For some people it’s a bit unfair to over analyze All Elite Wrestling for the TV product since they have only had five Dynamite television shows on TNT so far, with their sixth on November 6th, 2019. But sometimes you see an issue starting to form and it’s best to discuss now. That issue being the way tag wrestling is treated as more important than the entire Women’s Division.
AEW Dynamite is a very new show and the people running it are taking great strides to ensure that the show doesn’t feel like any currently existing pro wrestling shows on cable and network television. Distinguishing yourself from those products is an extremely important endeavour.
One of my biggest criticisms of the show so far has been their reluctance to tell stories on the show. Too many characters get introduced and we know nothing about them. AEW has the capability to run video packages explaining the motivations and histories of all of their characters. We’ve seen it on their YouTube channel and we’ve seen it used for Cody Rhodes primarily. It’s there but it isn’t being utilized to the best of their ability. Instead we get tag matches.
On my Twitter account I’ve brought up AEW’s over saturation on tag team wrestling several times. It’s a favourite thing of mine to bring up. I understand with the Young Bucks as Executive Vice Presidents that they would want to ensure that tag team wrestling is strong on the cards. Not only that but they ran a tag team tournament throughout Dynamite that just concluded last Wednesday. But tag wrestling has also happened outside of the division featuring singles competitors from men and women, as well as multi person tag matches to get as many on the card.
Over five episode of AEW Dynamite, we have watched:
Episode 1: 10/02/2019
Singles Matches Men: 3 (Cody Rhodes vs. Sammy Guevara, MJF vs. Brandon Cutler, PAC vs. Adam Page)
Singles Matches Women: 1 (Riho vs. Nyla Rose)
Tag Team Matches (Tag Divison): 0
Tag Team Matches (Non-Tag Division): 0
Six/Eight Person Matches: 1 (The Elite vs. Chris Jericho, Santana, and Ortiz)
Episode 2: 10/09/2019
Singles Matches Men: 1 (Jon Moxley vs. Shawn Spears)
Singles Matches Women: 0
Tag Team Matches (Tag Division): 1 (Private Party vs. Young Bucks)
Tag Team Matches (Non-Tag Division): 2 (Riho and Britt Baker vs. Bea Priestley and Emi Sakura, Inner Circle vs. Adam Page and Dustin Rhodes)
Six/Eight Person Matches: 0
Episode 3: 10/16/2019
Singles Matches Men: 1 (Darby Allin vs. Chris Jericho)
Singles Matches Women: 1 (Britt Baker vs. Riho)
Tag Team Matches (Tag Division): 2 (SCU vs. Best Friends, Lucha Brothers vs. Jurassic Express)
Tag Team Matches (Non-Tag Division): 2 (PnP vs. Reynolds and Silver, Adam Page and Kenny Omega vs. Jon Moxley and PAC)
Six/Eight Person Matches: 0
Episode 4: 10/23/2019
Singles Matches Men: 2 (Kenny Omega vs. Joey Janela, Jon Moxley vs. PAC)
Singles Matches Women: 1 (Jamie Hayter vs. Britt Baker)
Tag Team Matches (Tag Division): 3 (Lucha Bros vs. Private Party, SCU vs. Dark Order, Young Bucks vs. Best Friends)
Tag Team Matches (Non-Tag Division): 0
Six/Eight Person Matches: 0
Episode 5: 10/30/2019
Singles Matches Men: 1 (Adam Page vs. Sammy Guevara)
Singles Matches Women: 1 (Hikaru Shida vs. Shanna)
Tag Team Matches (Tag Division): 1 (SCU vs. Lucha Bros)
Tag Team Matches (Non-Tag Division): 0
Six/Eight Person Matches: 2 (Best Friends vs. Marshall, Silver, and Reynolds, The Elite vs. Hybrid2 and Kip Sabian)
And just to combine everything from the AEW Dark YouTube show:
Total
Singles Matches Men: 8 (nobody in a singles match was one half of a tag division team)
Singles Matches Women: 4
Tag Team Matches (Tag Division): 7 (6 from tag tournament)
Tag Team Matches (Non-Tag Division): 4 (one being PnP in a squash match)
Six/Eight Person Matches: 3 (all six person tag matches included at least one tag division team)
I’m not going to count AEW Dark but for those who have watched, those shows don’t include as much from the Tag Division because the tag division is on Dynamite.
For some breakdown match on the total:
Total Matches: 26
Total Singles Matches: 12
Total Tag Matches (2 v 2): 11
Total Tag Matches (2 v 2 and 3 v 3): 14
Total Matches Involving Men: 21
Total Matches Involving Women: 5 (one per show)
Total Matches Involving Young Bucks: 4 (only one being a tag tournament match)
This is really where I’m getting at when I complain about too many tag team matches on the first five shows (we don’t know Wednesday’s card as of writing but announced matches has been a men’s singles match and a men’s tag team match outside of the division) and how it amplifies how much focus is on tag team wrestling and how little is on the women’s division. The women’s division did get one tag team match, so even for their five matches, one of the five is a tag match. With exception to the third show which had the Young Bucks on AEW Dark, the Jackson brothers have been represented almost as much as the entire Women’s Division.
Maybe some don’t understand why this is a problem, but All Elite Wrestling tried to promise that their women’s division would show up as an equal to the men. Thus far, the only equality has been that tag team wrestling gets as much of a spotlight on the show as singles wrestling, and when you include multi person matches it actually surpasses it. Meanwhile the women look like an afterthought.
It doesn’t help that they decided to have their AEW Women’s Championship on the very first show and not make it the main event, when it could have been moved to the second episode and topped the program. Maybe they wanted the most eyeballs possible on the match which is fair, but they followed up their first women’s championship match the next show not with women wrestling to decide supremacy in the division, but a tag team match. And on the third episode they had a Women’s Championship match on the middle of the show and followed it up the next show with the loser of the match getting a spotlight match in her hometown.
Since then, the AEW Women’s champion Riho has been nowhere to be seen. No updates on the show of where she is or who her next contender could be. She wasn’t even on Dark. How can they possibly claim that women will be treated equal when their Women’s champion goes missing with no explanation? How are we supposed to believe she’s the best woman in the division when after her first title defence she’s gone and the person who lost to her is getting the next big match? And more importantly, how can you call it a competitive division that will be treated equal to the men when they literally wrestle once per show and that’s only one match more than the Young Bucks?
I honestly respect AEW having tag team wrestling be a prominent focus, but it feels like they are getting too high on their own supply. And by doing this, their women’s division is being turned into a gimmick instead of an equal part of their brand. They need to be willing to have more than one women’s match per show, and willing to tell us who is in their division. The past two shows have had new women debut for the division, and the only women to make more than one appearance have been Riho and Britt Baker (Baker has been in three of the five women’s matches), so it’s hard to make people care about it when they are hardly seeing new faces or the faces they’ve watched.
Hopefully as the weeks go by, All Elite Wrestling realizes this and starts promoting their Women’s Division better. I absolutely hate calling it a gimmick, and I do believe they want it to be of equal importance to the men. The problem is, you can’t accomplish that with just one match per week. You can’t accomplish that if your champion disappears for two weeks with no explanation. You can’t accomplish that without main events. And you cannot accomplish that without people knowing who are in your division overall. It’s a new month. Hopefully we see AEW step up for their women, and step back on the tag matches.