10 Times Wrestling Fans Got What They Wanted (But Didn’t Realise)
CM Punk and Kenny Omega answer the most common AEW complaint - with aplomb...
The 'Nobody hates wrestling as much as wrestling fans' take is deeply annoying.
It undermines pro wrestling as a worthy art form - if it can't be critiqued or analysed, then what is it? - and is a residual sentiment that lingers from the days in which we were considered gaping marks wowed by the artifice. It's also moronic, because if not us - the jaded, discerning, pedantic, whatever - who else is going to engage with the medium? Triple H's WWE is doing...fine, and AEW has a robust if stagnant audience with a ceiling. People are allowed to have standards. Nobody should be ordered to perform cartwheels because Triple H brought Top Dolla back.
It's also fair because f*ck us.
Collectively, we constantly project our own ideas onto the medium, often prematurely. Your writer bemoaned how little mic time MJF and others were afforded in the early phase of AEW Dynamite, and now, three years in, AEW is the best talker's promotion since JCP. There's a lesson in that: remove oneself from the insta-take swamp, and what should happen often does, in time.
What should happen often already has...
10. "We Want WCW To Come Back"
All Elite Wrestling's TNT press release was lowkey hilarious, in that it essentially listed everything WWE does so poorly and proclaimed 'Yeah, we're just gonna go ahead and do the opposite of all that sh*t'.
Tony Khan circulated more informally the real thrust of the promotion: WCW, only good. Unfortunately, the LOLWCW influence has crept in at times - the EVPs needed a calendar with which to determine Kris Statlander's availability in late 2020 - but there's a genuine, much-needed sporting flair to Dynamite's presentation that answers two decades' worth of calls.
The show is on TBS, and is called by Jim Ross and Tony Schiavone, who bring with them a warm, authoritative presence. Often, Schiavone will rush to the entrance ramp to conduct a post-match interview in the vein of a real sports presentation, and indeed WCW. The wild, show-closing brawls don't rest on a static, cinematic image; the idea, cribbed from WCW, is to put over Dynamite as a real event that is documented and not produced. In-ring, there is a strong emphasis on athleticism, physicality and expression. Much like Eric Bischoff countered the WWF's in-house style with diversity, AEW allows its performers to get over with their own styles.
Factions dominate the shared storytelling universe, the house lights are blinding, wrestlers you've never heard of are encouraged to go out there and get over: WCW is back, just under a different name.
But AEW has also drawn inspiration from a more unlikely source...