pro wrestling." The gift? Ric Flair. Here till March apparently to promote his own brand of energy drinks. Elsewhere in the show, a fan was spotted holding up a sign saying "Women's wrestling is alive and well". This was followed by a turgid Hikaru Shida vs Ruby Soho match that, at time of writing had garnered an impressive 2.66 rating on cagematch.
* **October 27th** - Jon Moxley gives an interview which amounts to a public call out of AEW's health and safety practices, or lack of them. The interview follows Moxley's concussion (see September 20th) and the ensuing communication breakdown. Moxley's suggestion seems pretty sensible-calling for a doctor and an industry vet to be watching and monitoring every match- and it also draws attention to the fact that AEW *doesn't* have these in place and why a former world champion feels they need to say this in a public interview rather than asking Tony Khan directly.
* **October 30th** - Bryan Danielson sustains a orbital bone injury that in kayfabe was sustained in a match on Dynamite teaming with Claudio against Okada and Orange Cassidy. However, its revealed that he actually sustained the injury four days before this on Collision against Andrade, once again raising questions about AEW's duty of care towards injured wrestlers.
* **November 2nd** - AEW announce the signing of Ric Flair to a multi-year deal, a move which is met with huge backlash online from fans and critics alike. Not only does the move play into the narrative of AEW turning into a company for retired ex-WWE stars, but it comes just a couple of years after a Dark Side of the Ring episode exposed Flair's abhorrent behavior during the infamous ''Plane Ride From Hell'' incident.
* **November 11th** - On an episode of Collision, Tony Khan announces a new round robin tournament called the Continental Classic. Instead of having the prize be something simple like a world title opportunity or a sum of cash, the winner instead gets a new 'Continental Classic' title belt (adding to AEW's bloated championship tally) along with the ROH World and New Japan Strong Openweight Championships, both of which would be on the line due to Eddie Kingston's participation in the tournament. Thus the winner would become a ''triple crown'' champion despite none of the belts holding much prestige.
* **November 29th** - Less than a month after signing with the company Ric Flair finds himself in hot water when, during a promo with Sting for an episode of Rampage, he asks for women “18-28, no boyfriends, no husbands, meet me at my hotel room.'' The line would be edited out of the final broadcast, however after online backlash Flair ''apologises'' in the form of a Twitter statement - *''I Appreciate Everything @TonyKhan, But* *I’m More Than Willing To Walk Away If I Am Embarrassing You And* *Y**our C**ompany. All I Can Say Is I’m Sorry!''*
* **December 9th** - AEW's flagship angle of the autumn has been "the Devil", a masked man who regularly attacks World Champiom MJF and anyone linked with him. This mystery attacker would bewilderingly get their own official t shirt despite the fact that in kayfabe, nobody knew who the attacker was or if they even worked for AEW. To make matters worse, it bore the slogan "I am Him", the catchphrase of current NXT wrestler, Carmelo Hayes.
* **December 13th** - During an episode of Dynamite, AEW's twitter account mixes up the two Briscoe brothers, sending out a tweet reading - ''Jay Briscoe may have been eliminated from contention last week, but that doesn't mean he will stop fighting". Jay Briscoe had died earlier in the year in a tragic car accident.
* **Christmas 2023**. The Ghost of Christmas Past, CM Punk is still haunting the company months after his departure. Yep, Brawl Out '22 is the gift that keeps on giving for LOLAEW fans, and on Christmas Eve, it was Chris Jericho's turn to get involved. After a news report said that the only person involved in Brawl Out that wasn't under an Non Disclosure Agreement was Ace Steel's wife, Lucy, The Fozzy frontman weighed in late on Christmas eve on Twitter claiming that he was also not under an NDA. What made this even more bizarre was that it was Jericho's own website, 'Web is Jericho' that he was correcting. The tweet drew a response from Cm Punk's lawyer Stephen P New, who claimed that Jericho was in fact under an NDA and this was in the Employee Handbook. Jericho's response: "I don’t adhere to an employee handbook and have NEVER had one in 4 years of working for @aew" likely won him no friends with those in the office who were looking to project the image of a company that had its act together. The same week, Dave Meltzer reported that Matt Jackson's wife, Dana Massie, who had been in charge of Merchandising, had left the company after feeling that following Brawl Out, the Bucks were "never allowed to defend themselves and the company never defend[ed] them". Massie's tenure as head of merch had not been without criticism, and earlier in the year CM Punk (yep, him again) had posted an official ROH t shirt that got the date of Death Before Dishonor wrong on his Instagram with the caption 'How this could happen?" and a laughing emoji. On Boxing day, Nick Hausman would also report that some AEW talent were unhappy with merchandise and a Sting snowglobe was so bad it had to be recalled.
* **World's End.** The weekend around AEW's PPV on December 30th was a shitshow allround. Wrestling media figure Nick Hausman would say on his podcast that Chris Jericho was akin to Harvey Weinstein. This prompted another round of rumour mongering that reached a fever pitch when Kylie Rae (who had left the company in 2019) left a heart emoji in response to a fan account speculating about Jericho's misdeeds. The implication to many was that Jericho was somehow responsible for Rae leaving. During the show Jericho, who had recently reformed the team of the "Le Sex Gods" recieved a few boos from the crowd and as he stepped into the ring, fans on the hardcam held up signs reading "Jeri-Go Away" and "World's NDA". At the post-show conference for World's End, a few members of the media actually dared to ask Tony Khan about concerns about sexual harrassment in the workplace. Khan responded by saying that AEW had the best safety record and was the safest company in pro wrestling. Through this very serious question and answer session, Khan was wearing a fur hat and sunglasses that he had borrowed from Toni Storm, a cartoonish appearance that appeared to make a joke of the whole deal. Eventually, Adam Hopkins, AEW's head of PR, had to come up to the table and take the hat and glasses from his boss.

## 2024

**January**. It's not just wrestling fans that have been clowning on AEW. The official USA Network account got in on the action, with a 'what was the cagematch rating?' post mocking Tony Khan's frequent appeal to the site as a metric of success.

## AEW Fight Forever

* **N****ov****ember 10th, 2020** - AEW officially announces they are producing a video game which will release on all consoles.
* **June** **22nd, 2021** - Tony Khan reveals in an interview with PWInsider that the sole reason AEW isn't turning a profit is because of a $20 million investment he has made in developing the video game *- ''the company tech**nically* *technically won't be in the black because I'm making this huge investment into gaming and video games. In particular, it's crazy because like that's going to be an even bigger investment that's going to pay off huge that I've made this huge eight figure investment in video games because that we won't see any revenue from that until 2022. ''*
* In interviews, both Tony Khan and Kenny Omega claim the game will be released some time in 2022. However this time frame is blown apart by a series of unfortunate events.
* **No****vember 19th, 2022** - Following months of silence, a new trailer is released showing off new gameplay. New cover art for the game is shown with Kenny Omega and Hangman Page front and center whilst CM Punk - who at the time was suspended from AEW following Brawl Out - was nowhere to be found. This leads to speculation that he'd been removed from the game altogether, something which ended up being untrue.
* **March 1st, 2023** - Game Changer Wrestling (GCW) file a claim to the United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) to oppose the trademark 'AEW: Fight Forever' along with a 90-day extension to investigate the claim further. The extension is granted, although it's also reported that GCW is in “settlement discussions” with AEW. All of this further delays the release of the game.
* **May 22nd, 2023** - AEW and THQ Nordic finally announce the game's release date - June 29th.
* **June 23rd, 2023** - The game's full roster is revealed. Evil Uno, who spent the best part of a year promoting Fight Forever via the company's AEWGames channels (even travelling to Germany for Gamescom), doesn't even make it into the game. Other noticable absences include then women's champion Toni Storm, Jamie Hayter, The Acclaimed, Swerve Strickland and three quarters of the House Of Black.
* **June 29th, 2023** - AEW's long awaited video game is finally released. The game receives mixed to negative reviews from most outlets. IGN, who had been promoting the game for months, give it a 6/10.
* The game is littered with issues including gameplay-breaking glitches, a lack of match types, an underwhelming career mode, a lack of licensed music (multiple wrestlers don't have their proper entrance themes), dated graphics, outdated wrestler attires and a downright awful create-a-wrestler mode.
* Kenny Omega, who famously was heavily involved in the production of the game, did not even make a single tweet about it on the first day of release.
* The intro to the game shamelessly steals it's opening lines from the TNA iMPACT game which releaed all the way back in 2008.
* The game goes on sale within mere days of release. On Steam it's reduced by 13% whilst on Amazon it's reduced by nearly 20%.
* Whilst player count is hard to verify, Steamcharts.com shows that Fight Forever's PC userbase plummeted in the weeks following its release. Within a month the steam player count had dropped over 90% from its peak and had less active players than WWE2K22 (a game released nearly 16 months prior). Within six weeks it was behind Fire Pro Wrestling World (a game released in late-2017) and was neck-and-neck with Wrestling Empire, an indie game developed by Matt Dickie released in early-2021.
* With player count plummeting and interest dying out, the only videos going viral relating to the game are those showing game-breaking glitches.
* The official AEW Fight Forever subreddit completely turns on the game with their ire being directed at the devs. A post talking about buyers remorse garners over 450 comments with most users agreeing with the original poster. Meanwhile there are daily posts complaining about various aspects of the game including the broken online matchmaking, delayed DLC and a general lack of updates.
* **August 10th, 2023** - Whilst Fight Forever continues to flounder, AEW removes one of their previous games - Elite GM - from all mobile app stores.

## Battle Of The Belts

* **May 19th, 2021** - Warner Brothers announce that AEW Dynamite will be moving to TBS at the start of 2022. In the same press release it's revealed that AEW will begin airing a new show (AEW Rampage) on TNT along with new quarterly ''supercards.''
* **May 27th, 2021** - Cody Rhodes promotes these specials by comparing them to Clash of the Champions and Saturday Night's Main Event - *''They'd be super events, type events where the titles are on the line, where big stories converge...those four specials will be very special indeed, in-house and arena, and on TNT. I think it'll be a whole new ball game for wrestling fans.''*
* **November 24th, 2021** - It's revealed that the TV specials will be named 'Battle Of The Belts' (BOTB) - taken from the NWA who held events with the same name between 1985 and 1987 - and will air on Saturday nights.
* The first BOTB takes place on January 8th, 2022 and right off the bat there are issues. A match that would have seen Cody Rhodes defend his TNT Championship against Sammy Guevara is cancelled due to Cody suffering from COVID. He's replaced by his brother Dustin, who fights Sammy for an Interim TNT Championship - a concept that would cause AEW unnecessary problems in the future.
* The second match sees Ricky Starks defend the FTW Championship - not even officially recognised by AEW - against Matt Sydal in a match with no build and literally announced the day before the show.
* The main-event sees Britt Baker defend her AEW Women's Championship against Riho in a match heavily panned for the non-stop interference from Jamie Hayter and Rebel at ringside. During the finish there is tension teased between Britt and Hayter which goes nowhere as the two hug after the match. Meanwhile, Riho suffers a broken collarbone and is out of action for close to four months.
* Despite being heavily featured in the promotional material, neither the World Champion 'Hangman' Adam Page (who defended the title three days earlier on Dynamite) or the World Tag Team Champions the Lucha Brothers (who lost the titles to Jurassic Express on that same Dynamite) appear on the show. Instead, the other champions all compete on an extended episode of Dark taped the same night. These matches are all inconsequential 'eliminators' featuring the champions beating undercard talent.
* The second BOTB takes place on April 15th, 2022. Realising it couldn't be sold on its own merit, AEW begins taping the event on a Friday after Rampage. Because of this, champions who aren't booked on BOTB don't even show up to do dark matches.
* The opener features Scorpio Sky losing his TNT Championship to Sammy Guevara in what would turn out to be the ONLY title change to take place on a BOTB show to date. The second bout sees Jonathan Gresham and Dalton Castle - two men who hadn't appeared on AEW programming before - fight for the ROH World Championship - a title not affiliated with AEW - in a match with no build and announced just two days before it aired. The main-event is Thunder Rosa successfully defending her Women's championship against Nyla Rose in a match with a heavily criticised build.
* The third BOTB airs August 5th, 2022. The opener has Wardlow retaining his TNT Championship against Jay Lethal. An after-match attack by Satnam Singh on Wardlow goes nowhere as the two never wrestle each other. The second match between Thunder Rosa and Jamie Hayter for the Women's Championship is mostly remembered for Rosa accidentally breaking Hayter's nose towards the finish. The main-event sees ROH World Champion Claudio Castagnoli successfully defend against Konosuke Takeshita in a match with next to no build and, again, for a title not affiliated with AEW.
* The fourth and final BOTB of the year takes place October 7th, 2022. To avoid clashing with WWE Extreme Rules the event is moved from Saturday and instead airs after Rampage on Friday. In the opener, PAC defends the All-Atlantic Championship against Trent Barretta in the only match with any story behind it. Jade Cargill retains the TBS Title against Willow Nightingale, whilst the main-event sees ROH Tag Team Champions FTR beat The Gates Of Agony, a team that had never wrestled on AEW television before and had debuted just two days beforehand on Dynamite.
* Interest in BOTB predictably plummets over time as people realise they're nothing but throwaway shows. Between the first and final BOTB of 2022, viewership declines 55% whilst the 18-49 demo drops by over 60%.
* Despite this, Warner and AEW continue to produce the quarterly specials into 2023. To date there have been eight BOTB events featuring 24 championship matches. Just once has a title actually changed hands.

## Thunder Rosa: Women's Champion

* **March 4th, 2022** - It's reported that Thunder Rosa suffered an injury during a tag match on Dynamite and may miss her title match at Revolution against Britt Baker. Those within AEW poo-poo the claims - *''I've reached out to Thunder Rosa and AEW sources who have vehemently denied she's injured. The match at AEW Revolution with Dr. Britt Baker DMD is to proceed as scheduled.''*
* **March 6th, 2022** - When the times comes for the match at Revolution, Rosa shockingly loses despite most predicting she'd finally win the title. It's noted by many that Rosa looked completely miserable during her entrance, including a tweet from v1 from OSW Review which goes viral. Months later he reveals that Rosa sent him angry private messages over this.
* **March 16th, 2022** - Rosa defeats Britt Baker inside of a steel cage to become AEW Women's Champion. Baker is criticised for 'no-selling' a thumbtack spot near the finish of the match. Britt makes a strange response video where, instead of addressing the apparent no-selling, takes aim at people who thought the thumbtacks were fake.
* **March 23rd, 2022** - A week after winning the title, Rosa is interrupted by Vickie Guerrero, who cuts a quasi-racist promo about Thunder not being a real Texan, telling her to - *''take your fake green card, start the backstroke and return back to Mexico''* - before Rosa is attacked from behind by Nyla Rosa. Not only does this bury the new champion right out of the gate but the promo is met with so much backlash that AEW scrubs it from all their social media channels and never mentions it again.
* **May 5th, 2022** - Rosa has an awful back-and-forth promo segment on Dynamite with Serena Deeb which is universally panned by fans. In the days that follow, Rosa does interviews where she attempts to defend her title run - *"I just know that people are never going to be satisfied with everything that you do, or anything that happens. Bottom line. I’m going to do my best with everything I’m given all the time and people will criticise that too – which is OK.''* Up until this point she had been champion for nearly two months. In that time she had wrestled just one match, barely been given any mic time and largely been overshadowed by other women's storylines.
* **June 8th, 2022** - Thunder Rosa and Marina Shafir have a sloppy match on Dynamite featuring multiple awkward spots. In the days that follow, Rosa is accused of 'sandbagging' (being uncooperative with an opponent), something she has to deny in interviews with the media. The incident is joked about on TV by Britt Baker weeks later, who at the time of the match had liked this tweet - *''It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a match where somebody so obviously tried to make themselves look better than their opponent by sandbagging and no selling, but I just saw a perfect example of it on Dynamite.''*
* **August 3rd, 2022** - Before a tag match on Dynamite, Rosa appears with a t-shirt emblazoned with the words 'Sandbagging' - presumably confusing the portion of the audience that doesn't read dirtsheets. During the match, Rosa comes off the top rope and lands a nasty dropkick to the back of Jamie Hayter.
* **August 5th, 2022** - Two days later, Rosa accidentally breaks Jamie Hayter's nose during a championship match. This happens amongst rumours of backstage heat between Rosa and those affiliated with Britt Baker - ''A new report from Fightful Select adds that Rosa has heat with a significant number of talents, confirming that she and Baker cannot stand each other and that has been the case for well over a year. Rosa and Baker have attempted to remain professional and work with each other, and they remain open to doing so for the sake of simply doing their jobs. They also confirmed that Hayter has heat with Rosa now, and that most of the heat on Rosa has to do with how stiff she works in the ring.''
* **August 24th, 2022** - Rosa relinquishes the AEW Women's Championship due to an ongoing back injury. It's noted by some that whilst CM Punk got nearly 10 minutes of TV time to announce his injury back in June, Rosa's backstage promo received less than a minute. Instead of stripping her of the title, Tony Khan books a fatal-4-way at All Out to determine a Interim Women's Champion.
* **September 4th, 2022** - During the post All Out media scrum, ongoing rumours of backstage issues in the women's locker room are highlighted again when new Interim Women's Champion Toni Storm implies that Rosa's back injury is not real, saying to reporters - *“I mean, it’s not ideal. But Thunder Rosa says she’s injured. Okay. So when she say’s she’s not injured, she can come back and lose to me, and that will be the end of that.''*

## Brawl Out

* During the post-show media scrum, bloodied and tired Punk sits down next to Tony Khan and places his newly won World Championship on the table. He starts drinking sodas and eating all kinds of baked goods, not stopping throughout the whole scrum
* Almost immediately, Punk interrupts journalist Nick Hausman and attempts to correct the record about his friendship with Colt Cabana (who 'shares a bank account with his mother'), saying he hasn't been friends with him in 'almost a decade' and wants nothing to do with him.
* He quickly turns to a rant against Cabana and The Elite ('fucking children', coincidentally Executive Vice Presidents of the same company).
* Tony Khan (yes, he's still there) seems to try to stop him multiple times, but all he's able to do is quietly nodding at every insult Punk drops. Eventually, Punk calls out anybody who does not agree to come and say it to his face - later The Elite happily obliges.
* Whatever happened in the locker room is clouded by NDA's and contradicting dirt sheet rumors, but there is one thing we know for sure: Brawl Out was a night to remember

### Aftermath

* **March 28th, 2023** - In a podcast with Renee Paquette, Jon Moxley noted - *"As an observer, it seems like – you know, I've spent eight years on the indies, spent a couple of years in WWE developmental, spent like eight years in WWE. I've never seen so much b\*\*\*\*\*\*t drama in one place in my entire f\*\*\*\*\*g life."*
* This was in the same week where Dave Meltzer (seemingly trying to win an internet argument on his board) let slip that Punk and Moxley had disagreed over the booking to their world title matches the previous year. Meltzer had suggested that Punk was reluctant to let Moxley pin him on Dynamite and had even threatened the company with a legal letter. Punk responded publicly on Instagram that he had been injured and didn't want to wrestle in that condition, the implication being that Tony Khan had made him wrestle injured.
* Adding to the drama, it was also revealed that Moxley had been working without a contract during this time. The eventual booking - Moxley beating Punk in a squash and then dropping the belt on the PPV - was critically panned and was apparently down to Moxley's huge amount of leverage over the booking at that time.