AEW is Wrestling
It’s been brewing for years. Time after time wrestling fans would exchange names, promotions, and matches like speakeasy codewords. In the mid-2000s it was Ring of Honor, CM Punk, Samoa Joe, Austin Aries, Chris Daniels, and Low Ki. For several years now we’ve been whispering New Japan, Okada, Naito, Nakamura, and Ibushi. Or even NXT, Seth Rollins, Big E, and Bo Dallas. For years wrestling was an obligation to the WWE even while the sport evolved elsewhere. Now we see what all those years in the indies has yielded. AEW.
AEW did not produce the perfect pay-per-view show. AEW is not a perfect company. Issues and problems will arise and what will determine that company’s future is how they evolve in the face of adversity. Their first major show, Double or Nothing, was however what wrestling should be. It’s the result of the natural evolution. Where the WWE stuck to a stale system obviously growing older by the day endlessly promising changes while only serving the same rebranded gruel. AEW is fresh, new, and exciting. The homogeneity of wrestling is over.
During one of the many interviews surrounding Double or Nothing, Cody described the show’s card as a buffet. A series of items you might not always order at your wrestling show. A not so sneaky way to force wrestling fans to enjoy things they might normally skip, or may not normally get a chance to see. And that’s the highlighted difference between AEW and WWE: change.
Tag teams were treated as important as single superstars battling it out. Women’s matches were emphasized with surprise entrants. Even single bouts weren’t just about fighting, they were deeper stories about family and interpersonal relationships within wrestling families. And there was a dinosaur lucha libre wrestler fighting an emo man with a staple gun. Fun for everyone.
It’s hard to go back now. Hard to watch five hours of someone else’s show knowing the pieces are there to put on amazing wrestling every week. Hard to know that AEW will soon be up and running and competing directly with such a sad product. Hard to just accept a company that carries all the usual issues any wrestling promotion has while still doing deals with questionable governments. Hard to watch all this wrestling when greener pastures have arrived.
WWE can finally become what Vince has always wanted it to be: sports entertainment. Not quite wrestling, just a wrestling by-product. An evolutionary path that still can be classified as something similar, but still not the same. AEW is wrestling now. The wrestling we always knew it could be. Not perfect, still work to be done, and progress to be made. But we are no longer trapped in the Sisyphean torment of WWE. You don’t have to hope your favorite gets booked properly or receives their moment or two in the sun before fading into the midcard again. Now you just have to hope their contract expires sooner rather than later.
