10 Ways AEW Is Better Than WWE
4. Listening To The Audience
Recently, to use just one example that informs the point, Sammy Guevara turned himself heel.
It's a strange one in hindsight. He broadcast his amazing life on social media, and his fictional character, who is meant to face struggle, scanned as altogether too happy for the audience to bear. These two thing shouldn't relate to one another, but wrestling is blurry. "You like to hear somebody's doing pretty good," Ric Flair said in his legendary "Golden spoon" promo, "but you don't want to hear they're doing better than you."
He misjudged the general vibe of the world - most people are fairly anxious and miserable! - and AEW somehow misjudged how obnoxious those Twitter posts were by developing Guevara's babyface character as "hot sex-having prankster".
The character was shockingly removed from the pulse, given AEW's otherwise stellar record of delivering borderline euphoric fan service, but every promotion is prone to a complete c*ck-up. The difference is that AEW once again listened to the reaction and turned Sammy heel within weeks.
Altogether different to WWE persisting with the babyface Roman Reigns character for six years - or, to use a more recent and fair example, WWE not realising that fans just want the old Becky Lynch back.