No AEW belts were actually defended at AEW Battle of the Belts

I’ve poked fun at AEW’s Battle of the Belts multiple times before for its tendency to feature too many title matches where the challenger is a low card person who rarely wins on AEW television, such as when Preston Vance challenged Orange Cassidy for the International title earlier this year at Battle of the Belts IX.

The show also contains too many filler ROH title matches that don’t have much to do with AEW programming. The end result is there has only been one championship change in the history of Battle of the Belts across the first nine events. Because of this kind of booking, a lot of AEW fans quickly realized the show could be skipped without missing anything of significance.

That brings me to this weekend’s (Apr. 13) Battle of the Belts X, which featured the following three matches:

• Athena (c) vs. Red Velvet for the ROH women’s world championship
• HOOK (c) vs. Shane Taylor for the FTW championship
• Roderick Strong (c) vs. Rocky Romero in an AEW International title eliminator match

What stands out to me about this AEW Battle of the Belts lineup is that it actually featured zero AEW belts being defended.

Athena is a ROH champion, not an AEW champion.

HOOK is the FTW champion, which is an unrecognized belt that is not an official AEW title. HOOK’s belt is not included in the AEW rankings, nor is he featured in the “Champions” section of AEW’s web site. He’s not an AEW champion.

Roderick Strong is the AEW International champion, but his match against Rocky Romero was a non-title match. It was an “eliminator match,” which is AEW’s fancy way of saying the challenger is guaranteed a future title match if they win.

So there you have it. AEW Battle of the Belts X featured a ROH title match, an unrecognized title match, and a non-title match. And the champions won every match, because that’s almost always what happens at AEW Battle of the Belts.

That doesn’t mean AEW Battle of the Belts X was a bad show, but come on, there has to be a better way to implement this concept.