If you watched Dynamite last week you saw the sign, even the camera man knows what’s up so my question to all of you is how would you fix it.
TK gives you the reigns and says he wants a women’s division that could headline next year’s All Out.
You can sign any free agents, use ROH talent, book anymatch or angle you want, but you have to have a great division in one years time.
(I’ll post my own thoughts later today)
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Keep a good relationship with Impact, since their woman’s division is fantastic. Let talent show up on Impact randomly; let Impact talent show up on Dynamite.
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Promote more international tournaments like they did with US/Japanese championship tournament
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HIRE VEDA SCOTT.
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Let Maria do Women’s Division Wednesday again and use the internet/social media to your advantage; run angles, do matches with other companies, etc.
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Let Nyla takeover AEW tiktok on Wednesdays and Saturdays before Dynamite and Collision :)
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Give us more than just shoehorned women’s division matches. Let the women exist with the men; imagine if the Outcasts and Bullet Club Gold worked together.
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Let Tay Melo free; she was so good before the JAS. Give her meaning again!.
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Put Serena Deeb on TV… anyway you can. Because she should be on tv. Deeb/Veda Scott would be a fantastic commentary team for a women’s show.
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If you can’t do anything with the network to get more timeslot’s, then do more with Youtube/socials and put more specials on for free. I’d wager the majority of AEW’s audience are younger and don’t have cable anyway.
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Persuade AJ to come back (long shot sure but I just need it to happen :))
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HIRE VEDA SCOTT
It really is a joke they haven’t hired Veda. Nyla doing a social media takeover would be awesome btw, great shout.
Fr :// I’d love her on a commentary team with Ian and Caprice or Nigel!
Love all these points
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Build division around those who can work. Deeb, Shida, Riho, Emi Sakura, Athena Kris Statlander, should be a focal point of your efforts. Willow Nightingale, Tay Conti, Skye Blue, Red Velvelt should be exciting new prospects. Do not push green talent or those who can’t work a decent match into the main event scene.
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Book around their strengths not weaknesses. Like have Shida doing more video packages. Don’t book promo battle between Serena Deeb and Thunder Rosa. Book a promo battle between Ruby and Britt.
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Force yourself to book more meaningful storylines and matches into your shows. One match per show, during an ad break which frequently turns into squash conditions your audience not to care.
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Be as aggressive in pursuing free agents as you are with men. The fact that TK didn’t sign Candice LeRae, Dakota Kai, Mia Yim, Mickie James, Masha Slamovich, Sasha Banks yet is signing any wrestling body with a modicum of promise across three countries tells you a lot.
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If men have it, women should also have it. Blood and Guts for men, Blood and Guts for Women, Minoru Suzuki frequents AEW on his US tours, Rina Yamashita should do that as well., etc.
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Police your wrestlers for any sexism. “Control your woman” and “You can take all of us?” should be simply banned if there is no kayfabe retaliations to those words.
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Women should be able to freely mixed with male wrestlers but not as eye candy. I mean they can be, but it says something, that Tay became simply an eye toy with Sammy when she was one of the most exciting workers in the division before.
I’m still gutted we lost face Tay. She was so damn good.
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It’s time for Yakuza boss Shida, straight up. We’ve wanted it since the pandemic era, and now is the right time. You could also elevate other women by building a faction around her.
Nyla Rose needs to let more of her personality show on tv. She and Marina Shafir also need to be separated. I don’t feel either one elevates the other. Going back to my first point, maybe have Shafir be an enforcer under Shida.
I’ll add more later if anything comes to mind.
Have shida run a gang to combat the outsiders but they need to go on the offensive and not just respond. Steal the outsiders jackets and burn em or something. Have Jade show up as the enforcer of the group because she’s sick of the outsiders, or maybe the jump her when she first shows up and Shida shows her the value of people that aren’t trying to use her.
Months later a renewed Jade competes in a triple for TNT title with Taya and Statlander.
Nyla should be paired with Skye, if you’ve seen her on Hey EW you know she needs to come out of her shell when speaking and I think Nyla is the person to help do that. Find a good mentor or partner for multiple women do a tag tournament that highlights each wrestler, do some vignettes and promos build it over 2-3 months since this is going to be THE Women’s Tag Title to watch. This worked very well for Cole/MJF.
Parity PPVs/TV I know it’s not fair to expect 2 blood and guts matches in a single night but we could have a women’s lights out match. Baker and Thunderosa showed the crowd would eat it up. 2 women’s matches a show should be the minimum. If the main event is a cage March, women’s match should be of a similar spectacle. It doesn’t need to be the exact same but don’t give me a 30 minute banger main event and a 5 minute women’s squash match.
2 out of 3 falls Table match Ladder match Falls count anywhere Concession brawls There are options!
We’ve seen so many weird gimmick matches that were super entertaining, let’s give the women some fun ones too!
I have some thoughts, but nothing I can eloquently express here – I mainly just wanted to say how damn good all of these ideas are.
I’m guessing none of you are billionaires with near-limitless resources and yet you already presented ideas for AEW’s women’s division that blow away almost everything Tony Khan has ever come up with.
The obvious:
- Stop airing a single women’s match every show. IMO the TV titles show be getting defended every other week each, and it shouldn’t count as the women’s match when the TBS champ has a match.
- Give them more build than one woman giving an interview and another showing up to randomly challenge her. The slowest improvement on the planet here.
- Don’t stall 1 of the 2 belts for a year waiting for a single person to come back from injury, no matter how good she is.
The more controversial:
- Firm up some larger factions and brew up a big ol faction war. It’s a great way to restart/kickstart the division imo, since so much is completely uninvolved. TFM TK keeps toying with something like this and then chickening out
- Push this into giving the women one of the marquee matches, Blood n Guts or Anarchy in the Arena or Casino Battle Royale or something that gets the big name on the posters and all the photo slots. Actually let them headline some shit
- Don’t bother with any more belts atm, there’s already 2 we rarely see.
At least 2 womens matches/segments per show. They are definitely underutilized but looking at the whole roster TK has an issue booking all divisions.
Titles should be the focal point for the most part. We don’t have a trios division and the tag division has been ignored for BTYBB. I’ve noticed you also need to be a good promo or high work rate to get semiconsistent time because people still get rotated. Main reason why Britt is almost always included, she is a pretty good promo but the wealth should still be spread.
Im sure injuries have affected the women’s division but at least a loose separation of World champ and TBS champ contenders would do wonders. For example, I love Taya but she shouldn’t get beaten for the TBS title 3x, get a few wins and then get a World title shit.
Most actionable thing though, have at 4 separate things going on at all times for them. We should have something long form for both world title and TBS title. And the undercard should be getting non title feuds to build up character so that they can transition to the title picture and people actually gaf.
I’d book it similar to how the Collision main events are. It needs to be more interconnected and not just single matches always before the main event. Characters need to be built up.
Has Statlander been on tv much since winning the TBS title?
Great idea. I’ll add more later (maybe a day or two? I’m gonna let this one marinate). But quickly: I don’t know why they didn’t do a “Blind Eliminators Tag Tournament” for the women’s division also. It fell flat during the pandemic era, but the roster is much stronger now. It would’ve been a great way to start new feuds/friendships/etc.
Mob boss Shida. Also pair Yuka with Riho, call them the Murder Girls, and have everyone who underestimates them get big time forearms til their lights go out.
It’s simple. More matches, and more angles.
They have all the ingredients they need. They just need to bake the fucking cake already.
This is pretty much it. They need to be willing to commit more time slots to the division. Right now it’s like they’re afraid to give the division any more time because it has historically got lower ratings than the men’s, but it’s a chicken and egg situation, since they’ve always been shucked off to the worst timeslot and never given investment. So of course people are going to become accustomed to tuning out for that section.
Make a concerted effort to allocate more of the show’s time to the division and better booking and more focus will inherently come, since they’ll have a larger portion of the show ‘on the line’ depending on the division being good television. It was a rough transition at the start for WWE too - the first women’s rumble was weak because the division was tiny, and it felt forced to give a women’s version of every big match. After a couple years though, it was the norm and the strength of the division started to shine through. They’ve still got a ways to go on their side of things as well on the main roster nowadays, but it’s in a better state than AEW for sure.
Now’s the best time to do it with the brand split - there’s more television time to go around than ever.
