10 Ways WWE Is Better Than AEW
7. Merchandise
One of the earliest sh*tpost critiques of AEW was that it was little more than a "t-shirt company" due to the enormous success of the Bullet Club shirt and what that (and ProWrestlingTees, and the Hot Topic relationship) represented about the community they'd built.
The remark ate itself within weeks though, not least because nobody could find a particularly good bit of merch to use as the stick to beat the show with. AEW will put any old sh*t on shirt (and they've been burned by that philosophy in the past), but after three years there's yet to be a single one that stands among the rest as a piece of iconic apparel. Or certainly not one that anybody but the wrestler themselves could or would wear.
Vince McMahon effectively signposted his pushes with all-time hot-sellers. "Hulkamania" and "Austin 3:16" represented the building and re-building of empires respectively and John Cena's willingness to be a billboard exists to this day in the form of Roman Reigns getting a sh*t new bit of clobber every other week. It's fluffy stuff on the surface, but it's also how you leave more fingerprints as a pop culture phenomenon. Wrestling (once for better, now for much worse) and WWE still go hand-in-hand, but AEW have the power to change that after just three years. Nailing one classic design will aid the cause.