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AEW Needs 13 Titles

AEW needs to add more titles. Did I get your fucking attention? Yeah? Good, because this is gonna be a pretty sober and theoretical article. The real lead-in should be “AEW could add some more titles if they want”. I’m not very good at the clickbait style of writing but we keep it moving. I find titles really interesting and while I work on a more comprehensive Philosophy of Pro Wrestling, I wanted to focus a bit on titles and how they can be used. The typical wisdom with AEW is that they have too many titles floating around, they aren’t focused on them enough, and they’re getting lost in the shuffle. I don’t disagree but… is that a bad thing?

In wrestling terms, I’m a sports guy. I’m not a sports guy in my regular life but I’m interested in the sport of pro wrestling over the drama of pro wrestling. Both parts have to be there obviously, that’s what pro wrestling is, but I look at things with the eye of putting together interesting fights, not in weaving intricate storylines. I think a lot of people see all the titles floating around in AEW and think “we don’t have enough characters and/or screen time to fit in stories with all of these people!” But my thing is, why do we need everybody to have a high-level story? This is a topic for another article, but I think too much emphasis has been placed on stories laid out by the promotion. Why not just present a series of events and let us craft stories around that? But again, I don’t want to get diverted.

For now, let’s just say that if we’re thinking of this in sports terms, there is something to be said for giving more people titles. If someone from Cameroon came over as a basketball player and I didn’t know them I might be like okay whatever they’ll get killed by 3rd string NBA guys, but if you tell me that they’ve won the Cameroon championship six times in the past, I might start to think they have a chance. If someone comes up as a champion, it *can* make them seem bigger than they would have already, it can give them a bit of a boost.

Obviously, you have to be careful, and I think you have to be more careful with the more titles you add. Mainly, you need to make sure your titles aren’t stepping on one-another’s toes, or at least not doing it too much. Titles will always be compared with one another, so when you have multiple champions floating around, you might find that the title you intended (as a promoter) to be most important is actually considered second to another title. Usually, this will happen because someone who holds that other title has gotten hot; a hot (i.e. currently-compelling) character will always matter more than a prestigious title, at least as it relates to the ticket-buying public. Again, another topic that is too big for this article is the handling of titles. I want to keep this one light and I’m already doing a bad job. But hopefully you get the point I’m hinting at enough for me to move on.

In my opinion, a division with what I’ll call “full depth” will have 3 titles: a top title, a secondary title, and a sub-territory title. The top title is self-explanatory. The secondary title is one of those things that I feel trips a lot of people up when trying to explain it, and I can’t say I have a clean explanation, but I’ll give it a go. I think there’s a usefulness in having a nominal top challenger, so it always feels like the top champion has a known rival. If every other match is off the table, we’ve still got the top champ vs the secondary champ. (I cut out a digression about this here.) The sub-territory title works similarly but is geared towards that sub-territory. These titles are more well-known in fully competitive sports because the territorial boundaries mean that certain matches can’t be made unless they are at a higher level, so people transition from one tier to another and typically vacate lower titles to do so. Essentially, for wrestling, sub-territory titles allow special matches to be booked on shows where otherwise they’d miss out because the top & secondary titles are unavailable.

To build on that point, the best move for a promotion is to establish a title for each major sub-territory they have, and make sure to use that title in that territory. This can help establish a connection between the promotion and that territory, showing those who are in that territory that the promotion is investing in bringing them wrestling. As media has evolved over the years, the idea of a territory has also changed. Whereas once we only had regional titles like “Southern” or “United States” or “National”, suddenly we had “Television” championships and eventually even “Internet” championships. And this is all a valid development.

Now, am I going to suggest that AEW establish all three titles for every division they have? No, although it might work out that way mathematically (I haven’t worked out the math yet). To figure out what AEW should have, we need to think about their situation. Firstly, they have five divisions: men’s singles, women’s singles, men’s tag, women’s tag, trios (just men so far but I’m not 100% sure this will always be the case); the women’s tag division doesn’t have any titles yet but they have had a tournament in the past and it seems a natural path forward. Second, what are AEW’s sub-territories? They are a touring promotion, but I think that in this day-and-age, the concept of sub-territories is better expressed by their television shows. If we go by that, they have three: Dynamite, Collision, and Rampage.

I wanted to do a section on the naming of titles here but it’s late and I also chickened out of the gimmick that would justify it; I was going to give all the AEW titles new names but that felt like a step too far, even for a silly blog. Regardless, I bring it up because even though titles are often named after their territories, I think having a “Dynamite Championship” is a mistake; the “TNT Championship” is too branded for my taste but is leagues better than titles named after specific shows. Also, just to be clear, I don’t think every division needs to have three sub-territory titles: each full division should have at least 1 sub-territory title, and the promotion as a whole should have at least 3. Finally, to put the minds of fantasy bookers at ease, these titles don’t have to be locked to their territories, especially in a case like this.

So here is what I think AEW’s title layout should be, by division. The ranking of these might not be exactly where AEW or you see them, but you know, whatever. Also, this is not including ROH; separate promotion, separate title structure. New titles in italics.

Men’s Singles
– AEW World Championship — Top: Obviously the top title, no question about that.
– AEW International Championship — Secondary: While the titles have fluctuated a bit in the past, I’m comfortable saying that the International Championship is more important than the other men’s singles belts at this point.
– AEW Continental Championship — Accolade/Secondary: Bad title name aside, this is an interesting case of having an extra title around. I think that this belt being linked to the Continental Classic is a great way to differentiate it from the International Championship while still having an in-built rivalry with that title over who is truly in that second position.
– AEW TNT Championship — Sub-Territory: The original AEW telvision title, this has de facto slid down in ranked importance but still serves a great purpose.
– FTW Chamionship: Not a real title, doesn’t count. I respect the history but it doesn’t factor in to the list of what AEW should sanction.

Women’s Singles
– AEW Women’s World Championship — Top: Again, pretty obvious.
— AEW Women’s International Championship — Secondary: AEW’s women’s division has not been a #1 or #2 focus for the company, so it may feel like its roster here is a little thin, but having a title like this can make the division seem more prestigious and can potentially help to elevate more women to become drawing cards. With the men’s International title already having cachet, I think bringing a title in with this name would immediately make it a worthwhile prize.
– AEW TBS Championship — Sub-territory: To match it with the TNT title, the TBS title can move down to be considered the sub-territory title for the women’s division.

Men’s Tag
– AEW World Tag Team Championship — Top
– AEW Television Tag Team Championship — Sub-territory: As I said before, if you have a sub-territory title, you should make sure to use that title in that sub-territory. TV titles tell people that the champion is likely to wrestle on TV, which can make the division feel more immediate since a viewer is likely to see meaningful tag team matches for free rather than just waiting to see the world champions (who should be saved for pay-per-view if possible).

Women’s Tag
– AEW Women’s World Tag Team Championship — Top
– AEW Women’s Television Tag Team Championship — Sub-territory

Trios
– AEW World Trios Championship — Top
– AEW Television Trios Championship — Sub-territory

I think that having multiple champions in a division makes the division seem like it matters, like there’s enough competition there to recognize two different stand-outs. There are five television/sub-territory champions here, which is enough that there should be at least 1 title match on every television show. Obviously, these things have to be managed well; you do have to have enough people to make each division work. I feel that AEW does have access to that kind of talent, though. At least give us some women’s tag team titles. I think we’ve been patient enough.

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High Stakes in Pro Wrestling

“Heat and hatred” has become a catchphrase of Joe Lanza from the Voices of Wrestling Flagship podcast. Heat and hatred draws money, that’s his point. It gets people excited so that they want to buy a ticket and see the show. It’s what creates interest. Pro wrestling has been built on heat and hatred, especially in the United States. I don’t disagree about this. One of the reasons that wrestling falls into the sports entertainment trap, though, is that they push for heat and hatred while forgetting one other thing: stakes.

Why do people watch competitive sports? At any particular time in the US, the major sports league in season will destroy the attendances and TV ratings that wrestling does. Now, a lot of people are determined to ignore business signals and such. I am not. You don’t need to be engaged in this stuff to enjoy wrestling but, aside from wrestling, I am interested in persuasion. In this instance, that means the fact that competitive sports are more popular than pro wrestling is interesting to me and it deserves some exploration. Pro wrestling has one foot in a lot of different worlds, and the fact that it grew out of competitive sport is a reason it will always be tied to that world.

So again, why do people watch competitive sports? Or, to be more precise, why do people generally prefer to watch elite level sports competition (national leagues, world championships, the Olympics) over lower-level competition? I think it’s because people like to watch the best of any type of thing they’re interested in. That’s where the draw of critic ratings in all sorts of things comes from. If you like comedy movies, you are probably somewhat interested in what people consider “the best comedy” to be; even if you personally don’t like it, you’re more likely to check it out than many other comedy movies. The same is for wrestling. This attraction to “the best” happens for two related reasons. First is the straightforward prestige. Showing that one has proven that they are superior in a skill to everyone else has its own attraction. It’s an accomplishment, a feat that only a few can do, and just on reason of rarity it’s interesting. The second reason is that high skill in anything usually translates to a more compelling performance. High-level sports are much more dynamic than lower-level sports due to the higher skill level and athletic ability involved.

Heat and hatred exist in competitive sports. Longtime sporting rivalries are well known in the US; I’m sorry that this sounds like SEO garbage but I’m not a big team sports fan so I can’t call out my favorite rivalry that people would know about. Americans have probably heard about European football hooliganism, another expression of how heat and hatred can draw people in. I do think “heat and hatred” refer to two different concepts, but I’m going to leave them linked as something “emotional charge” as I don’t want to presume how Lanza would make this division. For what I need here, it’ll work well enough. My point in bringing it up is that though heat and hatred does provide some draw to competitive sports, the primary draw is not heat and hatred. The primary draw for competitive sports is stakes.

The stakes of a contest is, essentially, what each participant has to gain or lose from the outcome. The highest interest matches in competitive sports are championship matches — where teams have the chance to become the overall league winners — and matches that will set one up for or eliminate one from reaching the championship match. All contests are rated according to what they mean for that ultimate stake. Things that happen to members of each team are also rated in their importance relative to what it might mean for the team reaching the championship. Understanding each set of stakes relies on knowing what happened before and on all that information being clear. Without those stakes, one contest is almost equivalent to another, meaning that the interest level remains at a baseline level.

A consequence of a high stakes situation is that each side is likely to put out more effort than in a low stakes situation. This isn’t to say that people consciously don’t try hard in low stakes situations, more than people have extra incentive to work harder than their usual when the stakes are higher than their usual. As a result, those people may be even more dynamic and exciting than they would be at other times. That acts as an aid to the “drawing power” of the contest, as not only will a potential fan see this contest as important enough to want to see it themselves, they can be more confident than normal that they will see an exciting contest. None of these require heat and hatred to exist beforehand, but they are all enhanced by the addition of heat and hatred.

Lanza says there are two aspects that lead to drawing potential, heat and hatred. I think there are four: heat, hatred, stakes, and character. Of these, I think that heat and hatred are actually the least important. I don’t say this as an insult to Lanza and I think he is correct in saying that heat and hatred are where “real money” come from, as that is how wrestling has generally drawn money. What happens for most people who discuss wrestling is that “character” is not considered separately from heat and hatred (which it should be) and “stakes” are treated as a given. The focus in wrestling storytelling from a planning/theory perspective has classically been on heat and hatred, at least in the United States. I think that, historically, Japan has had a stronger relationship with stakes than the United States has, though this has been changing in recent years.

When I say that stakes are taken for granted, what I mean is that there is very little attention paid in American wrestling to making stakes clear. As I stated above, for the fan to understand stakes properly, the stakes have to be presented in a clear and unambiguous manner. The championship title matters, yes, but everything around the championship also matters, because the stakes involved are not just who has the title but the entire context around the title. Every new complexity that is added into the situation makes it harder to understand stakes. Multi-side contests (like triple threats and fatal four-ways) confuse the situation. “Dirty finishes” like when someone cheats to win confuse the situation. Unexplained changes of how contenders are determined confuse the situation. All of these reduce the effectiveness of stakes in making matches stand out and be more important. This certainly leads to reduced interest and it may also lead to reduced effort; even though professional wrestling is not strictly competitive, most wrestlers will agree that they put more effort into high stakes contests.

My hot take is that people don’t need “storytelling”, what they need are favorites. Storytelling is a great tool to use in creating favorites, but what really draws people in are not the overall stories but the personal stories of their favorite wrestlers. By “personal stories” I’m not talking about boo-hoo family drama. What I mean is, if Jon Moxley is having a feud with Naito Tetsuya, what is important to fans is not if the feud is artistic, what is important to fans is what the feud means for Moxley and what the feud means for Naito. This is what I mean when I say that “character” is the fourth element of drawing, and it is probably the real difference between a good draw and a great draw. Heat and hatred help to enhance character and stakes and cultivating heat is highly important, but there is no sizzle without steak and I am absolutely mortified that the homophones there line up so well. This was not planned.

The best version of wrestling, in my opinion, is one with colorful characters that focuses on building stakes, and then uses the most popular characters in stories with heat and hatred that can keep the show exciting without locking in the entire roster into a complex and never-ending high school play. Clear stakes are more effective than confused stakes. Having more than two sides in a match makes the stakes involved almost irrelevant. Dirty finishes confuse stakes, clean finishes don’t. These are obvious lessons but ones that I think are more pressing when you understand that building stakes is incredibly important to how wrestling draws interest.