>>15206906He's a great wrestler, but he just hung around the wrong enablers for too long, people who didn't push him hard enough or give him constructive criticism, which is more of a general AEW problem anyway. If you look at the end of his New Japan run, they were seemingly gearing up for a face turn, where Tanahashi was talking about ''seeing the goodness in hangman, and trying to take the evil out of his heart'' or something like that, which would have been really neat to see. As bad as the anxious millenial thing was in its execution, it still had the potential to make for interesting televison, had they given the keys to a writer who understood subtlety, and made a truly invigorating story of a guy who overcame his neuroticism through hard work or something of that sort, but it's just too high bar for the kind of product put together by that company. He's good at playing the on-edge character, the Danielson 60 minute match showcased that very well, but if the story's not there then how far can you really go? Down the road of self-indulgence, it seemed.
