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#2 AEW's booking of monster heels
Lance Archer (13-2) should have outright won the TNT title in the finals of AEW's tournament to crown the first such Champion. He ran roughshod through his side of the bracket, but the storyline of the melee centered all around Cody Rhodes. Archer targeted Cody during his debut and destroyed Dustin Rhodes en route to the finals. When all was said and done, he lost in the finals to the American Nightmare.
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The Murderhawk Monster would later win a battle royal but then lose to Jon Moxley in an AEW Championship match. Falling to the major Champ of the company is one thing, but he should have defeated Cody Rhodes. It would have made him seem much more dangerous than simply throwing the likes of Joey Janela and Marko Stunt around the ring.
The Young Bucks are among the biggest stars in AEW, but they have lost to the likes of Private Party and others to help build some new stars. Chris Jericho lost to Orange Cassidy twice.
Another example is Wardlow (9-2), who lost to Cody in a cage match that determined if Cody could face MJF at Revolution. Wardlow lost the match after the American Nightmare hit a moonsault off of the top of the cage. It fit the storyline of Rhodes having to jump through hoops in order to face MJF, but it still marked a loss on Wardlow's record.
For these big bad dudes to have any credibility, they need to beat big names from time to time. When it came up in 2020, they all lost to Cody and Moxley. Moxley makes sense because he's the AEW Champ and biggest star in the company.
Cody could have lost to Archer and Wardlow to help build them up. Instead, any time they had a chance to be taken seriously by beating one of the bigger names in the company, they looked like Braun Strowman every time he faced Brock Lesnar or Roman Reigns.
Monster heels are obstacles to be overcome eventually, but almost everyone was shot down in their prominent spots in 2020.
