The Secret Weapon AEW Holds Over WWE
New Japan offers a seminal product, but a splintered grind of a package for new users. NXT meanwhile has long evolved from its original purpose as a developmental territory—and yet, various performers exist for management to track more so than the enjoyment of the audience. Wednesday nights aren’t so much eclectic as very uneven.
There is too much of even the best wrestling, creating a fractured fanbase.
AEW’s real hand is its mission to do everything possible not to exhaust that super-served fanbase with a readily-accessible live package packed with the demonstrable power to reward long-term investment and offer can’t-miss, unhinged angles. AEW can’t sign a Jon Moxley figure every week, of course—but the crucial live element promises at least the chance of the unexpected.
AEW is headed up by five very smart minds. Each has a certain speciality, and together, on admittedly scant evidence, this collaboration has resulted in a coherent and diverse product, and it’s ironic: AEW feels like a Universe of ideas opposed, on this new battleground, by an enemy producing literally more uninspired output than ever.
More than any throne-breaking digs or coffee cup Easter eggs, this feels like the biggest flex of them all.