All Wrestling Fans Won. You Can Stop Fighting Now.
Why are these separate, well-served audiences fighting? You all won. Unless you’re a fan of New Japan Pro Wrestling or the indie circuit, of course.
If you like sports entertainment, you’re getting the best version of it. If you like pro wrestling, AEW perfects it. Then it does some other, really not good stuff. But it tends to perfect it again soon enough.
This “who are we versus?” thing has plagued pop culture since the advent of the form - console wars, the Beatles Vs. the Stones, Marvel Vs. DCU - but it’s especially stupid and pointless viewed through the lens of a typical WWE Raw crowd in 2011.
Several thousand people in one building wanted two different things. They got those two different things. Those two different things are often the best version of those things. Those two different things are also impossible.
What if Vince went away? Or what if there was a new WCW?
You got them both! Shut up!
The “just enjoy wrestling!” engagement farm accounts are just as insufferable as the tribalist goofs - wrestling could be significantly better than it often is - but also, enjoy it. Or at least, have some perspective.
The thing is, nobody is going to stop fighting. Nobody is going to consume this and receive it as some revelatory eureka moment. People exist who have cultivated an entire identity around their love of and obsession over a wrestling promotion, the initials of which make that promotion automatically great and infallible. Those people are brainwashed - and a WWE tribalist certainly won’t listen to somebody who will willingly “admit” that they generally prefer AEW.
What you can do is simply ignore the discourse. It’s tempting to succumb (and God knows I used to do it rather a lot) when, for example, you have a salient counterpoint to some bad faith take or other. AEW does tell stories, stupid!
Don’t bother. They won’t listen.
Go further.
Stop talking around the discourse. Don’t even indirectly talk around the fact that it’s happening or dread that something has happened that will summon yet more of it. What will Eric Bischoff think of the AEW TV deal?
God, who could give an iota of a f*ck at this point.
Talk about the craft. It might be nice to discuss whether something is good or not on its own terms, or if it’s quite what you had in mind. Instead of, you know, responding to some bad faith take like it warrants a response. We could be having meaningful conversations that renew your appreciation for an unfairly maligned wrestler, or talking about certain storytelling details that enhance the portrayal of a character. Or you could just pretend that you always liked that Shawn Spears fellow.
One of the two.
Just stop fighting, to subvert the catchphrase of Kevin Owens (who is great now but will fall off if he becomes Kevin Steen again).