If WWE Was Being Honest About AEW
Ninjas vs. Orange Cassidy. Every team is an odd couple vs. the best tag team division in modern wrestling. Gas masked-embarrassment Dean Ambrose Vs. Wednesday night ratings king Jon Moxley.
The competition of AEW has compelled WWE to think outside of the box, so there is that. Regrettably, what they have discovered outside of said box is its risible cinematic genre.
If Vince McMahon was as creative and resourceful as he was sinister, there'd be no issue. He has reacted to the emergence of AEW with pure cynicism, by using (and to many, ruining) NXT as this pathetically desperate counter-programming shield. Siphoning ratings and attempting to steal momentum with short-term "wins" like the Great American Bash, every long-term metric suggests, funnily enough, that tapping fans on the shoulder, saying "Look over here!" and getting them to avert their eyes from TNT for a brief moment isn't going to make AEW go away.
AEW has already scored better viewership than WWE's flagship show in key demos prized by advertisers. If current viewership trends continue, the next round of all-important rights fees negotiations will prove incredibly significant in a way that felt impossible just this time last year.
WWE isn't uniformly awful, but the aberrations - Paul Heyman's direction of Roman Reigns, the details-rich Bayley Vs. Sasha Banks passion project - are just that. If WWE is going to stem this rising tide, they're going to have to do the work - honestly, not cynically.
Because it's becoming f*cking embarrassing, and tedious, just how little competition has changed anything.