What Wrestling Legends Really Think Of AEW
Such good or flippy sh*t?
AEW is all anybody wants to talk about.
As Voices of Wrestling correctly stated, no other promotion has faced such intense scrutiny, and between Twitter, Reddit, message boards, podcasts and comments sections, there are multiple platforms on which to apply it.
AEW is unprecedented: it's a major wrestling promotion that debuted as a major wrestling promotion headlined by a veritable fleet of main event-level free agent talent. The messaging did not help to detoxify the discourse; the inflammatory rhetoric of a "revolution" angered the WWE crowd as much as it galvanised the base established ahead of and at All In.
The battle cry rang out, it was promptly answered, and since then, it's been war all the time.
The lavish, fervent praise draws criticism in itself. That base adores AEW for its intricate, deft booking, playful humour, old school soul and pulsating, high-end match quality. The backlash targets AEW's non-traditional match genres and a bold promotional outlook that is interpreted by some as a certain smugness.
The wrestling fandom has reached a point at which even WWE RAW is barely discussed. A new day has dawned, and Monday is not it.
This extends to the legends of the craft...
10. Kevin Nash
Kevin Nash has expressed criticism over the promotion that is in direct head-to-head competition with the brand helmed by his old Kliq stablemates Triple H and Shawn Michaels.
So there's an obvious preference there, an obvious motive, perhaps, but Nash is an intelligent man and he made a valid point as it pertained to an otherwise excellent early Dynamite angle. When Chris Jericho and the Inner Circle commandeered an executive box, leading to a wild, fun, concessions stand brawl, Nash tweeted something of a plot hole.
Jericho, with his ticket, not scheduled for a match on a card that is promoted in advance in order to create a sense of sporting realism, professed to be a paying customer - but he baited Cody by talking into an AEW-branded mic. It was a pedantic criticism that Nash may have looked for - the NXT he resolved to watch instead is hardly without its contrivances - but AEW holds itself to an exacting standard. A megaphone, surely, was a more elegant solution and pompous in-character decision.
Nash, an avowed macrophiliac, also referred to Marko Stunt as a "fifth grader," as if that Lance Archer squash didn't totally f*cking rule.
In summation: he doesn't like it, has his reasons.