All Elite Wrestling had a ranking system that made the company unique compared to other wrestling promotions. The ranking system was introduced since the launch of the company in 2019. However, it was abandoned in 2022 due to some conflicts.
For example, some competitors topped the list but didn’t get title matches, while others jumped the list and got title opportunities. Therefore, it’s very hard to maintain a ranking system in a pre-determined space.
This past Saturday, AEW President Tony Khan announced on X that the rankings will be returning from this month onward.
On the 83 Weeks podcast, WWE Hall of Famer Eric Bischoff talked about Tony Khan re-introducing the rankings. Bischoff said that Khan has to merge creative and math to make it work.
“It can be effective. It can also see you painting yourself into a corner that you’ll never get out of. That’s probably why it didn’t work out the first time because you’ve got to really do a great job of merging creative and math because those two things generally don’t go together. Usually, good creative is kind of void of good math. Good math isn’t very creative, but it can be done.”
Eric Bischoff also said that the audience would lose faith if the ranking system didn’t go well.
“It’s a big risk because if it’s not going well, if there’s a flaw in your system, your audience is going to see it and they’re going to let you know and they’re going to lose faith so fast. I liked the idea of doing it. I think it’s one of the things that I was excited about back in 2019 when I heard that this was going to be one of the things, this was going to be the unique selling proposition for those of you who have spent, I don’t know, 45 minutes in a marketing 101 class in junior college. That was the one thing that to me made AEW potentially feel different than WWE, but they abandoned it pretty quickly…
I’m concerned that since there’s been a severe lack of creative horsepower in AEW, inconsistent all over the map, and non-existent more often than not in terms of the real story. I should say a compelling story, meaning a story that actually matters. The void comes to creative that I’ve seen out of AEW for the last two years doesn’t suggest to me that there’s a lot of hope that they’re going to figure out that formula.”