wrestling / Columns

411 Wrestling Fact or Fiction: Was AEW The Promotion Of The Year?

January 3, 2020 | Posted by Jake Chambers
Jon Moxley Photo Credit: AEW

Welcome back to the 411 Fact or Fiction – Wrestling Edition, I’m your host, Jake Chambers. Every week, Fact or Fiction poses statements on pro-wrestling history, culture and current events and then challenges writers to explain why they believe each statement is totally factual or completely fiction. No middle ground will be tolerated!

This week’s guest is: Len Archibald.

Without a doubt one of the most beloved wrestling columnists in 411 history, Len has won over the hearts and minds of the most bitter and cynical of us all with his wisdom, personal touches and verbal flourish.

You just don’t find his brand of page-turning, literary, long-form wrestling column out there much anymore. To get his thoughts these days you mostly have to scour all of the 411 comments section, as this renaissance man is more than a pontificator of the wrestling professional but throws a wide mental net across the pop cultural horizon.

But thankfully Len agreed to join me this week for a Fact or Fiction look back at 2019 in the wrestling world. Let’s go!

Statement #1: AEW was the wrestling promotion of the year.

Len Archibald: FACT – This time last year, AEW did not even exist. There was an All In show that was way more successful than it had any right to be and there were rumblings of “what can be…” but in the grand scheme of things, WWE still ruled mainstream wrestling and New Japan was considered the main alternative. A full calendar year later, AEW has a major primetime spot on a major cable network, running pay per views and are in a position to grow in a way that another major American promotion has not been able to in a long time. Now, wrestling “promotion” of the year – are we discussing financial metrics? That’s WWE. Are we discussing “storylines”? NXT (which yes, is WWE) may have a leg up creatively. But what AEW has that no other promotion did in 2019 was create a sense of urgency and a sense of buzz.
 
On New Years Day 2019, All Elite Wrestling was introduced to the world and wrestling fans went ablaze with speculation, doubt and excitement. Who would fund this, though? A day later, enter the billionaire Khan family as underwriters, and introduce Tony Khan as a lifelong wrestling fan and things went from “nice, good luck!” to “…oh. shit. This is legit.” in a hurry. As the months progressed, more talent was signed, more was revealed about what AEW was going to be about and 10 days before it’s second event, Double or Nothing the promotion announced that it signed a deal to air on TNT. Oh. Shit. This is really legit. Double or Nothing rolls around, Jon Moxley appears and the buzz grew even further.
 
Without even airing a SINGLE television episode, AEW received all sorts of press from the industry, stories from Sports Illustrated, CBS Sports, etc. – major outlets – and we as fans were totally in the dark of what the promotion would do when it hit television. When AEW Dynamite premiered in October, it gave TNT its largest TV debut in FIVE YEARS bringing in over 1.4 million viewers. While viewership flucuates, it battles back and forth with NXT over dominance.
 
AEW gave professional wrestling something fans have clamored for, for years. An alternative that gets them excited. Something that can take swings at WWE and not get obliterated for it. A promotion run by those passionate about the business with the capital to back things up with great production values along with great performers. The narrative all year from my point of view has not been “What is WWE doing?” but “What can AEW do?” That’s a powerful narrative shift in this industry and its a shift that is constant from tweets from other wrestlers, especially from WWE even acknowledging their existence and the continuous, if sometimes annoying back and forth between the AEW and NXT/WWE faithful. AEW has been a constant for an entire calendar year and has run the narrative in professional wrestling in 2019 and nothing is more powerful than being able to control narrative in any medium. That makes it the promotion of the year for me.

Jake Chambers: FACT – What he said.

Statement #2: The WWE 24/7 Title will still be around in 5 years.

Len Archibald: FICTION – I know for some of the more “refined”, the 24/7 Title is a garbage prop of a title that continues to devalue an already devalued WWE creative. I’ve enjoyed its run and 99% of it is due to R-Truth who has IMO etched his place in the WWE Hall of Fame with it. Whether or not one believes that means anything is sort of irrelevant to me – I have been a fan of R-Truth for a long time and am pleased that he is getting something significant to do on television.

With that, I believe the 24/7 Title is essentially the R-Truth memorial title without R-Truth being dead. As of this writing, he is a 29x(?!?!?!) 24/7 champ and is basically the face of the division. He is also 48 years old. I would be interested to see if WWE does decide to continue the lineage of the 24/7 title who they would pass the torch to, but the R-Truth of the matter is that novelty titles never last past the main world, secondary, tag and women’s title lineages. The European Title didn’t last long, nor did the Hardcore Title. Eventually, like with talent, creative will have nothing for the title and it will either be absorbed into Salvador Dali’s fifth dimension or will be buried with Little Jimmy.

Jake Chambers: FACT – When I wrote the statement I thought it was an easy “Fiction”, but I like Len’s idea that the 24/7 title is basically just a full-on tribute to R-Truth, and if so there’s no way this dude is retiring in 5 years. R-Truth still looks like he’s in his early 30s and as long as they let him I’m sure he’ll be running around with that belt well into his 60s.

Statement #3: NXT matches in 2019 had too many near-falls.

Len Archibald: FACT – …but ALL matches in 2019 had too many near-falls. I am 100% certain my friend will get into a deep and meaningful rant about the nuances of wrestling as storytelling and performance art and how having 18 near-falls in a competitive battle is overkill. I know we both see professional wrestling as performance art, even if we are two sides of the same coin sometimes.
 
I will speak about NXT specifically to start: I was at WrestleMania Week and attended NXT: New York where Gargano and Adam Cole had one of my favorite matches I have ever had the pleasure to see live. Watching the match without the insight (and depending on your taste, distraction) of commentary and television production, I was enamored with the story of Johnny Wrestling never giving up despite having the kitchen sink thrown at him. Even though my philosophy about professional wrestling is that it adheres by fighting video games like Street Fighter 2, where each wrestler has a certain skill set specific to them and they can utilize it to their maximum on anyone to win a match (much like how under the right circumstances, the smaller Chun Li can defeat the larger Blanca), there is still a limit to what someone can take. Everyone has a power bar lowers the more they are hit and at some point, they’re just defeated. While several matches in NXT were great, it did at some point get to overkill getting to 2.99999. I will admit that this doesn’t really bother me than most, as I always have been willing to take my suspension of disbelief far in professional wrestling (remember, the greatest big man in history is a near 7-foot mortician/old west gunslinger) so it is what it is. Wrestling, as a live art form is designed to illicit a visceral reaction from the attending audience and NXT has been doing something right, even if it does get into near-parody sometimes.

Jake Chambers: FACT – Len’s favourite match of 2019 is probably the reason I made this statement. Honestly, I had accepted in NXT, NJPW, and indie et al, that the spamming of near-falls is just wrestling language for “great match” now.

But it was the end of that first fall of the 2/3 Falls Cole/Gargano match, where Cole simply pinned Gargano with one “Last Shot” Shinning Wizard finisher (hardly a devestating move) just over 10 minutes into the match. To me that meant, well, if this was a regular main event then the match would have been over? C’mon, we know that would just never happen. Gargano then recovered and continued to kick out of everything for the next 30 minutes, which made even less sense storytelling-wise. If they wanted to keep consistent logic then the match should have gone about 35 minutes without a near-fall and a super intense like 3 minutes where you’d see all three falls. Otherwise, all it did was taint that match for me and everything else in NXT for 2019 as being inconsistent and unbelievable. In contrast, I think 2018’s no-time limit 2/3 Falls NJPW Okada/Omega match and this year’s Starr/Janela 60-minute Ironman match in Beyond, demonstrated how you can do a long, near-fall filled match without resorting to illogical near-fall spamming.

Fact or Fiction – Quick Hits
– one sentence is all you need for this FoF lightning round!

1. Cutest Wrestler of 2019 (Female) = Kairi Sane

Len Archibald: FICTION – Not as long as Askua lives, green mist and all.

Jake Chambers: FICTION – I’d have to go full fetish and say Maki Itoh.

2. Cutest Wrestler of 2019 (Male) = Heavy Machinery’s Otis

Len Archibald: FICTION – Every time Kyle O’Reilly plays guitar with his NXT Tag Title, a piece of my soul is uplifted – I just want to pinch his cheek.

Jake Chambers: FACT – Otis is kind of like a C-level Pokemon character come to life.

3. Brock Lesnar will be in the main event (last match) of Wrestlemania.

Len Archibald: FACT – Brock main evented WM 31 and 34 and did not main event WM 32, 33 and 35 – time to even things out. Bring on Kevin Owens!

Jake Chambers: FICTION – I’m just gonna say “Fiction” out of wishful thinking.

¡SWITCH!

Statement #4: Chris Jericho has been the most overrated wrestler of 2019.

Jake Chambers: FACT – Chris Jericho as AEW champion was such 2019 American smark fan move that you’d almost think AEW was booked without writers. Playing to the best-for-business Twitter straw-man logic that Jericho was the “right choice” to lead AEW into a new national TV enterprise because of some perceived mainstream appeal was just a nerdy-ass thing to do. All Chris Jericho has done is help establish a good wrestling show as good for the fans who were going to watch it anyways. That’s not excellent, that’s just fine. Jericho is NOT better now than he ever was, and is getting by on cheesy memes more than great matches.

Len Archibald: FICTION – UGH. Overrated/Underrated…my most hated terms. I see things in terms of value and not subjective “rating”. I suppose that statement may completely nullify the question. I believe Jericho was a good choice to be AEW’s first champion. There was value in this as having someone who is an international name like his appearing on Dynamite on a weekly basis would provide the star power needed to pull in past wrestling fans based on his history, current fans who have been familiar with his past WWE runs and future fans who may want to see what the big deal is about him. I am not sure that TNT would take a chance on inaugural champion Hangman Page or even Kenny Omega. In the ring, Jericho in 2020 is not Jericho in 2010…he is not pulling out classic wrestling clinics. Jericho’s cheesy wrestling memes are selling merchandise. That is value. Jericho is doing his best to spotlight other AEW talent through allowing them to have competitive matches with him – playing the Ric Flair role when he would travel around the country and allow younger talent to get the rub by making them look competitive. Jericho is right where he needs to be in my opinion – he’s not overshadowing anyone in his spot as AEW Champ, he isn’t getting lofty praise as the second coming of meatballs or any mess like that. He’s in his lane, he’s playing his role and he is…at least to the Khans, TNT and AEW fans, providing value. That’s what he should be rated on.

Statement #5: The best wrestling match of 2019 was Walter vs. Tyler Bate from NXT UK Takeover – Cardiff.

Jake Chambers: FACT – On a roster full of criminally under-utilized wrestlers, Tyler Bate was definitely at the top of that list in 2019. However, I give the WWE credit for at least letting him main event a show and have one true classic. How that didn’t translate into regular main event appearances is the continual mystery of all things WWE, but hey, at least we got this match. A close second for me is the Best of the Super Junior Finals between Will Ospreay and Shingo, but I’m giving the nod to Bate/Walter, but it was a bit like choosing the best movies of 2015 (Mad Max Fury Road, Furious 7) or 2018 (Mission: Impossible – Fallout, Avengers – Infinity War), two massive epics featuring incredible stakes and unique mismatches, but in all of these cases I’ll always nudge the way of the biggest budget.

Len Archibald: FICTION – Full bias, again because I was there, but Gargano vs. Cole 2 out of 3 Falls at Takeover New York is my match of 2019 and one of my WWE matches of the decade. It was everything I wanted in professional wrestling as storytelling: An underdog that stands for everything good, that scratched and clawed his way to the top to prove his worth going toe to toe against a self-righteous, evil bully and his goons. The match started where the crowd was very pro Adam Cole, but like a well-paced crescendo, over a near 40-minute timeframe, Johnny Gargano fought from the ground up to win the crowd, take the falls, take the title and etch his place as Mr. Takeover. My throat was sore at the end of the match, my palms were red from way too many high fives and the emotion I felt was elating. WALTER vs. Tyler Bate is a banger, don’t get me wrong and would be my second or third pick as match of the year, but it is hard to go against seeing a perfect match live. It’s always like when I speak to some who say “…yeah, Hogan vs. Rock was ok, but the audience made the match…” All I can say is…if you weren’t there, man – you just don’t know.  

Statement #6: This is the correct ranking of pop culture in 2019:
1 – Film
2 – TV
3 – Pro-wrestling
4 – Music
5 – Books

Jake Chambers: FACT – 2019 was the year for pro-wrestling to really strike. The “golden age of TV” has succumbed to fragmented streaming subscriptions that battle through mediocrity algorithms to find ways of keeping you on a site longest, while full-length, theatrical movies still feel like Generation X’s last salvo to remain relevant. Wrestling had all the elements to surpass these aspects of pop culture by incorporating the best of gif-and-gossip daily sports media with multi-channel methods of providing quick and layered storytelling. However, while 2019 was a good year for wrestling it didn’t push the boundaries enough to overtake their cinematic cousins on my ranking of the pop culture pantheon.

As fragmented as the TV universe has become, there’s still mind-blowingly innovative shows like Too Old To Die Young, Pennyworth and Primal out there if you’re looking, and while wrestling is good even the most obscure promotions are tightroping the status quo for fear of losing hits or subscribers. Meanwhile, movies are now serializing with the effectiveness of the real TV golden age (the ’90s), where we saw Avengers -Endgame cash in on a decade of complexity, good will and action with a mainstream audience, while the WWE seems unable to book compelling or coherent narratives week-to-week.

When it comes to the more dense neighbours on the cultural spectrum, wrestling was able to find ways to stand out in 2019 where music and books remained mostly afloat due to volume. Wrestlers like Will Ospreay, Jon Moxley, Adam Cole and even Seth Rollins were among the elite stars that made a strong impression this year that will be remembered historically, while the output of say BTS, Billie Eilish, a Margaret Atwood cash-in or the Rachel Hollis self-help phenomenon are unlikely to be remembered fondly 5~10 years from now.

While admittedly an odd statement/concept, I would like to know where Len places pro-wrestling in 2019 among his variety of cultural interests. Is wrestling his (or your) go-to upload when free time allows artistic consumption? And if not, why? Are you pushing for wrestling to be better or are we content with the space it possessed in pop culture this year? Was your match of the year better than your favourite movie; did you spend more time with your wrestler of the year than your favourite music act? Basically, how much does wrestling really matter?

Len Archibald: FICTION – What…a weird question but here we go. I am a movie guy, I get paid to critique films, I go to school for film production, film studies and film theory, my bloodstream is basically a filmstrip, so movies will always be my first love and will always be #1 in pop culture for me. I think 2019 was a pretty good year for movies…let’s slide away the fact that the biggest film in history was released this year, there were several films that I believe caught the zeigiest of pop-culture: Us, Joker, Parasite, Knives Out, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and my favorite of 2019, Midsommar. Oh…and some Marvel movie came out this year. I heard it made some money. All in all, I was satisfied with 2019’s cinematic output. Professional wrestling was not going to compete with that. BUT – let’s also take a look at wrestler’s in movies: The Rock continues to be a bankable movie star with two massive hits this year. Batista can stamp his name to the highest grossing film of all time, was trusted to open an action comedy and will be placed in another starring vehicle. John Cena…is quietly becoming one of the most reliable stars in Hollywood (look at the gross of the last 4 films he’s been in…there’s a reason he has not come back to WWE.)

All things considered, though – at least based on where I live and the experiences I have in places I’ve been, 2019 has been a banner year for wrestling. I started the year at a Royal Rumble party with probably close to 25 people – a good chunk of them either casual or non-wrestling fans and it was great both enjoying the show and watching the reactions of those around me. The women’s rumble was the most compelling for everyone. I attended WrestleMania 35 and being in NYC, wrestling was on the brain. Here is the thing: there are WAY more wrestling fans than I think we want to admit and some of us are so wrapped in a self-imposed bubble of self-hatred for being a wrestling fan that we create this false narrative that people hide their fandom (which is an idiotic concept in itself, if you have to hide your fandom of something, I question your fandom…) While in NYC, I met so many people who work in bars, spoke with bouncers, Uber drivers, etc. who are wrestling fans. And I am not talking about those who are “yeah I remember watching when Stone Cold/Hulk Hogan, etc….” but these are people who know what’s going on NOW. Conversations about Brock Lesnar’s worth, conversations about AEW and their prospects, conversations about if Okada is the wrestler of the decade – these are deep discussions about professional wrestling in the most famous city in the world. In Toronto where a good chunk of my family is, AEW is BIG. With WWE basically holding a monopoly on wrestling programming for the longest time, AEW has become a beacon of hope (I should look into viewership on TSN.) On top of all that, everyone still talks about The Rock. As long as he is the highest paid actor in the world and is on top of the world, wrestling will be a large part of pop culture and is a massive part of my life in pop culture.

Now, do I love Midsommar more than I love Cole vs. Gargano? I witnessed the match live (and watched several more times on WWE Network), I watched the film 8 times. It is hard to gauge if there is a deeper appreciation for one over the other. They are different art forms. That would be like asking if I prefer reading Anton Chekov over Charlie Kauffman. They’re different styles in different mediums. Is it possible the measure The Rock, professional wrestler with Dwayne Johnson, Hollywood Actor? Is Game of Throne’s final season a bigger disappointment than Lashley’s and Lana’s wedding?

I suppose at the end of the day, everything is relative based on what I feel like consuming. Perhaps that makes me some sort of tripped out, pretentious arthouse hippie but I can only say that it all blurs for me depending on day and mood. I mean, everything is on demand anyway, right? So whenever I want watch, read or listen to…anything really, it’s right at my fingertips. Choices? Rankings? Who needs those when I have everything at my disposal anyway? #immediategratificationnation
 
PS: LEAVE BILLIE ELLISH ALONE.

Thanks again to Len Archibald for taking part in this week’s epic year-in-review column. He has no social media or anything to plug, but if you want more Len I can direct you to a few of his great columns from the past, like his obituary to Bruno Sammartino, a great primer on the various IWC inside jokes, or one of his Ring Riffs column that tears apart the so-bad-it’s-good matches from the past. And then just look to the Disqus comments in your favourite 411 columns to keep up with his regular musings.

Happy New Year everyone!