AEW loosens WWE’s choke-hold
FOR over 30 years, Vince McMahon’s WWE has dominated the world of sports entertainment and professional wrestling. In the 1990s, the WWE faced competition from the likes of the World Championship Wrestling (WCW) and Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW).
By the late 1990s, McMahon went on to purchase both franchises and in the process absorb their best talent.
In the 2000s emerged Total Nonstop
Action (TNA) Impact Wrestling. TNA did achieve moderate success by managing to sign up mainly mid-card WWE wrestlers. While it did manage to sign up household names in the wrestling industry such as Kurt Angle, and Christian and Bobby Lashley, the roster was mainly occupied with talent who were either past their prime or who were not good enough to be considered for the WWE roster.
TNA was never really a threat to the WWE’s viewership and it still exists as Impact Wrestling, although it is a shadow of its former self with most of its talent now being unknown to wrestling fanatics.
While the WWE has beaten all of its challengers to date, it could be set to receive its biggest test yet from All Elite Wrestling (AEW), launched in early 2019 by American businessman Tony Khan, who also serves as co-owner of English Premiership football club Fulham FC and National Football League (NFL) team the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Khan has poured heavy funding into the project with almost all of its talent being good enough to compete in WWE. The company notably caused a stir in wrestling circles by managing to recruit Chris Jericho and legendary commentator Jim Ross (JR) upon its launch in 2019, and more recently Paul Wight, who was popularly known as The Big Show, last month.
Wight, Jericho and Ross are three names who were known for their longevity and dedication towards the WWE spanning multiple decades. All three are legends in the professional wrestling industry and the fact that the WWE lost the trio to a rival brand when it seemed as though they would stick to it forever must indicate that there is something that AEW is doing right.
While AEW still does have flaws, such as visibly shoddy camera work at times, it offers certain things that WWE can’t.
Watching an episode of AEW Dynamite appears more natural than watching an episode of WWE Raw because the wrestlers are allowed to be themselves and the wrestling is freeflowing.
One of the ways in which AEW aimed to stand out from WWE was to give wrestlers more creative freedom to express themselves and come up with their own ideas. In the WWE, that is just not the case.
Another strength of AEW compared to WWE is that it allows its talent to compete in other wrestling promotions and the schedule is also not as demanding on its talent as the WWE, which requires wrestlers to be on the road for up to 300 days a year.
Speaking about allowing talent to compete in other promotions, AEW executive vice-president Cody Rhodes said on the Busted Open Podcast: “People need this. They want to experience other worlds, and no contract in AEW is a blanket contract. Everybody can go from different places and register down. The doors are open. I know the classic thing in wrestling is ‘perception is reality’.”