Four ways that All Elite Wrestling is similar to WWE
AEW presents itself as the alternative to WWE, but it is very similar to its competitor in a number of ways.
AEW is the biggest competition that WWE has seen since the fall of WCW in 200. AEW quickly found its footing and presenting itself as a strong alternative to WWE has helped boost its position with many wrestling fans.
Tony Khan has done a great job of ensuring AEW is different from the WWE, but the two promotions have a lot more in common than he and fans will admit. For this piece, I will look at five ways that AEW is similar to the biggest promotion in professional wrestling.
4. Gimmick heavy wrestlers
Both AEW and WWE have several larger-than-life personalities on their rosters. The characters in both companies can get up to some extreme antics to make the characters seem like big deals. WWE boasts names like Finn Balor, Ezekiel, and Tony DeAngelo, as examples of some who are wrapped up in their gimmick at times. AEW has several gimmick wrestlers, such as the House of Black, who can take over people’s minds in the middle of matches. AEW has other gimmicks, such as Luchasaurus, who has become a fan favorite, and Dark Order, who went from a cult to a goofy babyface stable that followed Adam Page around.
3. Women’s division poorly booked
Both WWE and AEW are facing challenges with adequately booking the women’s division, although those reasons are different across each promotion.
Both companies have women’s rosters that are stacked with some of the best wrestlers in the world. Names like Bayley, Asuka, Beck Lynch, and Charlotte Flair, compared to the likes of Thunder Rosa, Hikaru Shida, Toni Storm, Serena Deeb, and Mercedes Martinez show just how deep women’s wrestling is. Yet, both organizations struggle to feature women in ways that fans want to consistently see.
The WWE and AEW have to be careful how they book their women’s division because it could start a destructive cycle of the audience not being invested in the women’s matches. Tony Khan needs to sit down and look at his women’s division, work with what he has, and stop signing wrestlers when you don’t have enough television time for everyone, especially when fans want to see more of the women on screen.
2. Familiar faces
In the world of professional wrestling, wrestlers will come and go from multiple promotions. A wrestler is almost guaranteed to cross between companies, especially since AEW and WWE are the two biggest wrestling companies in America. Impact Wrestling, MLW, and NWA are nowhere near as mainstream as WWE and AEW. That being said, WWE fans will see many familiar faces if they were to tune into AEW on Wednesday or Friday night.
1. The Older stars get the spotlight
AEW has one of the most diverse wrestling rosters in the world of professional wrestling we’ve ever seen. They have many young talents who have the potential to be game-changers in the future.
Despite that, AEW still relies on older wrestlers who have already established themselves in other companies such as WWE, WCW, and TNA. AEW depends on older wrestlers such as Jeff Hardy, Chris Jericho, Sting, and even CM Punk to boost their ratings. In the early stages of AEW, the company would try to recreate Attitude era moments that would fall flat. The Bubbly bath segment was a lesser version of the Steve Austin angle from the WWE in 1999. In 2021 AEW signed CM Punk and Bryan Danielson, two of the biggest names to sign with the company, but even with their signing, some of the AEW talents who have been there since day one were forced to take a back seat to them.
If AEW wants to be around twenty years from now, they have to focus on their younger talent and put them over their older talent.