AEW will have this issue from time to time, where they have two great wrestlers, who are on an upward swing, whose storylines might be on pause, or maybe they’re waiting for a new one, but either way, it will take these two wrestlers and smash them together like action figures because they have nothing to do but both men should probably be on the PPV.

Such is the case with Mark Briscoe and AEW TNT Champion Kyle Fletcher. Fletcher is coming off a feud with Hangman Page that, personally, convinced me that the kid has what it takes to be an AEW main eventer. Mark Briscoe is coming off, or maybe still in the middle of, his feud with MJF, which has grown a little long in the tooth, but either way, it’s a feud that has raised the stock of the former ROH World Champion.

So, of course, one of these guys needs to lose a match.

Even if Mark Briscoe is cost yet another title by MJF, it doesn’t feel like either man is in the right place for this match, other than simply not having a match at WrestleDream. Fletcher will either get a win over Briscoe, bolstering his position after losing to Page at All Out, or, even worse, would be losing the TNT Title to him in the middle of his ascension. None of those options are all that appetizing to me, and I’m left feeling very “dud”-y about this match. It sounds good on paper to have two incredibly popular wrestlers in a match, but the ramifications are just kind of boring. There’s an old saying (“and then the bell rings”) about how wrestlers have to be able to wrestle to have a match, but there should be another saying about the other bell, at the end of the match, when the talent and the booker have to deal with the fallout.

Written by Ross Berman