More On AEW
I kind of have to say something longer about this right?
What exactly am I supposed to say? We know five wrestlers and the name of a show at the moment. I have no idea if this is going to work or not and other than a lot of speculation about big names who might show up, we don’t know much of anything about the promotion. They’ve certainly made a splash to start, but there’s a fine line between something being talked about and the people coming to all of the shows.
It’s way too early to say where AEW is going, but I like what I’ve seen so far. It might wind up being a big indy or something like that and there’s nothing wrong with occupying that spot. If it turns into a bidding war and talent makes more money, that’s an awesome situation. I’m just trying to not get overly excited yet though, as the second show is likely to be a success. That’s not where the issue is going to be. The issue is going to be in the fifteenth or so show. How many people are going to come to that?
And better yet: how many of their lower level talents can WWE pick off? They might not be able to get Cody and the Bucks, but what about a few marginal people? If WWE starts picking them off, in the words of Road Dogg when the rest of the promotion walked out and DX was all that’s left, “Are we supposed to wrestle ourselves every week?”.
I’m firmly in a wait and see mode, because there isn’t much to see at the moment.
One reason why All In was a success was because it was a novelty. Here was a handful of guys who accepted a challenge from Dave Meltzer that they couldn’t put on a show that’d sell 10,000 tickets, they took their time to plan everything out, scouted a venue, managed to get some of the biggest indie talent out there along with a few of the genuinely biggest stars from New Japan to be on it, kept all kinds of buzz about it going via social media, sold the show out in less than an hour and roughly a year and a half after it was announced, the show went down.
That same novelty, that sense of newness if you will, is going to be momentum that carries AEW through their first several shows but the big question is if they can sustain the momentum after it’s no longer a novelty. As of right now, AEW may have already suffered something of a setback as New Japan and ROH will continue their working relationship without AEW being in the equation. That could possibly change but that’s the lay of the land right now. Maybe Impact would be willing to have a working relationship with AEW; Impact is no longer on the level it once was, it’s now well below New Japan and ROH but it’s still a recognizable brand.
It’s too soon to get worked up over AEW, in my opinion. There’s a lot that we don’t know: do they have a major financial backer or backers, is a TV deal development in its infancy, etc.? If all that we know right now is all there really is to the company at this point, then it’s definitely too soon.