10 Burning AEW Criticisms Tony Khan MUST Ignore
7. "AEW Needs To Stop Referencing WWE"
There's an element of truth to this take, but there's a good and bad version of everything.
The otherwise very entertaining Jericho Appreciation Society saying "Appreciate us" in a riff on Roman Reigns' "Acknowledge me" catchphrase is low rent. The Bloodline is at this point so great a faction that parody has descended into self-own. And, for all of the mocking of the "WWE wrestlers watch the monitors at unnatural angles" trope, AEW now does this without irony. Christ, lads, if we saw Hangman Page's face watching the glow of a monitor we can only see from behind, it would be fairly obvious that he isn't watching NCIS.
The AEW fanbase at large enjoys the digs. Promoters should encourage their fanbase to pop. This is all quite simple.
CM Punk elicited some of the loudest reactions of the year when he buried the WrestleMania ticket sales and told MJF to f*ck off to WWE. And on the subject of MJF, his referencing WWE in his recent, phenomenal promo segment with William Regal was incredibly effective.
It fuelled the emotion of his title quest, ultimately a quest for recognition, and had the happy byproduct of making the competition look wildly incompetent at a time when the narrative might be shifting in their favour.