AEW At A Crossroads As WWE Gains Momentum

What a difference a year can make, huh? AEW and WWE are both finding that out in 2022.

It wasn’t all that long AEW Dynamite was easily the best pro wrestling show on TV. The rise of Wardlow, his feud with MJF (and MJF’s feud with CM Punk), the influx of top tier stars like Bryan Danielson and Adam Cole, and the ascensions of up-and-coming stars like Ricky Starks, Darby Allin and Jungle Boy had all the momentum on the side of AEW.

Then, came September 4th and AEW’s All Out pay-per-view. That event was a turning point for the company—but for all the wrong reasons.

Punk, on the same night that he beat Jon Moxley, to become AEW Champion reportedly got into a backstage brawl involving The Young Bucks and Kenny Omega. None of those stars, all core performers for AEW, have been seen since, and they might have disappeared for good. Punk is reportedly expected to be done in AEW while Omega and The Young Bucks have been linked to potential jumps to WWE, though that won’t be contractually possible anytime soon.

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Oh, the irony of The Elite being on the outs with WWE not even six months after Cody Rhodes, another AEW founding father, bolted the company he helped build and instantly showed up as a huge star in a main event role in WWE. When 2022 began, who could have envisioned anything like this happening? No one. Just as it would have been almost impossible to predict that two more high-profile stars—this time Andrade and Sammy Guevara—would also throw fisticuffs backstage almost a month to the day after the Bucks-Omega-Punk melee.

Those two brawls have become a symbol of the state of AEW and pro wrestling as a whole, with the script being completely flipped ever since Triple H took over WWE just a few months ago.

Andrade, whose WWE past is well known, reportedly wants to leave AEW, and in terms of ex-WWE-now-AEW stars who want out, he isn’t alone. Malakai Black is reportedly seeking a WWE return as well while other stars, such as Miro, don’t seem to satisfied with their spots in AEW. You know who has been satisfied as of late, though? WWE fans.

At this time a year ago, AEW Dynamite was the unquestioned king of quality TV wrestling. AEW had done a masterful job of mixing the old with the new, establishing its original stars (with Wardlow as the best example) and crafting compelling long-term storylines, such as Adam “Hangman” Page dethroning Omega to become AEW World Heavyweight Champion. While there are some long-term stories currently being told in AEW right now, none are as nearly as riveting as Page vs. Omega, MJF vs. Punk or MJF vs. Wardlow, and as a whole, Dynamite’s overall quality has plummeted over the course of the year.

As AEW’s backstage atmosphere has erupted in chaos, Dynamite—over-burdened by its insistence on forcing mundane ROH storylines into its programs—has lost its focus, shifting too much between random ROH angles, booking far too many matches with predictable outcomes and getting far too many quality performers completely lost in the shuffle. Rampage—despite AEW President Tony Khan saying he plans on giving a renewed push to the show—has suffered a similar fate.

AEW’s B-show largely lacks star power and has little in the way of true storyline development. It’s mostly a show filled with matches that aren’t important enough to be on Dynamite, and for the most part if you miss Rampage one week, it won’t affect how you view Dynamite or Rampage the following week. Rampage is supposed to compliment Dynamite as a near-equal, but in WWE terms, it’s become Heat, Velocity or Main Event—a second-tier show with second-tier happenings.

Over in WWE, things certainly aren’t perfect, but both Monday Night Raw and Friday Night SmackDown have been completely transformed since July, morphing from below average shows to consistently good—and sometimes great—ones. Even though Monday Night Football is taking a chunk of Raw’s audience, matches and storylines on Raw have been given time to breathe, and SmackDown, thanks in large part to the greatness of The Bloodline, has seen similar improvements during that span.

One of WWE’s most noticable new strengths is its midcard title scene. Raw’s United States title is currently held by Bobby Lashley, one of the most protected and most dominant stars in WWE while SmackDown’s Intercontinental title is around the waist of the uber-impressive Gunther, who has been booked almost perfectly on the blue brand as champion. WWE’s midcard championships actually mean something now, and its entire TV product is better off because of it.

Even those WWE stars without a title find themselves involved in engaging storylines or in the midst of significant pushes. There are very few quality stars who aren’t being utilized or who are missing from storylines, and many of the stars who are being highlighted week in and week out are being booked to their strengths. That list includes the recently returning Johnny Gargano, Bayley and Braun Strowman as well as main roster mainstays like Seth Rollins and Sheamus and rising stars like Riddle.

Pro wrestling fans are never going to see a perfect product from either AEW or WWE, but since the start of the year, WWE has undoubtedly surpassed AEW, the latter of which has struggled thanks to a bloated roster that has become almost too big to handle. Whereas WWE’s roster was thinner than ever at the beginning of the year, the Triple H-led regime has fixed that issue and crafted rosters for Raw and SmackDown that aren’t too big or too small. There are enough performers on each show to largely avoid overdoing rematches while simultaneously crafting fresh and exciting matches, while the opposite is true in AEW where stars disappear for weeks on end with little to no explanation.

Of course, pro wrestling is like a seesaw, and there will be times where AEW is up and WWE is down, as was the case in 2020 and 2021, but for now, WWE has the edge in terms of virtually everything that matters: Storytelling, star power, dream matches, etc.

And while this conversation might be much different a year from now, the steady improvements made on Raw and SmackDown—coinciding with the downward spiral of Dynamite and Raw—have made this quite the crossroads for AEW and pro wrestling in its entirety.

Will AEW right the ship soon or will WWE continue to rule the roost?