AEW Faces Criticism for Spontaneous Script Changes and Poor Communication

When AEW debuted Dynamite on TNT in 2019, it was praised for its logical presentation and progression, especially compared to WWE during the Vince McMahon era. At that time, WWE was frequently criticized for McMahon’s habit of tearing up scripts just before showtime and rewriting segments live on air. However, five years after their inaugural pay-per-view, AEW is now experiencing its own creative issues.

According to Bryan Alvarez on the F4WOnline message boards, the script for the 2024 Double or Nothing pay-per-view was changed multiple times, leaving talent in the dark until moments before the show.

“Tony switched the script on yesterday’s PPV multiple times during the afternoon. Most people, not just the wrestlers, have no idea what they’re doing until the day of the show, and sometimes not until an hour or so before the show. People are flown to towns and given nothing to do, others are begged the day before the show to please get to the town so they can do something last-minute. He knows what he wants to do for PPVs (although this often changes), but as far as week-to-week TV, everything is booked show-to-show.”

Continuing, Alvarez notes that wrestlers have noticed the frequent changes and discuss them often. He added that talent are left in the dark often and that Khan is very hard to get hold of, comparing AEW to the 2019 version of WWE.

“For most people he’s [Tony Khan] incredibly difficult to get hold of. In some ways, it legitimately is more like 2019 WWE than it is 2019 AEW, where he was much easier to get hold of, he had very complex long-term storytelling, many people had a good idea of what they were doing and where things were going, and often most of the following week’s entire Dynamite card was booked and announced before the previous week’s Dynamite had even ended (remember when Excalibur would run down two dozen matches in 30 seconds for the following week?).

It’s night and day the changes, and people who work for the company, in all roles from the wrestlers to the office, talk about it ALL THE TIME.”

We will have to wait and see whether Tony Khan will end up changing his own creative process as it is likely he might have changed all of it to prevent leaks from happening again.

Do you feel Tony Khan’s current creative process is detrimental to AEW? Let us know in the comments section below!