That Possible Developmental Show

[Dr. Bolty, Disaster Enby]

Got thinking about this after the thread about the trademark for a show called "Elevation," and remembering what Tony Khan said about possibly splitting Dark into two shows, one of which would be more focused on Dark's developmental aspect.

If AEW has a developmental show...what should it be like?

Should it retain the format that the more developmental-ish side of Dark right now - IE, younger talent like KiLynn King and the Acclaimed doing squash matches against tryouts, with one of the standouts going up against an established midcarder in the main event?

Or, should it be a more fleshed out show where said younger talent primarily wrestle one another, and have proper feuds and angles?

The latter would probably be the better actual show. But there seems to be something valuable in the former where developmental is still, well, developmental - not something that would take the place of the centerpiece show, just a place where the newer wrestlers can work out their styles and their acts until they are ready for primetime.

Having it be more of a minor league promotion also pokes at one of the "rules" of AEW, which is that enhancement match victories carry some amount of weight in-universe (however weak it may be to many viewers). If Dani Jordyn is the top heel of a developmental show, going on a tear where she keeps stealing victories from the likes of Tesha Price, Madi Wrenkowski, and Katalina Perez...does she just show up on Dynamite for a crushing loss to Hikaru Shida to keep her "in her place," as it were, or does that just raise the question of why her 5-0 record on the developmental show doesn't mean the same thing as a wrestler like Leyla Hirsch getting a title shot off of a similar record? Whereas having the same wrestlers alternate between beating tryouts on the development show + jobbing on Dark would justify their kayfabe ranking and also drive home that the developmental show isn't primetime. It also prevents the dreaded NXT problem where talent good enough to move up in the world tends to stay put because they're the lynchpin of the show they're on...

Don't really have a conclusion, but - interested if anyone has any thoughts on this proposition.

[Mozenrath]

It'd probably be much like a lot of Dark is already, an opportunity for a lot of their up and comers to get some ring experience.

[toodarkmark]

Since its still pandemic world, it really cant be more then Dark but with newer talent or talent that hasn't gone over. So Dark has people who don't get Dynamite time but need to advance a story, build themselves to get on Dynamite a la Hybrid2, and getting job matches in for talent that's not in a story cycle.

Elevation is Top Flight, Red Velvet, Lindsay Snow, Serpentico, Acclaimed trying to make a name for themselves. I would love that, especially if its a Friday night show or something.

And then when they tour again, maybe they start to have the Saturday 6:05 TNT show, which should just be old school rasslin' with JR, Tony, and Cody, just working on that 50+ crowd.

[timelimitdraw]

I could see Elevation getting taped in a studio, like the April episodes of Dynamite or WCW Saturday Night back in the day.

Make it a one-hour show, shoot a bunch of episodes at once, and create an Elevation championship that has real stakes: When a talent successfully defends the Elevation title 10 times, they move up the card and get a shot at the World title on the main event of Dynamite.

[Bang Bang Bart]

If Elevation is meant to be AEW’s version of WCW Saturday Night, all I ask is for the set to be similar to the high-tech factory set that Saturday Night had in the mid 90s.