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AEW CROSSED A LINE THAT SHOULD NEVER, EVER BE CROSSED BY A WRESTLING COMPANY LAST NIGHT

At the AEW Worlds End media scrum last December, AEW Owner Tony Khan, while wearing the infamous Toni Storm wig and glasses, was asked about an unproven rumor of alleged sexual harassment happening in AEW years before and what kind of workplace environment AEW provides for its employees.

Khan stated:

"I think it applies to everyone in the company, women and men, and it's something we're very serious about and we've had a policy in place and certainly, anytime there is anything like that, we would make sure we do everything we can to prevent it. AEW has the best safety record, I believe, of any pro wrestling company in the world. I believe we have the most safe environment. I believe we have the best safety record of any pro wrestling company, and I would hold the record of AEW on safety against any wrestling company in the world and I think AEW is the safest place for pro wrestling.”

OK, Khan is promoter and an eternal optimist when it comes to anything pertaining to his company.  Everything is always great and nothing is ever bad.  We all know that very, very well.

Of course in reality, despite the words he stated a few months ago, our eyes tell us that his statement is nowhere close to being true.  We see people get dropped on their heads, unprotected, on almost a weekly basis.  We see dangerous spots where talents “make it look real” because it actually IS real.  We see matches where finishing moves, which are stiff and leave a mark, are transition spots that aren’t sold and actually lead to more similar spots which take a toll on AEW wrestlers and add people in a steady manner to their always full injury list. 

So, when Tony made the claim about how safe AEW’s environment is, only the dimmest of the dim believed the pablum he was spewing.  Those of us with an IQ over 70 have all seen enough to know that AEW is a much more dangerous environment than WWE is because of what Khan allows his wrestlers to do.  Hell, maybe he even asks them to do it, who knows?  But in any event, they do unnecessarily dangerous things on a regular basis and he doesn’t stop it so he is complicit in what is being done.  Sadly, there is nothing new there.

Sure, smart people know that wrestling is a physical business and working in it for any length of time will take its toll physically on most people so those who are smart limit as much abuse to their bodies as they can. 

Morons?  Well, they do things like this.

Now, clearly to me Darby Allin seems to have a death wish.  He may be the nicest guy in the world, I don’t know.  But what I do know is he’s one of the most reckless people I have ever seen work in a wrestling ring.  Anyone who thinks up that spot and says, “This is a great idea” is someone I would NEVER allow to have the final say on any kind of spot.  Hell, I wouldn’t even let him have ANY say in any spot if I were in charge because he clearly doesn’t take his own well being into account.  If Darby wants to die in or around the ring, that’s his choice I guess, but I wouldn’t allow him to do it for my company.  If Tony Khan is going to be a party to what we saw last night, and be sued by Allin’s family if Darby does actually achieve what seems to be his ultimate goal, fine.  That’s their call.  But, that’s not the worst of what happened last night.

Let’s forget for a second that wrestling is supposed to be a work and that there is no safe way to go through a sheet of glass from that high up in the air, it can’t be “done safely”.  Let’s ignore that in addition to him getting cut up, the glass did nothing at all to stop his fall (you know, like a table does) so in addition to getting sliced up he also landed on the floor with a sickening, and no doubt painful, thud,  We can also add that the spot did nothing to add to Sting’s last match and it’s fair to say to at least some people it detracted from it due to the sheet stupidity, and horror, of watching Allin do that to himself.

The bottom line here is that AEW proved last night that it’s not the safest place in wrestling which, again, fair, sane smart people already knew.

What AEW really showed us last night is that it’s also not safe for its customers.  If you doubt that, watch the video above.  At the very end, as Dimwit Darby goes crashing through glass, pieces of it go flying at a high rate of speed into the crowd, hitting fans that paid for the most expensive seats.  Nothing says you care about your fans like spraying them with chards of glass, right?  What’s the new motto, “AEW, come for matches, leave with stitches!”

It’s one thing for Tony Khan to allow people like Darby to take years off their life doing stupid stunts.  I guess one can make the case that if Darby wants to be in a wheelchair and eating out of a feeding tube by the time is forty, that’s his choice.  Me?  I wouldn’t allow it but I am also not trying to win a ridiculous Booker Of The Year award that I lost this year to a guy that actually knows how to tell great stories and actually tries to protect his wrestlers as much as possible in Paul Levesque.  Maybe those kinds of spots are Tony’s motivation to win his coveted award again, I don’t know.  I can’t see any positive reason to allow Allin to do that spot so maybe Tony will clear it up down the line (though I won’t waste my time waiting for his to do so).

No matter how you feel about the spot, to splatter your paying fans with glass fragments?  Who does that?  Who could not see that exploding glass tends to, well, EXPLODE, and doing it in front of your ringside fans wasn’t a great idea?  Who couldn’t see the potential to injure your customers and give them the opportunity to sue you for endangering them?

Oh, I know, the same dimwit who came up with the spot in the first place and the guy who thinks he runs the safest workplace in wrestling, that’s who.

Sweet Jesus.

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