WWE vs. AEW: Who Is Truly Better?

NOTE: This is just my personal opinion on how I see it, as someone that follows both shows from week-to-week.

Often, wrestling fans will put all their eggs in one basket and not see the good and bad in both companies. With this entry I will attempt to analyze how I feel about both sides.

WRESTLING QUALITY: Both rosters have incredible workers, and both companies do a good job with letting their top-tier workers just go out there and do their thing. WWE tends to agent their shows in a way where big moments and even certain moves are more often saved for the closing stretch, you wouldn’t be seeing the same match open the show that you see close the show, and that is a point in their favor. AEW tends to be more free-form, letting their wrestlers go all-out no matter where they are on the card, leading to a higher ceiling for some matches but also a feeling of sameness in spots, where you’ll see a piledriver on the like second match of the show and then expect the same fans to pop as big for it in the main event. I’d say it’s a toss up - AEW has a higher ceiling, but WWE tends to make the main event seem bigger, at the expense of asking undercard talents to hold back a bit. Both companies have too many interference finishes. RESULT: TIED

THEME MUSIC: Aside from the odd licensed theme, WWE tends to give wrestlers a theme from Def Rebel - and quite frankly, Def Rebel is terrible. While not every theme AEW’s baked-in music team of Mikey Rukus does is quality, it’s hard to be worse than Def Rebel, and Tony tends to shell out more for licensed music than WWE does, so the answer is simple. RESULT: AEW

PRESENTATION: WWE presents their wrestlers as larger-than-life, as SUPERSTARS, and often have guys come in immediately feeling like a huge deal - most recently, Jacob Fatu. Try as they may, it’s often that AEW wrestlers look like just another guy when they walk in - see, Kazuchika Okada’s early entrances where he just walked in with a white shirt, as opposed to his more theatrical entrance he had in NJPW. Other than Mercedes Mone and the Elite, almost no one in AEW has that kind of entrance. Kenny Omega even said he wished he had a similar presentation to someone like Roman Reigns, where he LOOKED like the final boss and the unkillable with a massive amount of aura. So I don’t think it’s just me that feels this way. RESULT” WWE

PPV QUALITY: Both sides have their drawbacks, and neither side truly has the balance quite right, but I find myself a bit less exhausted at the end of WWE PPVs, especially during the Triple H era. And it’s not the exact length that’s the issue, it’s the pacing. With WWE, a match will happen, and then 15 minutes of waiting will happen before the next. The 5-match formula is a bit thin, you could probably fit 1 or 2 more matches in and have a more well-paced show. Whereas with AEW, they put 15 matches on Forbidden Door including the buy-in, and probably only about half of them felt like they truly belonged. Sometimes Tony will put 2 or 3 matches on a supercard with zero build just to get everyone on the card. Occasionally, it pays off, but sometimes it feels unnecessary - why do we need ANOTHER Learning Tree match, exactly? Both sides need to find a better balance. RESULT: TIED

TV QUALITY: WWE shows tend to not have much in-ring wrestling outside of the PPVs, while AEW feels like it crams so much into a 2-hour time slot that there’s an overrun every single week. It’s a bigger surprise when a show DOES end on time with them. AEW tends to give away bigger matches more often on TV. They also tend to err on the more chaotic and unfocused side, with segments flying one after another with zero time to breathe. Just like with here’s a happy medium between too little and too much, and neither company truly gets it right. RESULT: TIED

BOOKING: Neither Triple H nor Tony Khan are particularly great at pivoting when something out of their control happens. Both try to play the “long game”, but neither are these god-tier bookers; they’re just better than Vince, which is a hilariously low bar. RESULT: TIED

FINAL VERDICT: Both shows need work, but apart from theme music and presentation, they’re both a lot closer to each other than they let on. Both need to find their balance, and for the love of christ, fire Def Rebel please, WWE.