Call them the “King/Queen of Prospects” (the K/QoP). Basically, a belt reserved for wrestlers 25-or-under. Here’s a list of men and women who would qualify:
Men: Daniel Garcia, Dante Martin, Darius Martin, Action Andretti, Hook, Komander, Kyle Fletcher, Lee Johnson, Nick Wayne, Parker Boudreaux, Cole Karter.
Women: Anna Jay, Julia Hart, Billie Starkz, Skye Blue, Leyla Hirsch.
(That info comes from https://www.thesmackdownhotel.com/roster/aew/ and is likely incomplete).
PROS:
- Acts as a great way to start long-term rivalries between top prospects.
- Shines a spotlight on young talent. Could be good for the demo?
- Gives insight into who Tony likes and wants to push down the road.
- Offers new story-telling devices. Example: A 24-year old has 3 months before they turn 25 to make good on their promise of one-day becoming the K/QoP.
- Could make Forbidden Door matches between AEW / NJPW’s top prospects more interesting.
- Could act as a recruiting tool for top prospects. “Come to AEW and we’ll let you have a run as K/QoP.”
CONS:
- There are too many belts. Enough with the belts.
- Without Dark/Elevation, there isn’t enough time to feature green wrestlers.
- There aren’t enough prospects under-25 to make it interesting. Especially on the women’s side.
What do you think?
I wouldn’t mind it, but with the lower amount of talent to contend for it, and the quantity of titles, it feels like it would be a ‘they hold the title for long periods of time and defend it only occasionally’ type set up. That’s not a bad thing per se, but I’d wanna see it replace something (like the FTW title [which I love, but it’s the odd tittle out]) than add to the others.
To be honest, another idea I’d like is to get that title, but only if we also changed the world title picture. I’d like to see the ‘rEaL wOrLd TiTlE’ shit end, now and just treat the Intl title as the ‘other’ main belt (as I feel OC has raised that fuckers prestige so much, and ‘International Championship’ and ‘World Championship’ are pretty much synonyms here. One dumb idea goes, one belt officially gets the prestige its earned, and there’s more time on the card to support everything else, plus the occasional Young-AEW Title™ match.
I like the idea of swapping out a title. I think you nailed it with FTW and the MTV championship (can’t hear “real world” without thinking of that damn MTV show lol) too.
Fuck I am committing 1 of my last 6 brain cells to saving that one for future use lol.
Infinite agreement here. It makes the actual World Championship belt look even worse, considering how under-utilized it already is. The International Championship is THE AEW Championship in my eyes, and the World Championship belt is just some form of PPV token they can walk out for interviews.