Who Needs Competition When You Bury Your Own Talent

AEW Dynamite for two weeks in a row is putting their own talent at risk of being weak for the benefit of someone else’s push. I get it, I understand that wrestling is largely about one person going over on the other. And not every match can a close one that both wrestlers come out looking strong, but AEW is nearly burying talent to put another over.

This week Dynamite was opened by Wardlow challenging for the TNT championship. The reigning champion Scorpio Sky was in his second reign after having defeated Sammy Guevara in a ladder match for the title. The two battled back and forth and both had two stints with the belt between January and April. They even redesigned the title to fit Scorpio’s persona.

Maybe his title reign was lackluster, maybe he had no support, to be fair, I didn’t care for it myself. But the way they put the title on Wardlow was ludicrous. Instead of having him beat Scorpio Sky, they had him win in under ten minutes with interference from numerous people on the outside. Sure, it may have made him look like a beast, but it also made Sky look like a jobber. Sky’s lack of offense, his losing to the powerbomb symphony with no attempt at a kickout, and not even gaining the upper hand with multiple people interfering for him, made Scorpio look like he was in a different tier than Wardlow.

This also makes Sammy Guevara look bad. His hard fought matches with Sky now seem like contests that weren’t on the level with Wardlow. And if Sammy were to challenge for the TNT title again, he would be smeared across the pavement.

But this wasn’t just one bad booking decision. The week before during the opening moments of Blood and Guts we saw Sammy Guevara start out in the ring against Claudio Castagnoli. This being a new arrival in AEW you expected him to have a good showing against the younger Guevara. But, he didn’t have a good match, he was amazing. The problem is, he no sold all of Guevara’s moves for the first few minutes of the match. Making it look like Sammy was a child trying to attack an adult.

I think AEW needs to be very careful about letting guys no sell moves, squash other television personalities, and pushing one wrestler at the expense of another. We have seen Roman Reigns be dominant in WWE for over a year now and he wasn’t leaving his competitors with nothing to show for it. We have had Roman go over Edge and Bryan at the same time, Cesaro, Riddle, both Usos, Lesnar and none of them came out of it looking like a jobber. They all came out of it looking like a million bucks for having stood toe to toe with Roman.

I hate to say it, but sometimes AEW can really learn a thing or two from the big dog… WWE