10 Ways AEW Has Revolutionised Pro Wrestling

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.