10 Most Exciting Young Prodigies In WWE & AEW Right Now
Future headliners, main-eventers, and money-makers.
American wrestling needs an emergent tide of youthful stars as much as ever before.
"It's a show for young people" is a common rebuttal to earnest criticism, though young people are those wrestling is failing the most. WWE has shed over 50% of viewers aged 18-34 across the last 12 months. An unprecedented 88% of female teenagers tuned out between hours one and three of the 27 July 2020 episode of RAW, and 52% of males. AEW's audience skews younger, Dynamite regularly trounces NXT in these demographics, and the show continues to smash pre-launch projections, but it needs to keep pushing forward to regularly finish in the top five every week.
Key to stopping the grey rot is pushing and promoting younger wrestlers whose best years are in the future, not the past, so these demographics can follow their careers and remain fans for decades - much like the 50+ group has with Vince McMahon's ageing part-timers. Fortunately, both promotions are stacked with options.
Only wrestlers aged 30 and under are applicable here. Most performers don't peak until after then, so it seems an appropriate cut-off point. Five from WWE, five from AEW, ranked in no particular order...
10. Penelope Ford
An early AEW concern was that their sparse road schedule may hinder their ability to develop wrestlers. This is sound logic and may hold true for other roster members, as constant practice is required to achieve mastery in anything, including wrestling. That's difficult when you work for a company that only runs once a week.
Penelope Ford has defied this, having emerged as a Most Improved Wrestler of the Year frontrunner over the past few months. 'The Superbad Girl' looks increasingly impressive each time out. She has grown to the point that there is no longer a gap between the confidence she exudes as a manager and that demonstrated between the ropes, which was most apparent when she faced Hikaru Shida at Fyter Fest. Never before had Ford looked such a complete wrestler, though it shouldn't come as a surprise that her best AEW performance came against the Women's Champion: Shida is elite.
Nonetheless, the signs are there that the charismatic Ford can and will become a torchbearer for her division over the next few years, occupying the space between Shida's outstanding wrestler and Britt Baker's company-best character work.