It Has Finally Been Found: The Worst Wrestling Opinion

Dynamite Dark Order
Twitter (@AEWrestling)

I personally preferred the Firefly Fun House match over the lot of them, AEW included. But, and I'm going to put this point in bold because it would help the sanity of being a wrestling fan who goes online, were you to comprehend it:

It's the dumbest sh*t imaginable to believe that these two entities produce interchangeable content, and that one is received more favourably purely because it isn't WWE.

The take of course is not limited to these out-of-context matches. It is everywhere. If AEW were to have put puppets in empty seats people would have loved it, is one actually real example. At least two people really think this. One person tweeted that, Jesus Christ, people complaining about WWE's new Brand Invitation gimmick wouldn't "bitch" if it was AEW, the wrestling company that famously has two television shows with two distinct rosters.

One company is essentially a love letter to professional wrestling's past; the other disavows the very designation. They're just different, people. They are just different. But people absolutely will not be told, because it's not the quality of the respective shows driving the response, but rather the influential "bias" of the wrestling journalism industry.

Read the following quote. Read it twice. Get it tattooed onto the inside of your eyelid, for the sake of Jesus Christ, because the lockdown is so much goddamn worse when this discourse intensifies after literally every wrestling show. Since the letters A, E, and W were first uttered in sequence in wrestling circles, Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter has been accused of being "biased" in favour of them: the initials, by default, not even the product, which is obviously automatically good. And yet, the following quote, in relation to the infamous Dark Order throat-f*ck Matt Jackson angle, was made by Dave Meltzer on the December 19, 2019 Wrestling Observer Radio.

"NXT is the opposite of what WWE is. Serious stories, not a lot of garbage filler. And that's what AEW fans want AEW to be."

And then this one across your other eyelid:

"The booking of AEW I have some questions about. Honest to God, when it was over, it felt like I was watching Nitro, and not in a good way."

CONT'D...(5 of 6)

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Contributor
Contributor

Michael Sidgwick is an editor, writer and podcaster for WhatCulture Wrestling. With over seven years of experience in wrestling analysis, Michael was published in the influential institution that was Power Slam magazine, and specialises in providing insights into All Elite Wrestling - so much so that he wrote a book about the subject. You can order Becoming All Elite: The Rise Of AEW on Amazon. Possessing a deep knowledge also of WWE, WCW, ECW and New Japan Pro Wrestling, Michael’s work has been publicly praised by former AEW World Champions Kenny Omega and MJF, and current Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes. When he isn’t putting your finger on why things are the way they are in the endlessly fascinating world of professional wrestling, Michael wraps his own around a hand grinder to explore the world of specialty coffee. Follow Michael on X (formerly known as Twitter) @MSidgwick for more!