10 Ways AEW Is Better Than WWE
7. Match Quality
WWE has actually peaked quite highly in 2022.
Becky Lynch and Bianca Belair's blistering, counter-heavy 'Mania 38 classic didn't f*ck around was only very slightly better than Cody Rhodes fighting through a winded abdomen in a superbly-paced banger opposite Seth Rollins, who stood up for WWE in a far better way than he did on Twitter in 2019.
AEW is still better in this department.
WWE's matches are generally trope-heavy and formulaic. The wrestlers often do the same thing and in the same order. In his TV masterpiece opposite Wheeler YUTA, Jon Moxley played against type to get his opponent over; the least melodramatic character in wrestling used hysteria to inform the story with a bismuth crystal-rare shocked kick-out face.
The action is simply more electrifying; consider Dax Harwood, nanoseconds away from defeat, reversing the Meltzer Driver with impossible timing to blast Nick Jackson with the slingshot Liger bomb. This ultra-dramatic swing in momentum was a heart-pounding moment helped, enormously, by the careful long-term booking with which Tony Khan protects his star acts. The intra-match storytelling is often so fantastic that even the less-protected stars are capable of engineering drama on the night.
The Hangman Page Vs. Lance Archer Texas Death match was a masterpiece in certain respects because they made the unthinkable plausible; it was felt throughout this predictable main event that Page literally had no way of winning.