AEW: Scorpio Sky’s Heel Turn Has Done Wonders For His Character

Scorpio Sky has already accomplished a lot in his short tenure with All Elite Wrestling.

Sky was one-half of the first-ever AEW Tag Team Champions with Frankie Kazarian in the now-defunct SCU.  Sky and Kazarian upset one of the premier tag teams of this generation, the Lucha Bros, to win the gold.

Sky was also victorious in the “Face of the Revolution” ladder match, earning him a TNT Title shot versus Darby Allin at the Revolution par-per-view.

The fans cheered for SCU for the entirety of their championship run.  And when Sky broke away from SCU to attempt to make waves as a singles competitor the crowds cheered him as well.  Even though he had spent all of this time in AEW as a babyface, the volume of those cheers never got to the level that it has for many of AEW’s other stars.

And to be perfectly honest, this is more a reflection of the society we live in today, rather than Sky’s ability, or lack thereof, to be a cheerable face.

We live in an era where society as a whole does not want heroes.  Instead, we prefer antiheroes.  We love to cheer the wrestlers that take down the heels while displaying some heel tendencies of their own.

We are way past the days where the biggest faces of any promotion are going to come on your television and tell the viewers to “say their prayers and take their vitamins” and flex and expect any sort of loud reaction.

Instead, we like our heroes to have an edge or at least a distinguishable quality that is unique to them that goes against the norm.

Just look at the four wrestlers that draw the biggest pops on a weekly basis in AEW.  Jon Moxley is all about unscripted violence, Adam Page is rarely seen without an alcoholic beverage in his hand, Darby Allin has bitten, scratched, and clawed at opponents with regularity in past matches, and Orange Cassidy is as apathetic to hard work as any wrestler that we have ever seen.

None of these are qualities that we should root for, yet here we are, screaming our lungs out at live events, and making sure we are tuned in to see these performers on television every week.

Scorpio Sky as a face just lacked that thing.   That edge that made him must-see TV.  That defining quality set him apart from the other stars of the promotion and I think he came to the realization that something had to change.

Scorpio Sky’s character has become vastly more interesting since turning heel.

Ironically, Sky’s transition to heel came after a loss in a TNT Title match, to the aforementioned Darby Allin.

After Allin was able to secure the pin on Sky, Scorpio attacked Darby and locked him in a heel hook that had Darby begging for mercy.

This was Scorpio’s second TNT title shot and he had come up short again.  And that was enough to make something in the mild-mannered and good-natured Scorpio Sky snap.

In the coming weeks, Sky would become angrier and angrier.  He was developing an underlying mean streak as he felt unappreciated and in a large part, unnoticed in AEW.

Then came the arrival in AEW of All Ego, Ethan Page.  Page’s attitude mirrored Sky’s to a large degree.  Page also felt like he was a top-of-the-card talent that was being wasted and not being given the opportunities that others in the promotion seemed to be handed.

So it made perfect sense for these two talented performers to team up in an attempt to cause commotion in hopes of getting the opportunities that they felt they deserved.

And in a stroke of genius, they targeted one of the most popular wrestlers in AEW, Darby Allin, and one of the most popular wrestlers of all time, Sting, as their first targets.

This move alone has gotten Scorpio Sky the reactions, albeit as a heel, that he was never quite able to achieve as a face.

Sky has embraced an arrogant demeanor and he and Ethan Page seem to feed off of each other’s belief that they are the hottest thing going in AEW.

And while both Page and Sky are talented enough to make waves as singles competitors, for now having them team up seems to be suited both of them just fine.

And this partnership, along with his new attitude and mean streak, make Scorpio Sky so much more interesting as a character, and is his best chance of climbing either the singles or tag team rankings in AEW.