Ranking the 4 Boldest Booking Moves AEW Is Making This Week

From a personal invite to Violent J to a champion’s first big test, Tony Khan is stacking a wild week of decisions — here’s how they rank.

AEW’s had a busy few days, and it’s not the kind of busy that shows up in a single headline. It’s a bunch of little swings all landing at once — some smart, some strange, all of them telling you something about how Tony Khan is running the show right now. So let’s rank the four boldest moves AEW is making this week, from the one I’d bet the house on to the one that makes me raise an eyebrow.

1. Booking Maya World’s first TBS Title defense against Persephone

This is the smartest thing on the list, full stop. Handing a brand-new champion a hard-hitting CMLL World Women’s Champion for her first TBS Title defense is exactly how you build a titleholder who feels legitimate instead of protected. Persephone brings a different in-ring dialect and a real credential to the table, and a hot first defense against quality is worth ten squash wins against no one. If AEW wants the TBS belt to mean something after a rocky stretch for its women’s mid-card, this is the blueprint. Test the champ, elevate the challenger’s promotion, and remind everyone why the lucha pipeline is one of the best things AEW has going.

2. Leaning into the Collision momentum

Booking isn’t just who’s in the match — it’s where you put the effort. Collision hitting a near two-month ratings high is a signal AEW would be foolish to ignore, and the fact that the show is climbing again suggests the company is actually treating Saturdays like they matter rather than dumping them there as an afterthought. The bold part isn’t the number itself; it’s the decision to keep investing in a second flagship at a time when a lot of promotions would’ve quietly downgraded it. Momentum is fragile, and AEW protecting it instead of cannibalizing it is a genuinely encouraging sign about the company’s discipline.

3. Letting Chris Jericho reset the narrative on his own terms

Jericho flatly denying he ever left AEW despite that long TV absence is a booking move even if it doesn’t look like one. This is AEW deciding how the last several months get remembered — turning a contract-gap-shaped hole in the roster into a controlled narrative rather than a rumor mill. The gamble is that fans buy it. Jericho’s been a lightning rod, and the online sentiment around his run hasn’t exactly been glowing. Framing the absence as a non-event only works if what he comes back to actually feels essential. If he returns to something meaningful, this ages fine. If he returns to more of the same, the “I never left” line reads as spin. Bold, but the jury’s out.

4. Tony Khan personally inviting Violent J to Dynamite

And here’s the swing that makes me squint. Khan reportedly extending a personal invite to Insane Clown Posse’s Violent J for the Detroit show is peak Tony Khan — passionate, personal, and completely his own vibe. In Detroit specifically, ICP has real cultural pull, so there’s a version of this that pops the live crowd and generates a fun viral moment. That’s the upside. The downside is that this is the exact instinct that gets AEW accused of chasing celebrity-adjacent stunts instead of stories. It ranks last not because it’s a bad idea, but because it’s the highest-variance one: it either becomes a great organic hometown moment or a shrug you forget by Thursday. There’s very little in between.

The takeaway

What ties all four together is a promotion that’s clearly feeling itself again. Building a champion the right way, feeding a rising second show, controlling the messaging on a divisive star, and taking a genuine celebrity swing in a market that’ll appreciate it — that’s a company operating with confidence. The trick, as always with AEW, is turning individual good instincts into a coherent week of television. The pieces are there. Now they have to add up.

Which of these do you think is the smartest call — and which one worries you? Drop your rankings in the comments and let’s argue it out.