AEW: Should AEW look to restart the Monday Night Wars

AEW might have emerged as the winners to what wrestling fans called the Wednesday Night Wars, but the real battle with WWE could happen sooner rather than later. Launching in 2019, AEW made it clear that they wanted to bring something new to the world of professional wrestling. AEW promised to restore prestige in tag team wrestling and assured fans that wins and losses would matter, which immediately made them an alternative to WWE.

The Wednesday night clash between Dynamite and NXT was the opening stage in a rivalry that wrestling fans might be seeing this decade. AEW Dynamite and NXT running together at the same time and nights affected the viewership of both shows. In this article, I will be discussing why I believe AEW should restart the Monday Night Wars.

For many wrestling fans, the Monday Night Wars were an exciting time in the history of professional wrestling. The two biggest companies were WCW and WWF, and they battled for the number one wrestling company in the world every Monday. In what was a legitimate rating war, the two wrestling companies would battle it out for audience members’ attention every week, forcing both companies to create some of the most creative storylines in professional wrestling history.

Now would be the perfect time for AEW to go to war with the WWE flagship show. The more recent episodes of Raw have typically landed around the 1.5-1.8 million mark, which is still ahead of AEW Dynamite. But with Raw suffering record low ratings in December of 2020 and now with AEW doing a million viewers since NXT isn’t on at the same day and time, it could AEW reach new heights. The two shows could soon be drawing closer to numbers that should have the WWE worried.

AEW is already competing gamely with Monday Night Raw in the critical 18-49 demographic and overall viewership. Having conquered NXT, AEW must now prove that it can go against WWE flagship shows. When it comes to competition, it can be good for both wrestling companies because it gives all the wrestlers involved the chance to prove why they’re the best wrestlers in the world.

When it comes to wrestling fans, we want another company that will push WWE to become creative again; AEW is the perfect wrestling company to make WWE go through a drastic change. AEW has some of the best wrestlers in the world on its roster. The AEW roster already has huge names like Sting and Y2J That people outside of wrestling are familiar with. AEW has the best tag team division out of all the wrestling companies out there. From the beginning, they said that they would make tag team wrestling important again. The WWE, on the other hand, hasn’t had a competitive tag team division since the early 2000s.

If AEW wanted to restart the Monday Night War, they would have first to admit that it wouldn’t be something that would be easy. AEW is behind WWE when it comes to television viewership and lucrative deals with Fox and Peacock, merchandise, video games, and mainstream presence. Now that the Wednesday night wars are over, fans should be looking for a potential match-up between WWE and AEW that would create legendary moments like the original Monday Night Wars.