10 Matches AEW Did Better Than WWE
These one-time WWE matches were given the AEW treatment and were better for it!
Hot on the heels of a certain American Dragon very much setting his sights on a returning Jon Moxley on Dynamite and Rampage in recent weeks, now seems to be as good a time as any to assess those All Elite showdowns that felt very much familiar - but at the same time entirely different.
After all, this incoming Danielson/Moxley no-doubt epic is nothing new, with the duo squaring off on WWE programming on a number of occasions under their Daniel Bryan and Dean Ambrose monikers, respectively. But even without actually witnessing their All Elite collision yet, it's safe to assume that whatever they throw together under Tony Khan's banner will dwarf those Sports Entertainment offerings in terms of sheer spectacle and physicality alone.
Either due to being given a bit more time to breathe when it came to the story being told or just being allowed to break free from the restrictions often placed on them by Vince McMahon and his cronies, absolutely every All Elite version of these previous WWE one-on-one encounters benefited from going down in the hottest promotion on planet earth later down the road...
10. Dustin Rhodes Vs. Jake Hager
Of the many names given the care and attention they were desperately lacking whilst plying their trade under the World Wrestling Entertainment banner, Jake Hager acted as the first sign of hope in The Land of All Elite. Brought into Chris Jericho's Inner Circle on night one of AEW Dynamite, gone was the All-American goof we'd grown used to seeing in Vinnie Mac's empire. In his place was a no-nonsense powerhouse with MMA pedigree.
And never was that more prevalent than during Hager's skirmish with Dustin Rhodes on the first-ever Revolution PPV, as the two one-time WWE stars went to war in early 2020.
While their previous WWE Main Event offering quietly went under the radar back in 2013, with Goldust besting Jack Swagger via Final Cut in that forgettable outing, the same could not be said for their next battle.
In Hager's AEW debut at the PPV, the Bellator fighter violently dispatched Rhodes via arm triangle post-low blow to the wrestling legend. Sure, it was hardly the match of the night (no prizes for guessing what was!) but it still made for a most exciting battle than their WWE work ever did.