How AEW Has Actually Answered Its Biggest Complaint
Wrestling could only function as a direct emulation of a real "league" if each division was comprised of an even number of acts and a set fixture list. What happens if somebody gets injured? What happens if a hot new act becomes available? Sorry, person that could positively impact ratings and draw money, we need to hold off of your debut because there are nine weeks of fixtures to run through!
Nobody is seriously suggesting that this is the case, but a promotion that bases its matches entirely around the win/loss rankings sounds as niche as f*ck. And really, if that were the case, people would just complain that there are no storylines to invest in.
Just be fair, for Christ's sake. AEW is on national television. Reductively, pro wrestling is a medium built on people that hate each other beating the sh*t out of each other. It's difficult to engineer that which sells a product that needs to make money through a league system. AEW referred to itself as a "league" to convey the idea that it isn't sports entertainment. Don't be thick. Don't be so wilfully thick as to confuse marketing for what marketing is. It is absolutely pathetic.
"AEW is just like WWE!" is not a bad take just because your writer disagrees with it. It is *sh*t*, superficial analysis. Dynamite, virtually all of the time, works hard (for evidently scant reward) to create a sense of immersion. No matches happen on an impromptu basis. Every segment, interrupted to engineer conflict or otherwise, is scheduled as if Dynamite is an event to be broadcast and not a show to be filmed. Every contrivance - the hour-long title matches always seem to settle between 10 and 20 minutes, for example - is a necessary byproduct of producing a television show.
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