McGuire’s Blog: Wait, AEW is going all the way to Australia for just one show?!?

February 11: Austin, Texas. February 15: Brisbane, AU. February 19: Phoenix, Arizona.

Those are the next nine days on AEW’s calendar. Tape a Dynamite Tuesday night. Hop on a 17-hour flight. Hang in Australia for a day or two. Go to work for a minute. Hop on another plane for another 17-hour flight. Hang out in Phoenix for a day or two. Work for a minute. Finally get back to your own bed.

Of all the things, good and bad (ok, well, mostly bad), that have been said about AEW’s foray into Australia this weekend – Expanding the audience! Rolling the dice! Bad ticket sales! Running on the same night on the same channel that broadcasts the NBA all-star festivities! – there’s one factor that I haven’t seen talked about enough, or even at all. That factor?

Routing.

It’s nothing short of shocking to think that this company, which repeatedly promises it has its shit together, would do something this fiscally irresponsible at this point in its evolution. I know, I know. TV deal money. Turning profits. Blah, blah, blah. All that’s fine and good, and it’s certainly a leg to stand on now, but what about five years from now? Ten years from now? Fifteen years from now?

It wouldn’t be unreasonable to eventually look back at this era of AEW with the benefit of hindsight and say … what the hell was that? You fly halfway across the world and you don’t even have the wherewithal to book at least one other date in one other city in said country that is halfway across the world? Huh? I was aghast when I pulled up the events page on AEW’s website and found that there isn’t a single other event scheduled for their time in Australia. “There’s no way,” were the first three words out of my mouth.

But there’s a way. Turns out, indeed, there’s a way.

It’s indicative of the mismanagement of the company. And I hate saying that. I hate writing that. I hate thinking that. Honestly. Taking shots at AEW is low-hanging fruit and I never have, nor will I ever, actively root for the company to fail. The problem with me saying that, however, is the reality that I feel like I have to say that (or something like that) whenever I decide to write about the Elites in this column. No, I’m not a hater. Yes, I like the product. No, I do not have a dismissive agenda.

It’s just that it’s impossible to look at some of these decisions and not wonder about how these people rebound. The Australia trip has been snake bitten from the jump. We all know that. The wild overestimation of interest in the product was embarrassing at best and pathetic at worst. A 52,000-seater was a ballsy move to begin with; having to downsize to a 13,000-seater while still having issues getting butts in seats isn’t a great way to introduce yourself to a new country.

But, logistically speaking, the fact that nobody thought to build the Grand Slam event around other shows is mind-blowing. In contrast, take a look at the Big Bad WWE (which AEW, we are told, is “challenging”). On March 14, Smackdown will go down in Barcelona, Spain. From there, WWE talent doesn’t return stateside until April 4, when a Smackdown takes place in Chicago. In the meantime, fans in London will receive both a Raw and Smackdown while Belgium and Scotland get a Raw and Italy plays host to a Smackdown. Nobody’s asking the crew to lace ’em up randomly on a Monday night in France just to have to rush back to Seattle for a Smackdown taping four days later. It just wouldn’t make sense.

And yet, that’s what AEW is about to do this week as its crew travels a gazillion miles across the world for a souped-up Collision. It has the potential to be one of those moments that people equate to the time TNA tried to go live, head-to-head, against WWE on Monday nights, or when basically anything happened in WCW in the year 2000. In 20 years, when the book on AEW is written, do we point to the time AEW couldn’t be bothered to book more than one show in one town in Australia as a glimpse of how dysfunctional its infrastructure was at the time? Or will this somehow be spun as a massive success in the immediate aftermath by Those Who Say Nothing Is Wrong?

If it’s the latter, I’m all ears. Hell, if it ends up eventually being the former, I’ll be all ears for that, too. The deeper problem is that either result doesn’t portend great things for the company. One result drips with denial while the other means nobody figured out how to pull the nose up on this thing. It’s sad, it’s disappointing, it’s deflating and most of all, it’s such a glaring example of ignorance meeting hubris in the worst ways possible. I promise we want to see you succeed, AEW. Or, well, most of us do. But it’s a move like this that makes some of us question our belief.

Sigh.

Here’s hoping there’s some thinking about the future being done on those flights back and forth. And, more pointedly, here’s hoping those thoughts help steer the plane in a direction that’s better than the one the journey is currently heading.