AEW: The End Of SCU Was Not Given The Time It Deserved

On last week’s episode of  AEW Dynamite, the Young Bucks successfully defended their tag team titles by defeating SCU.  This wouldn’t have been much of a headline except for the fact that the loss ended the long-time partnership of Frankie Kazarian and Christopher Daniels.

The final match of SCU in AEW was very good.  Kazarian and Daniels are veterans of the sport that understand how to promote psychology within a match and they promoted it to max during this one.

The challengers were undermanned from the start as the Young Bucks had the Good Brothers in their corner for the entirety of the match.

The odds grew even longer for SCU when Daniels was busted open and wore the proverbial crimson mask during the match.  Watching Daniels stumble around due to loss of blood, yet continue to fight on created a true sense of both pity and admiration for SCU as they battled to win the titles, and more importantly, remain a team.

But in the end, it was not to be.  Daniels would eventually take the pinfall and the Young Bucks would remain the AEW tag team champions, and SCU was no more.

And while the match was great in every way possible, the post-match left a lot to be desired.

SCU deserved a live post-match moment.

The match was over.  The Young Bucks were celebrating in their usual, arrogant style with the Good Brothers and Don Callis as they headed to the back.  Christopher Daniels was lying in a pool of his own blood and Frankie Kazarian sat in a corner, eyes wide, with a blank stare of disbelief.

And for a brief moment, there was an uneasy feeling that Kazarian may turn on Daniels as he began to rise and walk towards his tag team partner. AEW was about to pay off a great, dramatic build that was months in the making and I was on the edge of my seat waiting to see what was going to happen next. But then I heard Tony Schiavone’s voice explain that the cameras were heading to the back, and all of a sudden I was watching Jon Moxley and Eddie Kingston tear apart a dressing room instead.

Months after SCU announced that their next loss would end their partnership and after the extremely emotional match we just witnessed, that was it?  That is all we are getting?

I sat on my couch stunned.

The Mox and Kingston segment tearing apart the dressing room of the Young Bucks might have been awesome.  But I have no memory of it as all I could think about was the fact that we were getting no closure to the end of SCU.

To be fair, after the commercial break we were shown a clip of Daniels and Kazarian embracing in the ring.  But that was too little, and way too late.

By that time the match had been over for 5 minutes, we had sit through an unrelated segment and a commercial break and AEW had missed the opportunity to capitalize on what should have been a very tense and then memorable moment for SCU……..to again, show two wrestlers tear apart a dressing room.

While Dynamite is easily my favorite wrestling show, this is a prime example of something that AEW needs to figure out. They have built a very large roster of talent, and not counting their Youtube shows, they only have two hours of television time a week.

The argument could be made that they try to do too much in those two hours.  In one aspect that is commendable.  They have a lot of talent and AEW wants to give that talent as much national exposure as possible.

But in another aspect, it can really limit the effectiveness of segments by cutting away too quickly.  Especially in storylines that have been built up for months and have reached their emotional end.

While I understand that AEW is less than two years old, these are the types of things that the promotion needs to figure out sooner rather than later if they want to grow their audience and continue the trajectory the company is currently on.

If they can, the sky is truly the limit for All Elite Wrestling. For more on All Elite Wrestling and more across the industry, stick to Daily DDT.