Is AEW getting too big? and how do you solve the problem of a bloated roster?
It’s a weird question to ask about a company getting ‘too big’ and it only really gets asked in the world of entertainment, you’d never ask if McDonald’s or Mercedes-Benz is getting ‘too big’. But the context I ask it in is more like is AEW getting too big for its boots?
It seems as if Tony Khan is still running AEW like a fan more than a businessman. We can see this from the money he spends on special entrances, like Sting having Metallica’s Seek & Destroy at Revolution or when Bryan Danielson had Europe’s Final Countdown. It seems as he is still acting like Comic Book Guy in the Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror X when he was ‘The Collector’. Looking at the recent acquisitions, the rumored one’s to come and the existing roster AEW have, they seem like they’ve got too much talent.
AEW have signed main event caliber wrestlers in Adam Copeland, Will Ospreay, Jay White and Kota Ibushi in 2023 alone. Those 5 men have held some of the biggest titles in wrestling and they join a field of stars like Samoa Joe, Bryan Danielson, Adam Page, Swerve Strickland, Malakai Black to name a few, with others like MJF or Adam Cole on the injury list. This, on top of the stars AEW wants to develop into main eventers for years to come like Ricky Starks, Darby Allin, Sammy Guevara, and Brody King, makes the room at the top really crowded with a very limited space.
The Women’s Division is Crowded, Yet Underdeveloped
Looking at the women’s roster, when was the last time we saw Dr Britt Baker D.M.D? Or Hikaru Shida? But they’ve just signed Deonna Purrazzo and Mariah May, on top of the stacked women’s roster we already have.
AEW has two titles in the women’s division: the AEW Women’s World Championship and the TBS Championship. The TBS is treated more as a developmental title, held by Jade Cargill who bossed her way through before departing for WWE. Kris Statlander took the title before losing it to Julia Hart who is really playing second fiddle to Sky Blue’s rise to stardom. The title is just there with no challengers, it wasn’t even defended at Revolution.
Meanwhile, Saraya and Ruby Soho are in some weird love story with Angelo Parker and Zak Knight involved aiding his sister. The main event scene is currently owned by Toni Storm and setting up a match for Mariah May to turn on her idol. Mercedes Mone has now debuted, Jamie Hayter is set to come back, and there isn’t enough spots at the top for all these main event players. AEW signed Taya Valkyrie in 2023, she confronted Jade Cargill, lost, and disappeared over to ROH because the roster is too stacked.
How To Solve The AEW Problem
It feels like AEW sign wrestlers just so no one else can have them, they are like the Chelsea FC of the wrestling world. And I get it, they have a lighter schedule, they have the wrestling feel more than the sports entertainment feel and it doesn’t feel like ‘selling out’ to WWE. But there must be a point where there are too many people in AEW and not enough opportunities.
I can see Copeland dropping down and sitting in the mid-card, around the International and TNT Championships. People like Will Ospreay and the newly arrived Kazuchika Okada? To take a phrase from LA Knight: NAH NAH. People are going to get lost in the shuffle QUICK, Malakai Black hadn’t had a singles match in nearly 2 years or something like that recently. MALAKAI BLACK! The man was a star in NXT, came to AEW with big fanfare and TK got bored of him.
AEW have 3 shows per week; 3 hours of Dynamite, 2 hours of Collision and 1 hour of Rampage. Rampage is pretty pointless; it goes head-to-head almost with Smackdown and it’s numbers don’t do well. Collision was due to be the CM Punk brand until he punched TK in the head (probably for that look from the World’s End media scrum).
They need to go full force with that brand split, make wrestlers exclusive to Dynamite and to Collision, like WWE do with Smackdown and RAW allowing for the biggest stars to have a crossover. Create duplicate titles for each show, maybe not the tag titles because the tag division has enough teams in it to keep it going. I’d split it like the below.
| Dynamite | Collision |
| AEW World Championship | AEW Championship |
| AEW Women’s World Championship | AEW Women’s Championship |
| TNT Championship | International Championship |
| TBS Championship | TBS Championship Equivalent |
| AEW World Tag Team Championships | |
| AEW World Trios Tag Team Championships | |
| AEW Continental Championship (weird concept considering it has 3 companies attached to it) | |
Create a brand split, create separate brands, and create separate rosters. This allows for great ideas that would look like WWE like a Blood and Guts between the 2 rosters or a better version of Bragging Rights. This allows full exposure to all wrestlers, each wrestler being given sufficient time and maybe use Rampage as their version of NXT, the greener or less popular wrestlers to use as a jump to Collision or Dynamite.
I realise this article sounds like me being angry and a WWE fan but I’m not, I’m a fan of wrestling and I don’t want my favourites to be given 10 minutes of fame and then demoted to wrestling on Rampage. Will Ospreay is my second favourite wrestler of all time (behind AJ Styles) and I do not want to see him get lost in the shuffle and embroiled in a feud with the Don Callis Family for the rest of 2024. That man is AEW World Championship material, but that’s the same with most of their roster.