One of the things about AEW that is so surprising is the about of discourse the promotion gets every week with all sorts of subjects; from the women’s division to the typical subject of flips and blood. All these discourses are pretty consistent every week when we talk about AEW and the identity of the promotion. There are several answers to why people keep talking about these subjects every week.
The first answer, and most obvious one is because of the comparisons to WWE. Pro-wrestling in the US was controlled by WWE for two decades and a lot of wrestling fans grew up with only one way of pro-wrestling, or I should say sports entertainment. Some fans can only enjoy WWE’s version of the sport and anything outside of it is considered bad or garbage, and that’s the roadblock AEW faces with some fans of pro-wrestling. That’s the reason some people can’t connect to AEW and the discourses of blood or focusing on matches more than any other major wrestling promotion in the US creates these discourses every week. The big problem is that pro-WWE people want AEW to feel like WWE or be something close the WWF in the Attitude Era, and AEW never promised that.
While the comparisons with WWE will never end, the comparisons to WCW are also never-ending. AEW has some aspects that feel like peak Nitro, and even the feel of AEW can somewhat feel like WCW. Some people bring the similarities to WCW not only as something negative, but as warning to AEW that they could also one day end up like WCW. In reality, AEW hasn’t shown signs that they are heading towards that direction, especially with how their booking is and focus.
One of the reasons these discourses like blood or flips in AEW matches still take place is because of social media engagement. Some accounts keep repeating the same things they tweet every week for social media engagement and keep these redundant debates alive in places like wrestling Twitter every week. I don’t point names but most people know which accounts are those in Twitter. While these tactics to get attention on social media may feel boring, they work like a charm as you can see because those redundant discourses keep going on each week. In this category we could also put the likes of Jim Cornette, Eric Bischoff and others but instead of doing it in social media they for the most part to do it on their podcasts to get attention and by extension more listeners.
Going back to the beginning, does AEW have too much flips or blood? well, that depends really who you ask, obviously some will say yes, especially if you compare them to WWE, a PG rated show, to Dynamite and Rampage. While some have this perception of AEW as a deathmatch promotion like peak FMW or CZW, the reality of the situation is that AEW is nowhere near as violent as some think it is. Could AEW use less blood, they could but AEW doesn’t really abuse it, we have yet to see AEW have a match as bloody as JBL vs. Eddie Guerrero inside their ring.
While some of the discourse can be considered bias towards AEW, we can’t ignore them entirely, because there is some value to them, even if some discourses are as irrelevant as flips or blood. Those discourses should be taken into a count, to an extent of course. Will the discourse ever end? Very unlikely, but AEW should also feel happy people keep talking about them every week because the worst thing that can happen is when no one talks about you, something we see with other promotions, *cough* MLW *cough* but that’s a story for another time.
