AEW: There’s an over-reliance on faction run-ins at the moment

All Elite Wrestling has been producing the most exciting wrestling product since the early days of TNA and has become a fresh alternative for WWE’s product. In fact, AEW has become the closest competitor to WWE since WCW and it is commended because of how fresh the match-ups and feuds are on a weekly basis; however, every great thing has its flaws, and AEW has a huge crutch that has prevents them from being the perfect wrestling show in 2021.

In fairness to AEW, part of the reason why their product is so good is that they manage to rotate different faces during their programming in order to keep all three of their shows — Dynamite, Dark & Dark: Elevation — fresh. Storylines have been able to progress smoothly with the immense amount of factions and tag teams booked and managed within the company, which has helped them provide unique matches on a weekly basis.

However, their biggest pro is also the root of their biggest con. The reason why this is an issue is that the company has, unfortunately, done a very poor job of letting important moments breathe in order to highlight Faction Warfare and have as many people on TV as possible.

AEW is relying a bit too much on mass faction run-ins.

To provide some context as to how relied upon this trope is, we just have to look at the layouts of the matches of the June 26 edition of Saturday Night Dynamite.

In this special edition of AEW’s flagship show, only one of the five advertised matches did not include any form of outside interference: Top Flight’s Dante Martin vs. Matt Sydal. Similarly, The June 30th edition of Wednesday Night Dynamite had three matches that either had the results compromised due to outside interference (The Young Bucks vs Eddie Kingston & Penta El Zero Miedo & MJF vs Sammy Guevara) or had the focus of the match removed in order to add more emphasis on the post-match angle, like Jungle Boy vs Jack Evans.

The latter one was extremely discouraging, as the post-match angle involving Hardy Family Office, Jurassic Express & Christian Cage overshadowed a special moment for Jungle Boy, who became the first wrestler to win 50 Matches in AEW history.

Factions and tag teams are All Elite Wrestling’s specialty and they book this better than any company in the world, but they have to stop relying on the faction run-in trope, as it is damaging the product more than it is helping TV programming improve.

If AEW reduces the number of Run-ins per show, Dynamite can be described in the future as the perfect example of how to book a wrestling TV show for the internet age.