WWE Vs. AEW: How Do The Empty Arena Shows Compare?
7. Promos
WWE:
Edge's promo on RAW was fantastic. He looked a bit tortured initially, which isn't ideal, because the black, empty background and hair-pulling body language didn't much dissuade from the creeping notion that all of this feels too much like am-dram rehearsal. Once the new wavelength clicked in, it was powerful stuff; Edge is a superb, vengeful badass babyface, and he rounded out his promo with a real emotion divorced from cartoonish machismo. Roman Reigns outlined the differences between himself and Goldberg in an understated, good exchange with Michael Cole that revealed the human being within, as opposed to the canine. The intimacy feels somehow realer, despite virtually everything else looking so fake.
AEW:
Cody rallied his troops in Jacksonville with a tremendous babyface promo, one that unified the AEW base and the Elite alike, deftly transitioning from the reality we cannot ignore into the fiction we wish to escape into. It was passionate, fist-pumping stuff, even if his insistence on being "alive" made for poor optics.
MJF was on sensational form; Brodie Lee got himself over as a serious proposition in just minutes; Jake Roberts continued to build his programme with Cody in his excellent, sinister style: really, this was a marvellous job all-round, under the circumstances.