10 Ways WWE Is Completely Unrecognisable From Just One Year Ago
7. A Former Buried Wrestler Is The Opposition's Latest Big Reveal
The gear sucked and the production flub sucked, but All Elite Wrestling deserved a huge amount of credit for creating just about enough of a stage to effectively reveal Brodie Lee as 'The Exalted One' of The Dark Order.
It's a tricky one, all of this. Lee, as Luke Harper, was for years considered a secret weapon lurking below the surface/Bray Wyatt's bullsh*t'/other, another victim of WWE's systemic failure to find what fit for the majority of the deepest and most diverse talent pool they'd ever had. In their minds, because he'd been pushed around from pillar to post as a heel, face, singles and tag wrestler, he'd been pushed. A 2019 WrestleMania weekend Axxess battle with Dominik Dijakovic brought him to tears to talk about, and a tenuous release process between wrestler and wrestling company spoke to WWE's tacit frustration with an opposition suddenly springing up.
The noisy neighbours kept the volume up - Harper's arrival became a case of when not if - and his emergence at the centrepiece of AEW's most divisive storyline should determine exactly what he can still offer to the industry after so many false starts.