Tony’s Takes: The Dog Days of AEW’s year, AEW Forbidden Door, Paul Heyman and The Bloodline, WWE Raw on Netflix

By Tony Donofrio, ProWrestling.net Contributor (@TonyDonofrio)

AEW

-If AEW were the NHL, you’d think that it was late January-February. If you’re not a hockey fan, let me paint the picture. Known as the “dog days of winter,” the NHL falls into a slumber at that time and the season feels like it’s dragging. The all-star game is in the rearview mirror and it’s the hardest time of the year for a lot of NHL players in terms of staying motivated. Once the season gets to March though, the playoffs are on the horizon, the trade deadline is nearing, and things start to pick up steam again.

Next Monday would be the beginning of March for All Elite Wrestling. AEW’s annual Forbidden Door PPV and its month long buildup has turned into the “dog days of summer” for the promotion. Each summer wrestling fans and media alike go through this tough time. The Forbidden Door event will never go away but it probably should. Tony Khan is too stubborn and probably already thinks that this is another “great AEW tradition.” There aren’t enough big stars left in New Japan to make the event feel special. If we go back 12 months, I could argue the event was suffering fatigue then also. At least then you could point to Will Ospreay and Kazuchika Okada as special attractions for those that are American wrestling fans that don’t see a lot of great international talent. Since that time, both have signed with AEW. Uh oh.

Adding CMLL and Stardom to this annual event hasn’t done a lot. Mina Shirakawa is the lone exception to that rule and has been a very pleasant surprise, as her feud with Toni Storm has been one of the best things on AEW TV in the past month or so. AEW TV during the build to Forbidden Door is also the hardest 4-5 weeks to watch all year long. Storylines, more often than not, hit a speed bump and talent from New Japan (and CMLL and Stardom now) randomly get inserted to build up this “super card.”

Luckily, Khan has realized that force feeding a random international star into the AEW World Title picture would be a bad idea, so we’re seeing him stray from that formula this year. But, other than the aforementioned Storm-Shirakawa-Mariah May story, the rest of the “super card” has little-to-no excitement. If Khan would put his pride aside, this would be the last Forbidden Door show (at least for a few years). He won’t. But fear not, AEW faithful, the “dog days” are over next week.

-Is there a more criminally misused talent in modern pro wrestling (or at least in AEW) than Jay White? I’ll hang up and listen.

-Next week is AEW Dynamite: Beach Break! I love that Excalibur this week went out of his way to mention the various beaches on Lake Michigan to help drive home the theme. I get it, it’s Shark Week and it’s crosspromotion. It’s synergy at its finest. I was at the last Beach Break in 2022. I made the trek to Cleveland that late January night. The wind chill was below zero. Sure, Lake Erie also has beaches but it was the dead of winter…the “dog days,” if you will. I never understood why this theme wasn’t used at a location that is hot (or even just warm) and sunny. One of the fun things about old school WCW were the beach settings that were used for some of their shows. This feels like such a missed opportunity and should be planned out much further in advance with the show being somewhere in Florida, South Carolina, California, etc.

WWE

-Paul Heyman was right last year when he said that the Bloodline saga was still in the third inning. It still didn’t need the WWE Title until WrestleMania this year but I’ve covered that ad nauseam. The insertion of Jacob Fatu, Tama Tonga, and Tonga Loa has been brilliantly done and we haven’t even seen Roman Reigns or The Rock since WrestleMania. It’s easy to knock booking these days so it’s important to give credit when it’s due. There were some rocky moments for this story post-WrestleMania, but Heyman has helped keep this story on course and has been the Bloodline MVP since April. It’s been speculated that Hikuleo will also show up (perhaps under a different name). As noted, we haven’t seen Reigns and Rock in months. The Usos still haven’t been reintroduced and the saga already has its steam back. I can’t wait to see where the story continues to go.

-When Raw hits Netflix next year (and the rest of the WWE slate joins in internationally) there won’t be any censorship. I’m sure I’m not the only one looking forward to that. Having said that, if this show ends up having commercials, I’m hoping it’s capped at three hours but would prefer to see it cut to 2.5 hours. On the other hand, if the show is run commercial free, it must be capped at two hours but I’d really hope it falls somewhere between 1.5-1.75 hours.

I really think the show can be something really different weekly if it’s given some leeway. Imagine Raw being 90 minutes one week and then an hour and 40 minutes the next. Many Netflix shows don’t have an exact “out time” for every episode. A flexibility in how long the show runs gives it a sense of unpredictability that we haven’t seen in pro wrestling in a very long time. As I mentioned, there still needs to be a cap unless there’s a special circumstance. But, I’m really hoping that there’s some free rein for WWE to try out some new things on “Raw is Netflix” when it hits the streamer next year.