When AEW burst onto the scene in 2019, it was a contemporary new challenger to WWE. After years of stagnation below Vince McMahon, a big contingent of the wrestling group had grown uninterested in WWE’s want to stay to a selected method. Matches have been predictable, typically boring, and lacked the physicality of The Perspective period.
As such, AEW’s brash method to in-ring manufacturing and its penchant for violence helped it shortly rise to develop into the second-biggest wrestling promotion on the planet. Nevertheless, since Paul Levesque was given extra energy inside WWE, the corporate has skilled a large resurgence and is arguably the most well liked it has been in over 20 years.
That resurgence has come on the expense of AEW, whose tv numbers and rankings have steadily dropped during the last two years. According to Dave Meltzer in a current version of the Wrestling Observer E-newsletter, the decline in recognition and viewership has develop into a dialogue level inside AEW’s locker room.
“The locker room in some situations is healthier,” Meltzer wrote. “I feel the distinction is most get alongside, and most like Tony Khan, however there’s a concern about attendance and recognition that wasn’t there previously. The locker room usually will get alongside.”
A significant turning level for AEW got here virtually a 12 months in the past when CM Punk was suspended and finally fired for a backstage scuffle with Jack Perry at “All-In In London.” Punk finally returned to WWE, taking his diehard fanbase with him. That transfer damage AEW’s model in a number of methods and expedited the corporate’s decline in recognition.
Put merely, there was far an excessive amount of drama backstage, which is why Meltzer supplied an replace on the present locker-room concord. Nonetheless, the issues surrounding the corporate’s recognition are authentic. AEW hasn’t damaged the 1 million-viewers mark in over a 12 months and has hardly ever hit 800,000 viewers.
After all, when the dominant wrestling product experiences a large surge, different corporations will really feel the trickle-down impact. AEW should proceed to evolve its providing, employ smart wrestling people and stick the course. Finally, it ought to overcome the present chilly spell and start drawing in a brand new set of followers.
How Khan will get that message throughout to involved workers stays to be seen, however for now, there is not any query that AEW stays the “better of the remainder” in the case of wrestling promotions.