Is The Cross Promotion Being Handled Correctly?
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Since AEW’s Winter Is Coming Dynamite special we’ve seen Impact and AEW cross paths towards an inter promotional storyline. Recently AAA and NJPW have also gotten involved which is nothing but great news for the wrestling business, but has all of this been handled correctly?
We’d heard rumours of cross promotional storylines and wrestlers maybe going from company to company (which had left a lot of fans with intrigue) for a good number of months. When the initial bullet was fired and all of this began at Winter Is Coming we did seem to get that. We had Kenny Omega winning the AEW world title on AEW and Don Callis would go on to tell the audience to then watch Impact on Tuesday as they then address what just happened then. That was the perfect basis of what these relationships should do, use a story on one show to advertise the viewers to watch he following show (of the other company).
Sadly after this we didn’t see any stories drift over from one show to show another. We would see many talents come over from other companies and is was fantastic to see, it really elevates the show as it adds an unpredictable nature to the show and can give more match ups that you wouldn’t think you would see. However it is the stories that drive the matches and the show and if you don’t have everyone on the same page then it can become really messy.
Take an Impact fan like myself who’s invested in watching Impact wrestling week in week out. If a story that may involve an AEW or NJPW talent happens on Impact has my investment I’d expect it to continue on their programme? However as much as we’ve seen all this talent on these shows (and with Impact winning titles) it often feels like it’s missing something because you only have to watch the one promotion and that’s it. With this Kenny Omega holding the Impact world title story I really only need to watch Impact to get the story, you would feel that it’s a great opportunity for other promotions to gain more viewers? As a viewer of Impact if I like a story involving a wrestler outside Impact it would really benift them to bring in more viewers, If promotions can keep in touch of what they’re up to then it would really benefit when it comes to drifting stories over and make the shows that much better I feel?
When it comes to recent stories, one thing that has been very close for comfort when it comes to Impact and AEW recently is noticing where line is between a shoot and a work. Understandably Impact is the underdog and AEW is the confident top dog, however there are times were it can go a little beyond a story you feel and there are words or actions that are there as shoot. Maybe it’s just poorly delivered (like Jim Ross saying “that’s where the money is” when he sees the AEW title and the Impact title), then again this is putting fans in a very difficult position were lots of connections are being made however a lot of those connections are kicking Impact in the backside. Hopefully in time the line will become less blurry, however the fact that there is a line that is blurry isn’t a good thing.
Through the little niggles though there’s been a lot of good over the last 6 months that we’ve seen. In Impact we have seen talent exchanged such as Black Taurus from AAA, Finjuice for the last few months from NJPW and Kenny Omega also from AEW to name just a few. This will also likely continue with talent coming and going which does make for some unpredictable match ups and also some pretty excitable match ups. It’s also great to see a talent exchange utilised in Impact, we’ve had a relationship with AAA for nearly a decade but have never had much talent come over (when we sent a lot over there). Seeing Impact reap the benefits of this talent exchange is really great to see, especially when you feel it was them who began It all.
We’ve seen Impact get other promotions talent into the company, the only thing left is to get Impact talent onto other promotions shows. Beyond Don Callis and The Good Brothers we’ve still yet to see any Impact talent exchange onto any other promotion and while The Good Brothers themselves have been appearing on AEW, it doesn’t feel like they’re representing Impact Wrestling. Currently it feels like you have The Club as their own separate entity, hence why it’s great seeing The Good Brothers on AEW, but it feels like you need another talent who represents Impact.
Who knows what the long term plan of this is, but it’s been a very strange back a forth 6 months. I feel if they want you to just enjoy each show on it’s own for what it is and forget that each promotion may be doing a joint story then it really works. However if the joint story is going to be a thing then hopefully we see more progression come the next 6 months?
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