10 Ways AEW Has Revolutionised Pro Wrestling
The fuse for change.
All Elite Wrestling isn't a perfect professional wrestling company.
The win/loss rankings hold up to scrutiny, but this is mostly from an estimate, and perhaps generously so. The definition of a "quality" win is hazy, and that it is limited to a top five doesn't necessarily tell us what we haven't learned by paying attention to the top programmes. It's a nice visual reminder that puts over the otherwise elusive "league" aspect we were promised in the original TNT press release. It's limited to the presentation of the company; wrestling is wrestling and grudges and trash-talk will always drive it, but AEW could and perhaps should use the win/loss rankings as a narrative device. A traceable dip in form might compel a desperate, fading wrestler to turn heel, for instance. That real sports feel is missing, not that there isn't enough to differentiate AEW as a real alternative.
The Women's division continues to not warrant the Elite descriptor. The lack of focus is most damning; limited to one segment a week, most weeks, it's incredibly difficult for an act to build momentum. There's an almost patronising your-turn quality to it confounded by a further stop/start issue brought on by scheduling of the talent's diaries.
It is not, however, far away, through restoration as much as revolution...
10. Reinventing The Style Of TV Wrestling
TV wrestling in WWE is, through in-house policy and its schedule, often pedestrian, formulaic fare.
There's a about a million road agents working from the same style guide; the format is repetitive, the action withheld most often to account for the bloated schedule. It's a necessary measure to preserve the bodies of the roster, but while pragmatism and morality is nice, it does not satiate banger lust. NXT is the outlier to this, obviously - the best matches on Wednesday are exhilarating, outstanding - but even then, the style is regulated. There are more tropes than genres.
In AEW, MJF works a very overt, old-school heel style, defiantly so; he is less interested in the back-and-forth than drawing the closest approximation of old school heat. The Lucha Brothers have incorporated a style of lucha so authentic that it repels some for not adhering to Americanised referee counts. In the TV match of the year, Kenny Omega and PAC deftly adapted the long, main event puro epic to American TV by abandoning the slow-build and integrating familiar US heat spots. There's a sense of fun that pervades the midcard, too, creating a sense of levity not seen on TV in forever.
Irony, comedy, bangers, trios: AEW has expanded the language of TV wrestling, and in 2020 in particular, has transcended it.