AEW: Why a Television Title would work in All Elite Wrestling

With the television debut of AEW less than a month away, let’s examine why a Television Championship would benefit the nascent promotion.

On Sept. 7, All Elite Wrestling (AEW) star/executive vice president Cody spoke with IGN’s Matt Fowler and divulged a plethora of quotes on an array of topics: the promotion’s relative grassroots origins, roster utilization, a possible extra hour on Bleacher Report Live, the show potentially oversaturating the wrestling marketplace, and his impending AEW Championship match against Chris Jericho among others.

The entire interview — which also contains plenty of passive-aggressive digs at some well-worn WWE tropes — is worth a read, but for this piece, let’s focus on what he said about perhaps creating a secondary championship, namely a television championship (emphasis mine):

"“There’s a title we’re considering,” Rhodes stated, “and it’s something people can probably guess since we’re going to be on TV, hint hint, but there are no plans for it at the moment. Right now we revolve around the AEW Championship and in D.C. we’re going to name the first ever AEW Women’s Champion, and that’s such a beautiful belt.”"

Per the former Ring of Honor (ROH) World Champion’s own words, adding a television title to the mix is more of a long-term goal than an immediate one. After all, the promotion still has its hands full with building up the World, Tag Team, and Women’s belts’ prestige. But given the steps AEW has already taken towards accomplishing those objectives, there’s no reason to believe they wouldn’t devote the same level of attention to a television title if they decide to introduce one.

In the feature, Cody declared the promotion’s intention to provide “bell-to-bell, sports-centric pro wrestling” to the masses that forwards most of its stories in the ring. That adherence to their mission statement has shone through so far; the company has shown in its first handful of shows that the wins and losses carry ramifications, thus making the matches matter.

It was this strategy that legitimized Adam “Hangman” Page as a legitimate main eventer, affirmed Jericho as a viable top-of-the-card attraction, gave fans a compelling Nyla Rose/Riho women’s title match to look forward to once their weekly show premieres on Oct. 2, and has set the table for what should be an entertaining tag team championship tournament.

As encouraging as those developments are, however, AEW still needs something for the midcarders to fight over. Something that can fill 10-15 minutes of TV time without subjugating the fans to a tedious, discursive promo segment. Something that would reify their WWE-alternative status. A television championship checks all of those boxes.

Like every promotion not run by Vince McMahon, AEW understands how important championships are for storytelling and creating new stars. Without them, the wrestlers have little incentive to fight outside of grudges, bragging rights, and money. But as talented as most of this roster is, everyone can’t get pushed to the world title scene.

A TV title would not only draw a definitive line between the midcarders and the headliners, but it would also serve as a lab to test which of the second-tier group is ready to move up the ranks. There’s also plenty of storyline gold to be mined from such a championship.