Kanefabe Weekly: It's bad that they attacked their boss, right?

This week saw an angle to close AEW Dynamite that is new to the company, but familiar to wrestling fans: the on-screen authority figure. Tony Khan has avoided any meaningful role as a television character going on five years now. In the closing segment on Wednesday, he walked to the ring for a confrontation with Jack Perry.

I had no idea where the angle was headed. Maybe it was obvious to other people. I thought maybe there was going to be a parade of wrestlers, one entrance song hitting after another, to end the show in chaos. Khan might be a dismayed observed in that case, setting up a number of stories moving forward.

Instead, AEW went with a development that is both simpler and more complicated. The vicious attack on Khan by the “Scapegoat” and the other members of the newly formed Elite represents a new direction for the company. If nothing else, I’m curious where they are going with this. I think it’s safe to say I’m not alone in that.

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This is definitely a heel group doing heel stuff, right?

The Young Bucks are heels. To gauge fan reactions over the last few weeks and months is to confirm they are almost universally regarded as such. They get booed. They get chants. Many of those chants have cuss words. Their recent character shift is getting the intended results.

Matthew and Nicholas have settled in as heels once again. They have turned the Elite into a full heel group. And they have added two new members: Kazuchika Okada and Jack Perry.

That’s where things get a bit tricky.

Fans still cheer Okada. He seems to have a strong sense of how to generate heel heat, with his one-finger salute to turn the crowd against him at Dynasty as a true chef’s kiss moment. But so long as people are still feeling excitement that he is in AEW, Okada will receive mixed reactions.

Then there’s the artist formerly known as Jungle Boy. I think the whole idea here was to lean into CM Punk’s lingering popularity and get major heat on Perry as a heel. Something funny happened: he’s getting huge cheers instead.

On Wednesday night, the fans loudly chanted, “Oh, cry me a river,” a reference to what Perry said that triggered Punk’s hair-trigger temper and led to a backstage fight and Punk’s eventual dismissal from AEW. That chant as a greeting for Jack Perry’s first appearance since that incident is clearly intended to celebrate him. Right?

That fuzziness brings me to the central question around the closing angle on Dynamite: are the Elite the obvious bad guys here?

What is the function of this kind of angle? The setup is there for a strong reaction from fans: almost everyone can relate to feelings of frustration or anger towards their boss. Most civil people have not considered responding the way that wrestlers do, of course. That’s the point of pro wrestling: take the relatable feeling, then go completely over the top with it.

So, if we’re starting with the shared experience of anger towards boss, what feelings are we tapping into when someone attacks the authority figure?

It might be catharsis, watching the good guy wrestler give the boss their comeuppance. Vince McMahon made good money for many years on that approach.

It might be a means to generate heat for heels. One of the most memorable sequences for me since returning to wrestling fandom in the last eight years or so involved this kind of angle: Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn beating the heck out of Daniel Bryan.

In order for that angle to work, your authority figure should be beloved. The heels should be despised. That might just sound like I’m describing how stories work, but aren’t there more layers to it when you’re doing the authority figure story?

Tony Khan was beloved by fans at one point in time. I would never use the word universally when talking about wrestling fans. But by and large, if you were talking about AEW fans, you were talking about a group that was grateful and excited that Khan had started this new company and provided an exciting alternative to WWE.

I think most AEW fans still hold a positive impression of Khan. But the product has been less consistent over the last few years, at least in terms of staying true to its identity. Sometimes it felt like a show doing a WWE impression. Sometimes it felt like it was a Ring of Honor show now. I felt this way at times, and I’m sure I wasn’t alone: it just wasn’t the same.

At the same time, Khan acted like a bit of a mad man on social media. He is on the received end of more criticism. This shouldn’t be surprising for someone running a wrestling company, but Khan acts like it surprises him. He has thin skin and offers responses to criticism that are, at the very least, questionable in their wisdom from someone with “president and CEO” in their title.

Will fans boo the group that attacked that authority figure? Not just boo. Will they convey the outrage about their promotion coming under attack? Will they express the fury over a beloved boss being left helpless on the mat?

I don’t have a good sense of how these questions will play out. Jack Perry’s popularity complicates things even further. The fact that these gray areas even exist makes this a risky gambit for AEW.

What’s happening this week?

• Becky Lynch is the new Women’s Champion, earning the title recently vacated by Rhea Ripley. I get the sense that they are hoping to capture some of the magic from “the Man’s” initial rise to the top of WWE. I also get the sense it might work.

• Will Ospreay has been on the rise and will get a title shot. The curveball? It’s for Roderick Strong’s International Title. Everyone’s favorite BRUV can do no wrong, at least so far. I’m open to where this is headed, but I’m definitely surprised at what seems to be a lengthy detour away from the AEW World Championship.

• Mercedes Mone will wrestle in AEW someday, right? We now know that she will challenge for the TBS Championship at Double or Nothing. Maybe she’ll even have a match before that. Or maybe she’ll just keep dancing and being mean to Willow Nightengale.

• The WWE Draft is this week. This was pure nonsense in recent years, but with general managers for both shows and Triple H in charge, I could see this being pretty darn entertaining. Raw and Smackdown have leaned into a “real sports” presentation lately, so I’m curious how they will make it seem like the NFL draft that is happening at the same time.

• Swerve Strickland had his first match as champion on Wednesday and will cut his first promo on Saturday night. It’s an interesting time to be the new champion on the heels of this angle with the Elite and Tony Khan. But I have no doubt Swerve can stand up to that moment and match the importance of those other angles.

Will Gunther make a good king?

The answer is almost certainly yes. From Ring General to King of the Ring, Gunther is poised to move up the ranks. Without knowing who else might appear in the King of the Ring tournament, I can’t imagine a better choice than Gunther.

Fresh off a multi-year run that added some serious luster to the Intercontinental Championship now held by Sami Zayn, Gunther could do the same for this whole notion of the King of the Ring. No disrespect to King Corbin, Shinsuke, or whoever else has been strutting around with a crown in recent years.

Odds and ends

• Imperium, always an underrated faction, finally paid off the split they have been teasing for a while now.

• Lance Archer was awesome in the very confusing gauntlet match on AEW Dynamite this week, the match that Ospreay eventually won to get his title shot against Roddy Strong.

• Jay White was also awesome in that gauntlet match.

• The toils of so may pay-per-views and premium live events: we’re quietly getting AJ Styles versus Cody Rhodes for the belt in one week. “Quietly” shouldn’t be in that sentence.

• Chuck Taylor sided with Orange Cassidy over Trent. Their parking lot brawl should be all kinds of fun as we barrel towards Orange versus Trent at a pay-per-view.

All of these baby face champions

Becky Lynch. Sami Zayn. Bayley. The Awesome Truth. And of course, the man himself, Cody Rhodes. There were a number of long stories that paid off with these baby faces getting their big wins as WWE started its “new era.”

There is time right now to take a breath and kick off new directions. But I’m definitely curious how this will go. You know, the money in the chase and all that, and a number of the good guys are done chasing (for now).

This week at Kanefabe

• A special AEW Dynasty edition of the weekly power rankings

• An essay about the potential for the best of both worlds with WWE and AEW

• Five questions that included Samoa Joe’s towel and whether Jon Moxley has ever played golf

At this time next week, we’ll have freshly drafted rosters for WWE’s shows and know Swerve’s opponent for Double or Nothing. Until then, have fun watching pro wrestling.