Who wins the Wednesday Night Wars: 6 cases for AEW
By Amelia N
![Credit: All Elite Wrestling Credit: All Elite Wrestling](https://images2.minutemediacdn.com/image/upload/c_fill,w_720,ar_16:9,f_auto,q_auto,g_auto/shape/cover/sport/a02c8399ea9500e60b1277944911eec2ccdff59e9cea3ec2c82ff92369d584a8.jpg)
With AEW announcing their flagship weekly TV show is due to be live on Wednesday nights starting October 2, it seemed as if WWE were instantly feeling the pressure from the upstart promotion.
They certainly responded as if they were; news quickly broke that NXT was being moved to Wednesday nights on the USA Network (at the exact same time as All Elite’s as yet unnamed show airs on TNT, no less), as well as that the quasi-developmental brand was being given a two hour time-slot, starting weeks before AEW and being streamed live, rather than being taped beforehand.
The last time WWE were put under sustained pressure by a rival promotion was during the infamous Monday Night Wars way back in the mid-to-late 1990s, when they were being consistently bested in the ratings by WCW’s show, Nitro. WCW seemed to stand a half-decent chance of knocking WWE off the perch they’d been comfortably sat on ever since they eliminated the vast majority of regional promotions, but, as is so often the way in almost everything in life, everything went to pot, because Vince Russo.
20-something years later, we have another budding mainstream wrestling war on our hands. Very much in the same vein as twenty years ago, All Elite Wrestling are a new, upstart promotion who are promising to offer a genuine alternative to the WWE product that many believe has long been stale and boring. However, very much differently to twenty years ago, AEW might well just have the perfect combination of corporate industry knowledge and experience, wrestling talent and significantly wealthy investors, to succeed where WCW failed.
Let’s take a look at six reasons why All Elite Wrestling stand a genuine, real chance of beating WWE in the Wednesday Night Wars…