6 months ago
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AEW/Lee South
Swerve Strickland has just ended his first full week as AEW World Champion and he has been a very busy man. Strickland defeated Samoa Joe at AEW Dynasty to become the first-ever African American AEW World Champion, before appearing on "AEW Dynamite" in an Eliminator match against ROH Television Champion Kyle Fletcher. After defeating Fletcher, he opened the April 27 edition of "AEW Collision" with his first promo since winning the title and closed the show by making his first defense against Claudio Castagnoli. However, Eric Bischoff believes that this style of booking could actually harm Strickland in the long term, especially since he wasn't given a championship celebration on "Dynamite."
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"Swerve Strickland wins the championship, wins the title, celebration, everybody's excited for him — including me by the way — and what do they do? They s**t all over him in the opening segment by putting him into a match that doesn't f**king matter with a guy that doesn't matter," he said on the "83 Weeks." podcast.
Bischoff believes that by putting him in matches instead of giving him promo time, Strickland isn't going to be seen as a draw and will end up dropping the championship to whoever the "next shiny toy" is in AEW. The WWE Hall of Famer also believes that Strickland would have benefited from a video package to show all the viewers who didn't purchase the Dynasty pay-per-view why this is such a big deal.
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"Get this man over," Bischoff said. "Create some emotion that people that didn't watch the pay-per-view can also experience, and even the ones that did watch the pay-per-view are going to experience it at a heightened level in a more emotional way. Or as they say in the wrestling business: get the guy over."
Please credit "83 Weeks" when using quotes from this article, and give a H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.
