Why AEW Has Just Pulled Off The Mother Of All Game-Changers

But then, neither man - to considerable, era-defining protest - were presented at the tippy-top.

WWE never positioned Punk at John Cena's level and were so weirdly intent on knocking Bryan off his perch. Vince McMahon never put the entire marketing machine behind either, and this, in parallel with the total failure to launch the Roman Reigns babyface act, is when the rot set in. As brilliantly mapped out by Brandon Thurston of Wrestlenomics, while #CancelWWENetwork did not result in mass subscription cancellations, the dire events of January 25, 2015 were a major factor behind WWE losing its TV audience at a level that accelerated beyond wider cable trends. The convergence of several nightmarish realities was the impetus behind WWE's shocking decline.

In the early-to-mid 2010s, CM Punk and Daniel Bryan exemplified the WWE that WWE fans wanted WWE to be in an age of vocal defiance. When that vision did not materialise, millions, plural, left WWE behind. Several years have elapsed since then. Those millions are not at all guaranteed to hop to TNT if and when Punk and Bryan debut. Many of them have likely moved on with their lives, and those that did not in all likelihood make up much of AEW's core base. This might just be the ultimate dose of fan service rather than a real, game-changing driver of growth.

The bad faith misconception is that AEW has somehow failed because it hasn't "brought back" Attitude Era fans. This is simply not true, nor was it ever a realistic goal - but attracting the scorned WWE fans of the mid-2010s, or at least enough of them to topple RAW and make the next round of rights fees negotiations very interesting, is not an implausible scenario.

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