Why AEW Were Right All Along
AEW is attempting to "restore the feeling" - and with VERY good reason...
All Elite Wrestling exploded into life more quickly than any other promotion ever. Funded by a connected super-fan billionaire and named after the branding of the act du jour, it sprinted out of the blocks with a revitalised Chris Jericho doing the best work of his career, Cody Rhodes' very astute grasp of the romantic underdog narrative, and the Elite's state-of-the-art fusion of exhilaration and layered melodrama. You might have personally deemed it corny, but it was red-hot. Transformative. It might not seem that way now - the worst time to put something over is when it just cycles out of fashion - but it was red-hot.
AEW had a vision to do what WWE refused to do or was incapable of doing. TV matches that were actually worked with lung-bursting effort. Creative freedom. Long-term, intricate stories. And, of paramount importance, wins and losses mattering. Lapsed WWE fans had watched on, for years, feeling patronised as Vince McMahon as toggled through his Rolodex of awful finishes. As New Japan Pro Wrestling rose to prominence, they longed for a mainstream US alternative with something in the way of a puro influence. Actually, they didn't. That was a totally naive pipe dream and they didn't bother. And then AEW actually materialised, the wild convergence of factors behind which should never be overlooked. It is a unicorn of a promotion that, beyond the odd, horrendous development - the orignal incarnation of the Dark Order, the Nightmare Collective, Matt Hardy - was as good if not better at its peak than the unprecedented level of hype promised.
Ironically, AEW's vision was so successful that this was proved to them when they began to fail by deviating from it.
The autumn 2023 period was inexplicable, and that was the worst thing about it. AEW was meant to be the switched-on promotion dialled into the pulse of the jaded, more discerning fandom. AEW was meant to be the promotion that had learned from the mistakes of WCW and TNA, which each entered death spirals after forging the competition. AEW was even incredibly smug about how much it knew better, once upon a time, which was as much a reassuring marketing tactic as anything else. And yet, they made a grave mistake. Whether inspired by the success of the Bloodline, frustrated by the lack of growth promised following the events of All Out 2021, or acquiescing to the demands of the wrong people - disingenuous online grifters or carnies within the company - AEW copied WWE's homework.
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