10 Major Challenges Facing WWE In 2021
2. AEW
What else?
Yes it's great that on a couple of separate occasions this year the combined viewership totals on Wednesday defeated Raw's on a Monday, and yes it's absolutely fine to watch and enjoy all the wrestling and just be glad about all the choice, but WWE started a war, not the company that snapped a monopoly.
All Elite Wrestling have been guilty of plenty of petty jabs, but they didn't aim Dynamite square in the face of Raw from launch. WWE, in contrast, planted NXT on the USA Network two weeks before AEW's weekly in order to try and get a head start. They remain the only weeks the black-and-gold brand has hit seven figures.
What AEW is not, right now, is direct competition to WWE as the number one wrestling company in the world. What it is, however, is an alternative a sizeable number of fans have stuck with this year in the face of countless other distractions. It's showing wrestling fans what a wrestling show looks like again, forcing them to ask questions of whatever the f*ck that mutated version of one is on Monday Nights.
They were always destined to be more than the noisy neighbours (or "pissants" Triple H pegged them as in 2019) but the volume of those chants will only be louder in 2021 if and when fans return.