Shawn Spears finding a tag team partner

they changed directions. honestly I think they made a good choice, I don't have any interest seeing spears in a throw away tag team.

Spears is kind of in a funny situation. Everyone always talks about how much better off people will be in AEW, and how guys that were underutilized in WWE will flourish. Spears seems to be in the same spot he was in in WWE. I often forget he works in AEW.

I’m sure he’s saying that, but what is his role? I feel like he’s barely on the show.

As talked about in another thread, AEW has done a pretty good job with long-term storytelling, despite a lot of fumbles, lately. This angle, though, is one where they clearly needed something for him to do, and then someone else had another idea, and his role seemed to be undefinable. 

What's unfortunate is that he had a lot of steam heading into All Out, and easily could have gained it back with a few big wins. Losing to Cody proved to be a good story, as the Cody character flourished, but they dropped the ball with a talented guy in Sean Spears.

I don't feel like the roster is too big, but the issue is more how they're structuring shows.  With Cody's open challenge, there are consistently 3 15+ matches each week.  That's half your show right there, and it makes it tough to find places to fit in other talent.  But I don't see the roster size as an issue overall.  You need enough depth that you can avoid repeating matchups and keep things fresh.  And the heavy focus on tag wrestling is going to mean that some of the lower card singles guys are going to be less visible than we're used to in singles dominated promotions.

I just haven't seen anything from Spears that has intrigued me since the product launched.  It's possible maybe AEW brass doesn't either.  He was put in a pretty prominent spot early on, feuding with Cody and hooking up with Tully.  But it didn't seem like there was much crowd response, and I think guys like MJF and Darby hooked on the with crowd faster than expected and shot up the depth chart. 

That's going to be the road forward, I think.  Some guys will absolutely take off in new environment.  Some won't.  In sports, sometimes the change of scenery trade works and a guy comes into his own in a new environment.  Sometime it doesn't change a thing.  As time goes on, I think we'll a fair number of the original signings cycled out as talent becomes available and they're able to trade up and AEW has more money to work with.  That's not a bad thing, imo.

Not to stray too far OT, but totally agree.  I think there were some guys who clearly outpaced expectations early on - Darby, Sammy, and Scorpio being the biggest in my mind.  Some others - Jannella, Jimmy Hacov (before his release), Spears, and some others were given time but just didn't seem to catch on.

You can't, and shouldn't, just hoarding talent for talent's take.  Some may stick around simply because of politics (Luther) or because they'll work for cheap.  But some turnover is healthy and needed.  WWE has felt so stale to me for the last few years because the main roster hasn't really changed and NXT callups have been fewer and fewer.  

And if Meltzer's rumor that nearly all of the WWE roster has reached out to AEW in some capacity, you can't hang onto a lower card guy out of loyalty when there is a chance to trade up to someone who may be a better performer.  The real question becomes how do you walk that line between having a good backstage environment and making smart business decisions.