AEW playing risky game with questionable Will Ospreay-Ricochet booking decisions

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15AEW did some strange things in the build-up to and during the much-anticipated match between International champion Will Ospreay and Ricochet — potentially wasting a chance at a monumental moment.The excellent interview segment between Ospreay and Ricochet with Renee Paquette showed the exact issue critics point to with AEW’s storytelling.The YouTube segment gave you their backstory and a clear idea of why their match matters.

But instead of letting this eight-minute exchange — which only got 59K views as of Wednesday — happen live in the ring or air on Dynamite, we got pieces of it on the lower-rated Rampage and Collison How the match played out made the choice make slightly more sense as we never got a clear winner, so AEW can still present the story in a better way down the road.But the route they took to get there left me wondering if fans in Pittsburgh were booing the booking or AEW’s intended target Konosuke Takeshita.The match had already been stopped and booed and restarted and cheered after Ospreay and Ricochet pinned each other at the same time.

Fans were robbed of a winner shortly after by Takeshita’s attack on Ospreay, which has been building in storyline.It was hard to tell if fans were more upset that AEW took a winner away from them twice or upset at Takeshita, who eventually caught their unqestioned ire.At least AEW is finally committing to a Takeshita push as he will face Ricochet and Ospreay for the title at WrestleDream at the needed risk of damaging the feeling around Ricochet-Ospreay rematch.NXT successfully began its new CW era on Tuesday, and with a new era should come changes.The NXT 2.0 version of the product is clearly over as the brand has a new silver and black branding and new world championships that removed the colorful backgrounds. But things should ...