Creative in wrestling today seems extremely focused on long-term booking.
Bookers are widely evaluated based on their ability to string together long stories that conclude with satisfying payoffs, typically at a major show. Legends are told of past bookers who successfully pulled off these major angles that elevated new stars, created tons of excitement, and popped business in the process.
As a result, short-term bookings are often overlooked. Putting together a successful program that only lasts a couple of weeks and results in some entertaining segments or matches and ultimately gives a small rub to the people in the stories, is not seen as being nearly as important as long-term booking or “the big picture” of a promotion. Historically speaking, those small moments are largely forgotten, while the giant blow-off match after a year-long feud is remembered.
This creates the perception that short-term booking is both easier than long-term booking, and less essential, both of which are not true.
Short-term booking can be just as challenging as long-term booking, it just has a different set of challenges. Short-term booking seeks immediate fan investment, while long-term booking can afford to build anticipation and interest slowly over time. Short-term booking requires each segment to be executed perfectly to achieve maximum effect, while long-term booking can have several missteps along the way and still ultimately work out.
Short-term booking is also the key to what has become by far the most lucrative aspect of the pro wrestling business; the weekly television show. For a show to be exciting each week, the short-term booking needs to be good, as fans need to feel invested in what is happening on a week-to-week basis. A company with good long-term booking can rely on having fan investment for the major shows where fans feel like the longstanding angles will reach some kind of conclusion, but weak short-term booking can make the weekly television show feel like an inessential slog that nobody really has to watch.
Too often, it feels like weekly wrestling shows merely exist to kill some time while waiting for the next PPV cycle to blow off some longstanding angles. Without consistent short-term angles and storylines, weekly television just comes across as filler that the promotion is contractually obligated to provide and that fans watch out of habit.
This brings us to Darby Allin, who is currently working on one of the most entertaining runs of weekly television in recent memory, entirely done through quality short-term booking. Allin’s run began at Dynasty on April 12, when following a victory over Andrade, he was named the #1 contender for the AEW World Championship, which he announced he would be having his world title match just three days later on Dynamite.
Allin then beat MJF, a match built on three day’s notice, to win the world title for the first time.
Since then, Allin has been making weekly title defenses, all in feuds that have only been booked with a couple of days in between the matches. However, these are not just random matches. Frequently, his opponents, such as PAC, Brody King, and Kevin Knight, have cited past victories over Allin, justifying their ability to get a title shot. In the background, the longer story of MJF trying to get a rematch for the title has been unfolding, ultimately leading up to MJF having to put his hair on the line at Double or Nothing in order to challenge for the title again.
The booking around Allin’s title win and subsequent defenses has injected life into each show he has worked, whether that be Dynamite or Collision, and single-handily carried the special “Fairway to Hell” show last Saturday when he defended the title against PAC. It’s made each show feel must-see and consequential, not supplemental content that fans could easily skip and be no worse off if they decided to watch something else that night.
In five years’ time, it is unlikely there will be regular conversations about Darby Allin’s quick run as AEW World Champion in the spring of 2026. It’s not going to be in the first line of Tony Khan’s booking obituary–instead, major angles and long-term booking plans that came together will be the highlights and what people remember. However, for the past month, fans watching AEW each week have found the product as enjoyable as ever, and that is due to the effective short-term booking that is often taken for granted.
Allin is not the only example either.
Over the past few weeks, Samoa Joe has been calling out Will Ospreay and trying to recruit him for his group, The Opps, as opposed to working with the Death Riders. At first, this felt random, but then it was announced that Joe would be facing Will Ospreay in the first round of the Owen Hart tournament.
Instead of just having it be “these are two big names who are meeting in round one” and letting that be enough justification for the match, some concerted effort was put into making the match into a mini-feud, with a likely tag match between The Opps and The Deathriders on a television leading up the eventual Ospreay vs Joe match at Double or Nothing taking place.
Again, this is effective short-term booking because Ospreay’s bigger picture is him winning the Owen (likely beating Swerve Strickland in the finals) and then going to ALL IN to challenge for the world title. Instead of just kind of sitting around and waiting for the Swerve match and ALL IN to happen, he is given something productive and interesting to do over the next few weeks.
In a lot of ways, short-term booking has become a lost art. Since history often forgets the week-to-week booking, it’s not a glamorous job and the immediate payoff for it is never as convincing as a long-term program that “crowns” a new top star, or something to that degree. Short-term booking, though, is integral to maintaining maximum interest in a promotion and also shows a booker’s ability to balance multiple things at one time.
Companies should invest in making the week-to-week product as interesting as possible; otherwise, most of the wrestling just feels like empty calories.
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