WWE Just Exposed AEW's Most Embarrassing Flaw

NXT 2.0 is neither one thing nor the other and yet it's a million things at once. Yeah, it's like that.

By the mere fact it still exists on television, it's a wrestling telecast that should at least feature wrestling mostly worthy of being on television. And yet, per the rebrand, it's intent is to be far closer to a developmental for the main roster than Triple H's polished super-indie ever was. To this end, it contains a roster of many with only a basic grasp of the basics but with looks and gimmicks Vince McMahon might transplant wholesale onto Raw and SmackDown.

In keeping with all WWE shows, it doesn't really book but it does plot. Characters still behave in ways completely detached from reality, but do so in ways you can at least imagine being drawn out on a whiteboard first. But because it's 2.0, on that same whiteboard will be intersecting lines where the characters will be obsessed with either sexual conquests, an alternate profession to wrestling altogether, or both if there's obvious growth or it can be slotted in, by which they mean penises and vaginas OH!

The problems with the brand stretch beyond the micro weekly concerns of booking and pushes and character development, but when viewed side-by-side with a high end edition of Dynamite, the problems - as with most WWE vehicles - are more pronounced.

And yet, it's in the still-unnamed Performance Center venue and dayglo chaos of Tuesday nights that a paradigm has at potentially shifted back in favour of the market leader. For three years, AEW have for select periods gotten just about everything right with one glaring exception. And 2.0 - almost in tribute to its parent initials - has pounced on the gap.

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