Over the four years of All Elite Wrestling's existence, it's World championship has been kept pretty sacred. Granted there was a rough period with interim titles and injury's, but as of right now only six men have held the elite prize. When Jericho had it he made the most sense as the man with the most main stream appeal when the company started. Moxley has shown himself to be a dependable hand through his record three reigns. Omega was the man people clamoured for to be champion at some point, who battled through injuries to reach his finish line. Hangman was from day one preparing to finish the story. Sorry Cody, you know I love you. Whatever anyone thinks about CM Punk, it is a fact that we never got to see what an AEW World title reign would actually look like. Then we get to MJF, who is carving out his legacy with the title today.
All of this makes me look to the future, and wonder who the next AEW World champion might be. Four of the previous six were guys established either in WWE of New Japan, whereas Maxwell can be considered an AEW guy, but at this point the future beyond MJF isn't quite clear. At the time of making this video his Full Gear match with Jay White was just announced. By the time that match takes place MJF will have surpassed Kenny Omega as longest reigning champion, and if he gets by Jay White, he will pass the one year mark, as he won the title on the same weekend last year.
Before I get into my list, I want to hear your ideas. Please let me know in the comments who you think will be the next AEW World Champion and why.
1) Swerve Strickland
I'm not just saying this because of his line in a promo with Hangman saying that if he had the same opportunities as Page had he'd be the first black AEW World champion, but I honestly feel like Swerve would kill it as the World champion. When allowed to which he hasn't always, Swerve often delivers one of the better matches of any show he's on. At All In, Swerve felt like a big star, and completely at home across the ring from an icon like Sting, which by the way is a match he manifested on his podcast and made it happen. Then at WrestleDream he beat Hangman in what felt like validation of him as a top star for the promotion. Swerve needed a big win against a credible talent, and he got one that night in Seattle. This coming Tueday he's set to wrestle Bryan Danielson, and honestly if feels like he might get another huge win. It also seems like Tony Khan is a fan of Swerve, despite his early dubious booking of the guy.
Swerve has also made it sound like his personal goal, not exactly in these words, is to make WWE regret releasing him, and there's no better way for him to do that than to conquering All Elite Wrestling and proving his worth in the main events. The quiet part of that goal might be to eventually go back with a bigger profile than he left with ala Drew Mcintyre and Cody Rhodes, which I can totally see him doing. He showed a lot of promise in NXT, and was let go right after being called up to Smackdown, along with the rest of Hit Row. He had a bit of a slow start in AEW, being in a long team and feud with Keith Lee, then being handed a parade of henchmen that he frankly didn't need. As an early ROH fan I love his nods back to the Embassy, even going as far as to wear the no longer with us Jimmy Rave's entrance robe, and it suits him well. His relationship with Prince Nana had been allowed to build organically too, with Swerve dictating Nana's pace depending on his mood. If Swerve doesn't feel like it, Nana can't dance. Swerve comes across to me at least, as a badass who controls his own empire stoically, and thats a surprisingly rare thing when you look at a lot of other top heels these days. Maybe you could put Roman in that category when he leaves his grievances to Paul Heyman to deal with.
If they spent the next few months having Swerve knock off a few more big names, I could see him being ready to challenge MJF by Revolution, because the one thing he was lacking but is not slowly gaining is big wins. A few wins over the likes of Danielson would set him up right, and tell me they wouldn't be great matches too.
2) Eddie Kingston
I know this isn't likely, but this is a fantasy booking video so I can say it, how freaking great would a MJF vs Eddie Kingston main event feud be? The promos alone would be a sight to behold, and both men like to draw from their personal histories to provide context to promos at every chance they get. Talk about pro wrestling storytelling, this might well be epic. When I started writing this video Eddie hadn't yet won the Ring of Honor World title, but my point still stands that the story could be epic given time.
Eddie has for so long been the nearly man who succeeds every once in a while. He's the man who at the start of the pandemic sold his wrestling boots prior to his AEW debut, where he wasn't guaranteed to leave with a job but he did. All of this is to avoid calling him an underdog, because you could apply that term but Eddie is deeper than that as a character. If he wasn't, a better comparison would be Mikey Whipwreck, and he beat Steve Austin for the ECW World title. Yes he recently won the ROH World title, but imagine if that was just the start of him ascending, putting a new spin on the classic underdog story.
Right before the pandemic, Eddie was telling an interesting story in Progress Wrestling that never really got going. Eddie did one promo in particular about being the last of his generation not to make it to a major promotion, and now the generation younger were passing him by, and he was sick of watching it happen. He at the time had targeted then NXT UK roster member and new NXT Champion Ilja Dragunov, and as we've come to expect from the Mad King, his promo made you feel his angst and rage.
Eddie is the perennial nearly man just like Tommy Dreamer was in ECW, but every once in a while the nearly man in wrestling has to win to keep himself in the game. He did this recently by winning the NJPW Strong title, but how much more meaningful would it be for Eddie Kingston to even for a day be AEW World Champion. Maybe before he gets a shot at MJF, he might have to get that big win over Jon Moxley, calling back to their 2020 feud over the World title, and once he has that behind him he could maybe earn a shot some time next year.
3) Jungle B-
3) Jay White
When Jay White first won the IWGP heavyweight title from Hiroshi Tanahashi back in 2019 he was a fairly contentious figure amongst fans. Some saw him as the future, and others thought he was undeserving. Personally even though I loved Tanahashi and his win over Kenny Omega, I was sad that his likely last major title reign was over as soon as it was, but I was also a fan of Jay White and the potential in him back then. Now four years and another World title reign later the Switchblade is in AEW, and leading his own brand of Bullet Club. I could totally see Jay blind siding all of us and having a Bullet Club Gold a hostile takeover to end Full Gear.
The main thing Jay lacks right now, much like Swerve is big singles victories. He's proven himself elsewhere but not in AEW yet. Once thing I would have loved out of CM Punk's second AEW run was a singles match between the two, and imagine what it would have done for Jay to win that match, but it wasn't to be. I don't see MJF losing at Full Gear myself, but maybe Jay in retaliation might earn a later shot having beaten some other top card talent and come back in win down the line?
4) Adam Cole
Let's get the obvious one out of the way. Now I'll be honest in saying that I'm a bit of a recent convert to this idea. While I enjoyed the current storyline as it happened, I wasn't thrilled about it main eventing Wembley Stadium, however live and in person I absolutely loved the match they gave us and the story that was told. It felt like a big important main event. There were people sitting around me that fully believed when the two double pinned each other that the show was about to end, and they were very, very angry.
The way All In ended left many open branches as to where the story could go. Cole and MJF won the ROH tag titles, which by the way was a very clever move as nobody seems to care much about ROH these days, and having them on it might help for a while. I still haven't given up on the idea that Cole will turn on us all and align with Roderick Strong and the Kingdom. He does after all have history with Taven and Bennett that admittedly I don't know much about. Unfortunately for AEW they weren't able to reunite the Undisputed era for various reasons, Bobby, but maybe the Kingdom plus Roddy group could take that role with Adam Cole at the helm? They could even involve Kyle O'Reilly should he be fit enough to come back. The end of last weeks Dynamite has been much discussed, and my view right now is that it is leading to a Cole, Roddy, and Kingdom faction.
Throughout the Cole and MJF story one thing I wasn't having was the umpteenth attempt at MJF teasing turning babyface and usually doesn't in the end, but All In felt like they were making the biggest effort ever to try and convince us that the guy who refers to himself as the Devil could actually turn the corner. Him chasing a heel group led by Adam Cole is an interesting prospect in itself, and one that could maybe even take us back to Wembley Stadium for the payoff if they play it right.
So those are my four ideas, if you have a different one please let me know in the comments. Despite everything I just said, I walked out of Wembley Stadium with the thought in my head that in the era of longer title reigns we seem to be in, MJF could well still be AEW World Champion come All In next year, and right now I'd be fine with that.
No comments:
Post a Comment