PARKS’S TAKE: AEW’s booking and overall presentation shines during tournament season, so should they do more?

AEW is in the middle of a strong run of television as both Dynamite and Collision have been near must-see for wrestling fans. They’re also in the middle of the Owen Hart Foundation Tournament, which will climax for the men and the women at the upcoming Double or Nothing PPV.

Inconsistency has plagued AEW’s TV offerings over the last few years. They’ll get on a hot streak, then they’ll go cold. Rinse and repeat. The one common thread I’ve seen in their good times, however, is that AEW is usually running a tournament of some kind. The Owen now. The Continental Classic previously. The first iteration of the latter helped re-focus the booking and made Collision and Dynamite (and Rampage at the time) much more watchable.

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It seems like AEW already runs a lot of tournaments, but the answer is clear here: AEW should be a tournament-based company. There should be SOME kind of tournament running on TV all the time. Lord knows they have enough title belts. Tag team tournament! World Title no. 1 contender tournament! Women’s TBS Title tournament! Trios tournament! A tournament to see who will qualify for the NEXT tournament!

This is the only sure-fire way to make AEW’s TV consistently top-notch. It forces the booking team and Tony Khan to go back to basics, which is when they are at their best. It lets the world-class athletes in the company do the storytelling in the ring, and no other company has the high-end workers that AEW has. So play to their strengths! And their strength is wrestling. Tournaments for one! Tournaments for all! That’s the cure-all for AEW and Khan should map out a year’s worth of tournaments to ensure it stays that way.