Should AEW bring back the rankings?

[Cattle Mutilation]

What do you think?

I would go with yes if they stuck by their rankings and made it a big focus on the product to get back to a more sports-like presentation.

Like you can say have the #5 vs. #6 with a big match to move up the rankings.

And then when TK decides to have a tournament, he can base the participants and matchups on the rankings.

#1 contender matches can have a ranking behind them to justify the matchup instead of it just being a seemingly randomly booked match like we had last night with Swerve vs. Danielson.

 

[Ed MOTHERFUCKING G]

Who fukkin cares, it won't make the show better or make them write better stories or sell tickets. Nobody gives a shyt about rankings and nobody even noticed when they left. Stupid idea and worse thread.

 

[Kidd Dibiase]

No…

 

[Cattle Mutilation]

Who fukkin cares, it won't make the show better or make them write better stories or sell tickets. Nobody gives a shyt about rankings and nobody even noticed when they left. Stupid idea and worse thread.

You going to say that to Kevin Nash since him saying it on his podcast was what motivated me to make this thread?

 

[julesocean]

The thing with rankings is you have to book around them. It's not always who is hot, people coming back from injuries, people racking up wins on Rampage who are mid af etc.

If you have to change plans for any matchup or storyline around a belt, it's then not as simple as "this the guy that make sense in replacement" but "oh wait this guy is next up in the rankings but we aint ready for that rollout yet "

Sounds good in theory but when thinking about logistics it's terrible.

 

[Finn Baller]

personal issues and characters sell tickets and make people watch, nobody gives a fukk about rankings other than who the #1 contender is

 

[Saysumthinfunnymike]

No... the rankings didn't work. People would say "how is so and so the #1 contender?" and the reality was that the person probably won a lot of matches on Dark but ok cool... whatever.. the bulk of the audience wasn't seeing those matches.

It's just too convoluted.

 

[Rollie Forbes]

The rankings were a unique concept, but they ended up being meaningless because Tony's booking didn't align with the ranking system.
For example, there was a period when Jay Lethal was top contender to the World Title, but he never ascended to the main event. No matter the ranking, Tony Khan only pushed his favorites.

 

[StatUS]

Do people even care about rankings in UFC until the title match is made?

 

[get my pool]

It could work if they did something like making only certain matches count toward the rankings, treat it like a midcard title match almost. But having someone’s whole record taken into account for rankings was stupid

 

[Da King]

What do you think?

I would go with yes if they stuck by their rankings and made it a big focus on the product to get back to a more sports-like presentation.

Like you can say have the #5 vs. #6 with a big match to move up the rankings.

And then when TK decides to have a tournament, he can base the participants and matchups on the rankings.

#1 contender matches can have a ranking behind them to justify the matchup instead of it just being a seemingly randomly booked match like we had last night with Swerve vs. Danielson.

Anyone tell this fakkit this shyt is fake?

 

[Hey_zeus]

Rankings have never and will never work in rasslin. WCW, TNA, and now AEW have all tried it with the same result. You need smart and consistent booking that doesn't insult your intelligence which is obviously too difficult for the genre to pull off.

 

[Ed MOTHERFUCKING G]

You going to say that to Kevin Nash since him saying it on his podcast was what motivated me to make this thread?

I don't give a fukk about Kevin Nash's opinion on the matter.

 

[Jmare007]

It wouldn't make a lick of a difference. For every #5 vs #6 match scenario that you suggested might be interesting, there's a lot more other scenarios were either:
-pairs up wrestlers that are cold and wont stop being cold no matter what ranking they have at that moment,
-ranks wrestlers that are perceived as not worthy of said ranking ("it's a joke that X is 9-3 and Y is 15-1, makes no sense).
-you level down the playing field. All of a sudden, a star like Omega has singles losses that were justified by his feuds, but it takes him away from title contention unless he gets booked to the ground just to rack up Ws. Why would you limit the booking like that just because you have to follow a made up system from scripted fights? also, people that have less Ls because they haven't faced anybody are highly ranked that people that have faced main eventers.
-and you when you try to juelz your way by saying "he list to X but that lose doesn't hurt his ranking much" you end up in the same situation where the rankings had to be thrown to the bushes the first time.
-you also limit the chances of big time matchups. If you try to book with any type of anticipation you have to save the matches were the stars will taken an L, or just book few of them so no one racks too many Ls. Once again limiting your booking for no good reason. AEW has always suffered from bad timing and waiting too long to pull the trigger on big matchups, and the ranking system will never help them solve that.
-it ties you up when you have to improvise. When multiple people go down with injuries or other issues, it's not as simple as taking your rankings and choose the next wrestler up, because the ranking does not account for how over said wrestler will actually be at that time, so it will not necessarily be the way to go.

And there's more. The point is, it's not worth the headache of booking around a ranking system. Wins and losses should always matter, but rankings don't actually help that cause.

 

[Cladyclad]

All AEW had to do is center a ppv around the rankings. Easy fix. That ppv could been a pillar event every year.