Top 10 AEW Debuts

What a week for AEW, huh? Sammy Guevara won the TNT Championship on a show in which it was made clear that AEW was invested in the future and Guevarra, MJF, Jungle Boy, and Darby Allin would be the 4 home-grown, young pillars of the company moving forward.  They also added Lio Rush and Kiera Hogan among others to their evergrowing roster, and, most importantly, we saw Bryan Danielson stretch and kick the life out of Nick Jackson.

In fact, what a last two weeks for AEW, am I right? With the Dynamite and Rampage Grand Slams, AEW provided one of the best 4 hours of wrestling in a single week peaked by that Match of the Decade contender between Bryan Danielson and Kenny Omega.

Okay, fair enough. What a month of September! With AEW All Out 2021 being touted by many to be one of, if not the greatest PPVs in history. With a potential Match of the Year between the Young Bucks and Lucha Bros and the ground-breaking debuts of Ruby Soho, Minoru Suzuki, Adam Cole, and Bryan Danielson, the show, for once, made the majority of wrestling fans extremely happy and excited for the future.

All right, I’ll say it, the whole year 2021 has been fantastic for AEW. They’re no longer (i.e., even if they ever were once considered) a “piss-ant” company. 2020 was awesome too and 2019 was at least great. So, whether WWE considered them competition before or not, they sure as hell do now.

But let’s not dwell too much into the wars right now and let’s talk about AEW.

I think we can all agree that the company’s in a boom period right now and these giant debuts they’ve done recently are a big part of it. Now, I firmly believe that while moments like these are undeniable crowd-pleasing and draw in fans, a promotion can’t rely on these moments alone to keep the fans engaged, as proved by Goldberg….. *checks notes* way too many times. *sigh*

Okay, when we’re talking about the best AEW debuts, we’re not only looking at the moment of the debut itself but also how the wrestler was booked at the beginning of their AEW run and how successful and over they managed to be.

So, no Miro or Andrade El Idolo or Ethan Page on this list, sorry. Part of the reason why some AEW debuts end up being overwhelming is that due to the size of their roster, it can be hard to find a place for every single talent who someone on the internet thinks is a future world champion, and understandably so. I think as fans we need to be patient and give AEW the benefit of the doubt because they’ve earned it. Look what they did with Miro and Dark Order. Was Adam Page getting over as a babyface at the start? Look at him now.

However, there are some debuts that were great but I couldn’t put them in for some reason or another. Thunder Rosa’s debut was perfect and she would’ve been on this list had she when the title, or, more importantly, had her title match with Hikaru Shida not followed that Sammy Guevara/Matt Hardy disaster at All Out 2020. Another example of a great debut marred by circumstances is that of the late great Mr Brodie Lee, just imagine the deafening pop in Rochester if Covid wasn’t a thing. I also didn’t include the debuts of Kenta and Minoru Suzuki because as important and Forbidden Door opening they were, they didn’t contribute much in the AEW storylines.

Some other honorable mentions are Jake Hager, Santana & Ortiz, Ricky Starks, and Brian Cage.

Now, let’s get to it. These are the 10 best debuts in AEW history.