AEW missed opportunities with Jade Cargill while waiting for Statlander

Jade Cargill became a major star for AEW even as the company missed opportunities with her booking.

Injuries often throw a wrench right into creative plans in wrestling, but bookers need to be able to quickly pivot to another path to keep their product on the right track. That is exactly what didn’t happen when Kris Statlander got injured as rumors swirled she was set to dethrone Jade Cargill for the TBS championship.

AEW did not seem to have a plan b, when it came to who should even be in a program with Jade Cargill. Instead, AEW just left Jade Cargill to defeat jobber after jobber, just to get her total win count to keep growing.

Cargill is arguably one of AEW’s biggest stars in the women’s division and certainly could’ve done more with her reign as champion than being put on tv in the death 9:30 EST time slot every week facing an opponent everyone knew she would pin in less than two minutes.

If AEW was set on having Statlander dethrone Jade, that is more than fine, but that doesn’t mean they should’ve just tried to get by without featuring the title without any prominent stories other than Taya Valkyrie vs Jade Cargill this past month.

Underutilized talents like Tay Melo, Emi Sakura, and Penelope Ford could’ve been used against Cargill to create a dynamic for a feud that relies on the basis of “you were pushed as a star since you got here when I was never given the opportunity to shine as much as you”.

Cargill’s career is also relatively new, meaning she needs more experience in the ring, and one-minute squash matches don’t really give her the opportunity to do that.

Jade should’ve been the de-facto main women’s champion while Hayter was healing her injuries, but instead, the Homegrown vs Outcasts took over as the main feud for Wednesday nights. Jade could’ve still been dominant against much of the AEW locker room, but at least signed wrestlers would’ve been gaining exposure instead of just local talents in one-off appearances.

Now that Statlander has won the TBS championship, AEW is truly about to see if their investment of Cargill beating jobbers every week paid off to establish a second women’s belt.