DEEP DIVE: The “Hardcore” AEW Fan Base

When AEW was announced at a Press Conference in Florida by Tony Khan, The Young Bucks, Cody Rhodes, Kenny Omega, and Chris Jericho (among others), wrestling fans were elated that there was a new wrestling company in town. The fan base that AEW started with was mostly fans who were jaded by WWE’s brand of “Sports Entertainment” and wanted an alternative. And an alternative they were promised by those in charge of AEW. AEW promised a sports-based program, pulling away from the sillier aspects of WWE, and returning to “pro-wrestling” more than “Sports Entertainment”.

Now, there can be a debate as to whether AEW has done this or not, but the one thing that remains abundantly clear is that AEW is absolutely more focused on delivering great in-ring action than anything else. And that speaks to a certain portion of their fan base, as made evident by the recent Kenny Omega vs MJF match that we saw on Collision. MJF and Omega tore the house down, and MJF further proved that he could hang in the ring with the best that AEW has to offer. However, the business side of that decision got called out by many fans online. Now, there is a debate about the build of the match, as some AEW fans said that it needed to happen when it did due to MJF being on the cusp of usurping Kenny Omega as the longest-reigning AEW Champion of all time. While this is true, this is the biggest AEW match that has not taken place at this time. Omega vs MJF could have made AEW a lot of money if it was built correctly and given a proper audience to put it in front of. AEW knew that this record was coming close. Instead of building to a match with these 2 top draws, they put it on a random Collision after announcing it 3 days prior.

AEW fans have suggested that the build for the match was longer, sighting that MJF and Omega both whispered the number of days that MJF had until he broke Omega’s record. Now, call me crazy, but that still seems like a very lazy build to one of their biggest matches of all time. AEW and WWE are in 2 opposite directions in terms of how they structure their TV shows. WWE’s TV deal is expiring. The rights to their TV programs are one of the largest sources of income for the company, so WWE needs to ensure that their ratings are good to maintain their lucrative TV deal. WWE has the luxury of putting great matches on free TV because they are no longer selling Pay Per Views, switching to Premium Live Events happening exclusively on their own WWE Network app overseas, and domestically on Peacock. AEW, however, does not have that luxury and needs to convince its fanbase, as well as people outside of it that their PPV shows are worthy of purchasing. There can only be one “First Time Ever for the AEW World Heavyweight Title” match between MJF and Kenny Omega. And AEW squandered that money to hot-shot a title match on their 2nd lowest-rated show because of a kayfabe record.

Funny enough, WWE booked a strong title match on WWE RAW between Sami Zayn and current WWE World Heavyweight Champion Seth Rollins. And wouldn’t you know it, the AEW faithful tweeted about how there was no build for this match and how WWE isn’t criticized for it, while it was all the discourse about the AEW title match. For those who agree with that, I apologize, but I need to ask, where is your brain? How on earth can you compare a first-time-ever World Title match between your 2 biggest stars and a match between 2 WWE wrestlers we have seen wrestle each other on numerous occasions? Also, Sami Zayn came out on RAW after Kevin Owens was traded to Smackdown cut a heartfelt promo about wanting to be considered a Main Eventer, and said he wanted a shot at Seth’s title. He then prevented Damian Priest from cashing in his Money in the Bank briefcase against Rollins at Crown Jewel. All of this was addressed in the promo Seth and Sami cut to start RAW, and Seth made it clear that he wanted to defend the title against Sami as a thank-you for stopping the Judgment Day. So, there was a build. Was it the best ever? No. But this match was a means to an end, setting up the eventual War Games match between Sami, Seth, and crew and the Judgement Day.

A better comparison would be if WWE put Roman Reigns against Cody Rhodes for the WWE Undisputed Universal Heavyweight Championship on an episode of Smackdown after announcing it 3 days prior. Or WCW putting Hogan vs. Goldberg on NITRO and announcing it on Thunder 4 days prior, instead of a PPV. Wait, that happened. And it’s still amongst the most controversial calls to be made by a wrestling company, debated until today. Because who knows what the PPV numbers could have been? Yes, the ratings were Bischoff’s focus at the time, but I’m sure that even he would tell you that in hindsight, it may not have been the best move for WCW in terms of making money. The absolute funniest part of the discourse has been the narrative that because WWE put a big title match on RAW without any build they weren’t slammed for it, but the only reason it happened to Omega vs MJF was that the match took place in AEW. And this is the most laughable thing I have ever read.

For years prior to the formation of AEW, the internet has universally pointed to all of WWE’s problems and slammed WWE at every turn. Now, before I launch into this section, I’d like to point out that there was a severe lack of quality programming in WWE during this stretch. After no longer being interested in TNA, I watched as much Ring of Honor as I could and kept up with WWE. However, there was a point where WWE TV became so hard to watch due to there being little to no substance in any of the shows, that I almost stopped watching. With that being said, there were definitely good parts of WWE during that stretch. However, you’d never know about them, because despite whatever WWE did well, the fans continually decided to focus on all the bad parts of WWE TV. A lot of these people are a part of the initial ground-swell of AEW supporters. At what point did we think that these same people wouldn’t eventually treat AEW the same way after a few missteps?

Ironically, these are a lot of the same fans who worked to discredit WWE for years before AEW came into the picture to be their chosen alternative. You’d see these same fans complaining about WWE programming, calling it “The Fed” (Which makes no sense, it longer to type and they haven’t been the World Wrestling Federation in over 20 years, longer than a large portion of the IWC have been alive), and doing their best to highlight all the things that they do not like about WWE, instead of focusing on what they do like. For almost 20 years, WWE did not have a promotion that looked to be legitimate competition to WWE. The internet was a cesspool of negativity whenever WWE was discussed. To be fair, there was a lot of WWE programming that deserved to be picked apart, but a lot of it was done to drive clicks to articles and podcasts because of being anti-WWE. Podcasters and wrestling analysts regularly said that WWE was the worst it had ever been, even fully supporting upstart company TNA Wrestling as the best wrestling show in America, based on in-ring action alone. That’s right, go back to listen to your favorite podcasters and analysts talk about early TNA as being a better program than WWE. That’s right, the punchline of pro wrestling over the past 10 years (how many times have we seen ‘TNA lol’) was being touted as better than WWE because wrestling fans were convinced that with no competition, WWE was absolutely awful. This is ironic because look at how many, “The 2008 WWE roster was so underrated”, “Ruthless Aggression Era was the best era in wrestling”, and “2016 WWE was so good!” tweets we see. The shows weren’t bad, they were over-hated because hating WWE was the thing to do.

Fast forward to now in 2023, WWE has been on fire. People are enjoying the shows more, due to Triple H highlighting in-ring workers, booking the women’s division better and more frequently and there are more real stories being told throughout the show. Wrestling fans seem to be enjoying the product more, and that is reflected in the crowd sizes, record-setting profits, and fans talking about the product. Meanwhile, AEW has worn out all of the initial “They’re still a young company that’s learning, go easy on them!” sentiment they were initially given, and fans of the product have even started to call AEW out on some of the less than popular booking decisions they have made. From start-stop pushes of talents like Wardlow, Keith Lee, Hikaru Shida, Toni Storm, Ricky Starks, Powerhouse Hobbes, and many others, AEW fans are calling for more consistency in story-telling and pushes. And the ones that are doing it while still praising all the things they like about AEW aren’t a problem. Yet, every time AEW is remotely criticized, there are dozens of angry AEW fans in the comments, getting angry about other AEW fans not liking parts of the show. And that hurts AEW more than anything because if you’re just taking what you’re given by the company, they’ll never grow and get better. Fans were the reason why we got some of the best moments in wrestling. Daniel Bryan at Wrestlemania 30, Kofi-Maina, the rise of AJ Styles in TNA, NJPW, and WWE, and countless other amazing stories and moments. Criticizing is always a good thing, and it’s not insulting to AEW if fans want them to get better.

But this is why I end up with a headache being on Social Media for too long. A large portion of AEW fans can’t even see this at all. They feel that WWE fans are trying to sabotage AEW, and insisting that they are wishing AEW out of business. And to be fair, there are absolutely some really bad-faith, toxic accounts that either want that or are going negative on AEW because it gets them clicks. The same way a lot of AEW pages do the same as WWE. And the AEW fans are mostly the fans that I called out earlier, focusing on the negatives. Now that AEW is struggling, they’re also getting negative about AEW. And to that, I say, you made your bed, and now this is the result. AEW fans need to understand that not everyone likes everything AEW is going to do. Some like seeing great wrestling every week, but it’s not enough to keep them invested in the show weekly. And I understand that because I believe the best era of AEW was during the CM Punk and MJF feud. Because there was also a lot of good wrestling and storytelling on the show with everyone else at that time. I was interested again in Sting’s retirement tour, but I don’t care to see him and Darby Allin vs the Outrunners. And that’s okay, but I’m not going to tweet about it. I know why it doesn’t entice me to watch it, I’m not out to convince others to join me.

AEW can be a great promotion, and possibly evolve into something even bigger than the Number 2 American Wrestling Company, but their fans need to calm down a bit. WWE fans dealt with their shows being criticized by everyone for over 10 years. AEW fans can defend AEW all they want., but they also need to understand that criticism is okay, and that when someone says, “That wasn’t the best Dynamite”, it doesn’t mean that they want AEW to fail, or don’t like the whole promotion, or that they’re being held to a higher standard. Wrestling writers have 52 weeks every year to fill, some shows are going to miss the mark. But if fans continue to act like Marks themselves, they’re just doing a huge disservice to AEW. And that’s the last thing we want. Because the wrestling world is better with AEW in it.

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