I just finished watching the show and man, they really need to iron out all of the indy in their show.
I will give a bit of leeway to some of the showcase matches (CIMA's crew plus the Joshi girls) for being largely spot fests, but there's no reason why the entire card outside of Cody/Dustin and Omega/Jericho should lack any form of sensible psychology or storytelling (or only use it to set up more indierific spots) .
They need way more storytelling to get these matches (and the rest of their roster) to actually mean something down the line, and hopefully the talent they acquired behind the scenes can help them get it in order before the tv-show starts.
All things considered I think they gave their audience as much of a "mix" as they are gonna give them to be honest.
This fanbase LOVES flippy shyt, a bunch of finisher quick outs, nearfalls and moves.
Will they grow tired of it once they get it once a week on TV? We'll see. But we also gotta consider this audience watches these type of matches probably on a weekly basis and they still fukking love it. It took me like 3 years of getting tired of the current New Japan main event style - for the most part - but that shyt is in year 7 and people still go crazy for it. I think that's what AEW is aiming for, not in being exactly like New Japan, but in consistently giving their audience what it wants in terms of matches.
I know I've been a broken record about this but they have to cater to their core fanbase first. And they gave them a very old school match/feel in Dustin/Cody, as long as they are able to throw in that kind of match regularly, I think they should be fine.
I hope having guys like Arn and Dustin in agent roles helps them find a good balance. But if you, me or others don't exactly click with their style, then too bad for us, shyt has been to successful for the BTE guys to change it up in major ways.
