10 Things Only '90s Wrestling Fans Will Understand

10. What Competition Used To Mean

In the late '90s, the WWF functioned as something adjacent to a meritocracy.

The WWF didn't have a Network that fostered inherent laziness. The WWF had mainstream competition, and, since this was years before they didn't have institutional brain worms, they were actually capable of recognising the boot.

"There's something repeatedly kicking me in the ass. But it's a new boot, and once that boot is broken in, it won't kick my ass no more. Because that's how it works. People are only watching AEW over NXT because it's new. That's why NXT UK, formally incorporated in 2018, is the most-watched WWE show and consistently defeats RAW, SmackDown, and NXT in viewership!"

-Triple H, speaking to investors on a quarterly conference call.

This "AEW will force WWE to get better!" myth is just a myth. It's an echo of rhetoric that WWE, through its dumbsh*t revisionist history, has arrogantly allowed themselves to believe.

Competition in the '90s informed drastic, thrilling, transformative change. Competition in the modern era has informed NXT's spiral into lamentable desperation. They're doing the same old things, only, at the expense of a story and consistent success, to the slight and temporary detriment of AEW.

Competition in the '90s gave us Stone Cold Steve Austin whaling on Mr. McMahon with a bedpan with a priceless sound effect of which the Simpsons would be proud.

Competition in the modern era is WWE counter-programming AEW with the dying mewl of EVOLVE.