[Lock Jaw]

My conclusions after watching AEW since Punk's debut:

I could never in a million years have imagined wasting an opportunity as big as that one, and failing to capitalize on potentially having new/old viewers watching your program. You get him and then just aimlessly force him onto your shows, including even just doing commentary. He finally does something and stands up to a heel Bobby Fish beating up a jobber (despite having previous opportunitites at standing up to heels whilst on commentary), they have a match with a controversial ending.... but that is dropped to build a hurried two week deep-seated blood feud vs Eddie Kingston.

Daniel Bryan has been handled a bit better, but should never have been mixed up with the world title/main event scene when he debuted, because then taking him out of it for someone else is just an immediate step down/disappointment. Should have just skipped that part and his run would actually be quite excellent, building him up via having him wrestle a bunch of bangers and beating people with different moves... building him up until eventually putting him in the spot to earn the contendership. Instead, took him out of the picture and gave the shot to another dude... but at the same time already put Bryan in the spot to earn the next shot even before the current contender had his shot, which overshadows that match because you are already looking back onto Bryan and caring about that and not the current world title match.

Speaking of their world champ, he felt like an afterthought almost the entire time I watched. Meanwhile you have Hangman Adam Page involved with the intolerable Dark Order, and not doing anything at all to build him up or get him over... barely even building up the match vs Omega until the very last week before the PPV when they figured they should do something. I know there is the supposed "long form storytelling" that they were semi-trying to push via commentary and some short video packages.... but I don't buy it for one second. More likely they saw that viral post that someone has posted here a few times about Hangman's "journey", and decided to run with it. Wouldn't be the first time I saw that they have leaned into memes/internet things and run with it. Which would even be fine in itself if they actually put any effort into pushing that angle instead of just assuming that everyone knew what it was all about.

As for the rassling itself, no doubt about it they have some good stuff. The more flippy/choreographed stuff of Young Bucks/Lucha Bros/Adam Cole/etc is personally not for me, I get burnt out on it real fast... but if you enjoy it more power to you. There was still some good stuff that was not of that style too. They do suffer from a problem of booking matches to have guys look "all equal". Even jobber/squash matches the jobber more often than not gets a lot of offense to make it seem like a "tough win", because more than anything they seem to want to get a "this is awesome" chant every match (which, granted is not too hard these days).

The fans of AEW are both a blessing and curse. It is awesome to hear a loud crowd, and it can't be overstated how much that actually gets you into matches/a show. At the same time, they are the "annoying" modern rassling crowd who will chant "this is awesome" and "fight forever" at the drop of a hat. At the PPV a few tried to chant "You still got it" at Arn Anderson when he delivered a few punches to Andrade's manager, thankfully it didn't take off.

Something AEW is missing/lacking is the ability to tell stories and get over their characters. Which partly goes back to the fans just getting into anything, so they feel like they don't have to get them over/sell them to a potential TV audience. AEW is great at booking their shows and always telling you what is coming up on the next Rampage/Dynamite.... which is great from a "wrestling" perspective and "live show perspective", but not for an "entertaining television program" perspective. You need to have a bit of that spontaneity and unexpectedness... even if it is cookie cutter WWE "Wrestler A interrupts Wrestler B, Authority Figure makes a match..... COMING UP NEXT!!"

AEW does a lot of "assuming that you know" who people are and what things are about. May seem like "talking down" in WWE, but you do have to do a lot of repetition and spelling things out to build your characters/stories/brand.

Think I said it in some other thread... AEW seems to succeed despite itself. Which is great for them, and great for those that enjoy it. It just seems to be a self-fulfilling prophecy driven by memes and internet culture, and should the cool thing on the internet ever turn to be against them they would need to make some major changes. Even if they wanted to grow beyond their current ratings/fanbase they would need to make major changes.

I think overall what I'd say is...... AEW is the better wrestling show, especially if you were to go to it live. While WWE is the better television program. If you want "wrestling", watch AEW. If you want "entertainment" and "characters" watch WWE.