When I was aimlessly scrolling while slogging my way through the final episode of DTF St. Louis, I saw a spoiler-ey post about how Darby Allin was going to get his shot at MJF and the AEW World Championship; in the main event, tonight!!!  Seeing as how I was already in HBO Max watching DTF St. Louis, I thought for a second that I could just as easily switch over to AEW Dynamite, even if the app makes it impossible to find it without manually searching for it, but then I thought, nahhh, might as well cross this series off my list, and maybe I’ll tune in afterward, but that didn’t happen either because I then went into catching up with several episodes of Daredevil: Born Again S2 instead.

Regardless, after I had moved on from that post, I had this thought in my mind that I had this sneaking suspicion that AEW was going to have MJF drop the title to Darby Allin, because why the fuck not, Darby is one of the most protected and over talents in the company, he’s clearly over with the fans, and who gives a fuck about any sort of genuine buildup, and to go straight from a PPV on Sunday to a title change on television the immediate Wednesday?

Before I went to bed and was aimlessly scrolling again, I saw postings about how Darby Allin has defeated MJF to become the AEW World Champion (!!! And Sting came out to congratulate him!!!), and my immediate thought was that it’s clear that I still had, it, when it came to accurately being able to predict the outcomes of predetermined professional wrestling matches.

Full disclosure, Darby Allin isn’t my cup of tea; I think he puts his body through an extraordinarily excessive amount of punishment, and even though the perspective of the industry is endlessly trying to change the narrative of the importance of size, I’m old and I just can’t buy into some 5’8, 155 lb. emo band-looking edgelord being anything remotely close to a World champion in professional wrestling.

However, I do recognize that the guy has an immense passion for the industry, after all a person wouldn’t be willing to basically attempt physical suicide as much as Darby Allin did if he didn’t, and in spite of his limited physical stature, the guy is a hard worker who clearly puts 110% effort into his work every night he performs.

Darby Allin has an incredible mind for the industry, is clearly going to be a life-long idea guy in the business when his body can’t take it anymore, and most importantly, he has a connection with younger fans that just can’t be artificially cultivated.  He moves merch and captures the imagination of young fans, and those things by themselves are invaluable, even if an old like me isn’t a fan.

As a whole, Darby Allin absolutely deserves to be World champion in AEW; he works hard, has given everything to the company, is over, the fans are behind him, and there’s absolutely no argument from even me, that he should be rewarded with a run with the company’s top prize.

However, it’s just the way this all transpired that had me scratching my head, and triggered the want to brog about it, and continue on the use of the WTF Is AEW doing titling.

For starters, I’m going back to the fact that there was basically no build up for this whatsoever.  Over the last few months, the World title picture in AEW has basically been Kenny Omega, Hangman Adam Page and Swerve Strickland, with talents like Konosuke Takeshita, Andrade and Brody King lurking nearby.  Jon Moxley is still strong, albeit tied up with whatever tier the Not Inter-Continental Championship is, and in spite of his own ballast with the International Championship, eventually Kazuchika Okada is going to be due a shot at the World.

Darby won a number one contender’s match at Dynasty against Andrade, so we all knew that he’d get his shot at MJF, but little did many of us realize that it would be immediately afterward, and on the very same night.  Considering MJF’s general history with the company has been under a colossal amount of protection, very limited appearances and a seemingly high amount of creative freedom, I figured Darby would’ve had to have gone through the cliched trial of tasks that most of all of MJF’s feuds ultimately have to go through before they’d have a match at whatever PPV they have to try and rival SummerSlam, where MJF would win after a 30 minute scrap, of course courtesy of a punch while wearing the Dynamite Diamond ring, like he’s basically won nearly every single match over the last five years.

I know Tony Khan lives to try to surprise internet wrestling fans, but I feel like he left a lot of money on the table by skipping the foreplay, and going straight for Darby vs. MJF, because one of MJF’s greatest attributes is his ability to cut promos, and by not building it up, viewers were denied at least 6-8 weeks of potential promos to hype up the match, even if it were going to end the way it did then as it did just yesterday.

Next, I have a lot of thoughts about MJF didn’t just lose the match to Darby Allin, but he was basically squashed.  Here’s a guy in MJF who has been through absolute hell in the matches that he’s had over the last calendar year, with multiple scraps with the likes of Hangman Adam Page, Samoa Joe, Swerve Strickland, Brody King and Kenny Omega.  He has taken some insane bumps, basically been strangled by ropes, taken avalanche-version of every high-impact slam, and had a large number of excessive bodily harm inflicted onto him.  Just a day ago, the internet was abuzz over a top rope One-Winged Angel he took from Kenny Omega, and that’s one of the most protected moves in the entire industry, when done regularly, but MJF kicked out of it from the top rope.

And then against Darby Allin, he basically takes a low-blow, four Coffin Drops, which I’m sorry, is a really lame finisher, especially considering the treasure chest full of moves in which other AEW talents, including Darby Allin are capable of performing, and to top it off, MJF is pinned after being rolled up in a side headlock takeover, which is like, the very first move done in any Ricky Steamboat vs. Ric Flair match in history.

Basically just about everything about Darby Allin defeating MJF for the AEW World championship is head-scratching puzzling, and kind of reeks of being done for intentional shock value, but not necessarily any real long-term net positive.  To me, it completely derails MJF’s championship reign, which has seen him overcome an impressive list of names already, and even though I fully believe that the title will be back with MJF before the end of the year, once again, I’m old, and I believe that rapid changes of championships devalues them, and even if MJF gains it back in two weeks, the clock has already stopped on his previous run, and we’re onto reign #3, instead of continuing on the reign of terror that #2 was shaping out to be prior to this occurrence.

I may not be a fan of Darby Allin’s, but I respect the work and passion for the business, and I have no problem with him being given a run with the AEW World Championship.  I just wish it happened under more auspicious conditions, and not have been done to artificially shock fans for the sake of being surprising, and not at the cost of burning the equity of one of the company’s most protected assets, as well as passively burying an all-star team worth of talent in doing so.

But then again, this series of posts wouldn’t exist if TK weren’t always trying to be so disingenuously surprising.  Hopefully it leads to something better than I would surmise, and that Darby doesn’t have a completely forgettable first-ever World championship run, like so many in the industry have had before him.