10 Things You Only Learn Attending AEW LIVE

10. Live Wrestling Is Better

The mainstream pro wrestling business is entirely dependent on televised rights fees.

Mainstream pro wrestling in the United States boomed and continues to thrive through its longstanding relationship with cable television. Ted Turner believes that pro wrestling was crucial to the very success of the medium.

The vast majority of wrestling fans consume wrestling through the telly. It's the home of pro wrestling, but that renders it easy to lose sight of just how great pro wrestling is and can be. Sometimes the atmosphere isn't captured particularly well. Most weeks, the standard is so high that it is normalised. The homogenised nature of the modern "hybrid" style is such that becoming apathetic to it is all too easy.

Go and watch an AEW show live, if you're able to do that, because that's how wrestling is meant to be watched.

The height Komander reaches after his rope-walk is impossible, undermined by the fitful US TV camera. The chest-caving impact of a chop caused me to wince (and shriek, and holler). The music is so loud that you can't help but get pumped up. It doesn't matter if last week's chapter of a storyline wasn't great, or if the card doesn't showcase the best of the roster. The live experience is so vivid, and the commitment to working a TV match so passionate, that you feel everything in your gut. It's a sensory overload in the best, most vital way.

My personal pet hate, in this online sphere, is the "let people enjoy things" crowd. I enjoy watching wrestling on an analytical level.

Live, with no inhibitions, I can see where that lot are coming from. Wrestling can in fact be "fun". It is not actually that serious after all!