WWE Vs. AEW: How Do The Empty Arena Shows Compare?
3. Creative Acknowledgement Of Generalised 'This Is Just Too Weird' Vibe
WWE:
People seemed to really hate RAW this week, but goddamn did Byron Saxton (!) pop your writer, which is surely a sign of the impending apocalypse. His outrageously dorky cry of "Hell yeah!" - followed by Tom Phillips' incredible, angered/mystified "What?", and then Steve Austin's t*t-popping deadpan - was an inspired, absurd joke. The pan to the empty seats was a great touch. When WWE leans into this unworkable premise, it works. Triple H entering polymath bully a*sehole mode was another, winning acknowledgement of the state of things, too. When WWE got weird with it - voluntarily - the bits allowed for quite incredible, and very welcome, comedic relief.
AEW:
AEW elsewhere had little use for this, by engineering a unique atmosphere, but Chuck Taylor and Trent's elbow-to-elbow greeting struck a neat chord of farce. They had to touch to tag in, and they had to touch to win a professional wrestling match, and so the premise of the bit was delightfully absurd in its sheer pointlessness. Sammy Guevara, recognising that there was no crowd to singalong to Judas, did it himself, abysmally, nailing the can't-sing bit so well that Jericho's t*ts popped off right on camera.
We all need a laugh - the revving up of f*cking army tanks can now be heard around the globe - and both companies delivered effective punchlines.