See “Trump, Donald J.” for an example of Americans doing “research”. Americans at our core are not that far off now from how we were back in Hamilton’s day. We want a narrative. We want the fight. We want independence…Even if it’s only an ideal or an illusion. We want tribalism. We want “US” vs “them” even when those delineations don’t make a whole lot of sense. AEW vs. NXT is like Star Wars fanboys Vs. Trekkies. Like y’all are BOTH marginalized nerds, you might as well break bread & celebrate this crazy geek culture together.
But that fundamental American spirit is part of the reason why we have this “war” in the 1st place, when the smarter play would be to run on different nights, so both shows could flirt w/a million viewers.
And the kicker is that the numbers since March (and probably until next March) will be extremely random b/c we’re living in the midst of a pandemic. One could say that our world’s been turned…upside down.
Nevermind, I searched Twitter and saw what everyone is referring to. I know some have asked me before why I don’t really care for Tony Khan, this is a perfect example. For me, he is what Seth Rollins was to many of you a year ago. I think he’s fake, full of it, and and I dont like how a business owners of the #2 promotion in North America gets into Twitter battles with wrestlers and fans. You wouldn’t even see Vince do that.
Honestly, Khan strikes me as somebody who is very genuine in his enthusiasm for wrestling. Somebody who is truly passionate, and excited for the company he has created.
I’d say Vince in his own way throughout the late 90’s is in his own way, did similar things. McMahon carried on public wars against journalists (Phil Muchnick), Wrestlers (Hogan, Savage) and other companies (Turner Broadcasting). He took out print ads against Turner warning shareholders, and stirring shit. If McMahon had been on Twitter in the late 90’s he would have seemed insane.
And comparing Tony to Vince is also hard, as Tony’s enthusiasm is the exact opposite of the kind of attitude that the WWE system promotes. You can’t be a “fan” in WWE, because if you are, you’re punished. John and Wai discussed this during their review of Ricochet’s 365 episode.
Here’s the thing - NXT burned through its biggest match possible and called up main roster talent and still couldn’t beat AEW in the demo. That’s the bigger story to me. AEW has soooo much left in its arsenal
I noticed that as well. Don’t get me wrong, AEW Is a great addition to the Wrestling world.
however, you hit on something big just Then. Identity! An AEW Show will be at like a 6.5 & when I read the reviews, one would think it was a 27 out of 10. It’s like politics, when people make politics a part of their identity it’s kind of pathetic to me.
Ya I can’t defend Vince McMahon lol, his track record is what it is.
I won’t deny that Khan may be a big fan, and that is cool, my issue with him is that I think he is very fake and childish, and his antics are annoying. Unless someone asks, I wont list everything as I dont want to change the direction of the thread, but this is just another example that leaves me shaking my head.
I want to be clear, I want Khan and AEW to be successful because they do put on a good product at times. I watched Fyter Fest both nights and both shows were good for the most part, but with some of their tactics I worry sometimes that they are TNA 2.0. AEW needs to worry about AEW and learn from the mistakes TNA made.
Showing ratings charts on Twitter IMO makes AEW look desperate. Now I am not saying this just to “bash” AEW and “praise” WWE, WWE does a lot of things I role my eyes at as well, every time I hear about their 5 billion social media subscribers I laugh at them. The difference is WWE is established and I dont worry about them loosing their fan base, while AEW does have fans (myself included), its a 1 year old company, people are not going to be as loyal to them as the WWE hardcore fans are. Just like ROH and TNA, the second they are no longer the hot new cool company, people will jump off the ship. I dont want to see that happen which is why I am saying something. If I didnt care i would just laugh at them.
You hit the nail on the head, some fans (not all) blindly support AEW because they so desperately want them to overtake WWE, most likely because they are bitter and/or angry towards WWE, and they feel like criticizing AEW is almost like taking the WWE’s side which is ridiculous.
Its no different then when Trump says something idiotic and republicans just blindly defend him because they don’t want to give the Democrats any ammo. Or when a Democrat is called out for hypocrisy, and other Democrats refuse to acknowledge it. As soon as people become partisan, IMO they loose all credibility.
It is both ways though. If I look at AEW related articles like half the comments are like AEW = Awesome. Half are AEW is crap. Both seem to be regardless of what is being talked about. For every AEW Mark there are just as many (or more) WWE marks or Cornette cultists.
I agree with everything you are saying minus the last part about more WWE fans being partisan, but that could just be due to us reading different things.
I 100 percent agree. When I was on Twitter, there were hordes of WWE fan boys/girls who hated anything that wasn’t WWE. Might as well be the right vs. left sometimes, but I think most of us know the difference.
I see the NXT thing all the time. Especially around Survivor series guys saying they did not want to see these nobodies. I think as “more cultured” wrestling fans (more hardcore people watching other products listening to podcasts etc.) it is really easy to see the AEW lovers all over the place but unless you look at places like Twitter, face book, Instagram you don’t really see a lot of the “hardecore” Main roster homers. Guys who absolutely love Brock, Roman, Cena etc.
I can believe that. My wrestling bubble consists of Post Wrestling, SNME, F4/Observer, PWInsider, and PP & BTR (when they were active), I rarely go on social media for wrestling, truthfully I can’t stand it.
Watched the FTR match from Wednesday’s Dynamite and wtf? One of them tagged one of The Young Bucks by slapping his back. That better be the most intricate set-up for a future promo where they are called out as doing the same thing they rail against.
Oh, and they have already fucked-up Lance Archer. A monster should have killed Joey Janella in minutes. Going 20 minutes with him and allowing him to look competitive makes Archer look like any other mid-card performer (and before anyone says anything, it was also a booking mistake to let Cody go so long with him).
