Now with the New Year’s Day announcement of All Elite Wrestling being an official new wrestling promotion located in Jacksonville, Florida which is the home of The NFL Team called The Jacksonville Jaguars.
After the announcement was made, The Internet wrestling community (mostly made up of casual wrestling fans who have been fans for 2-5 years and truly don’t care much for wrestling) got caught up in the emotional investment part of it and took the news and ran with it.
As a fan of wrestling for 21 years now, I don’t expect AEW to immediately make in impact in the wrestling scene because there are many steps that they must take in order to be a successful wrestling promotion because as much money as WWE have now, but the fact of the matter is that they have become extremely arrogant, complacent, and lazy to the point of refusing to make any meaningful changes to the overall product because let’s be honest, the overall current WWE product is absolutely garbage.
Here now are top 5 things that All Elite Wrestling should avoid doing in 2019.
1. Trying To Be Like WWE - 2018 was actually the best year in the history of Impact Wrestling to me because they finally got away from the mentality of “let’s be like WWE and all these other wrestling promotions throughout North America” by finally establishing their own identity by creating compelling storylines that the fans can be interested in, creating unique gimmicks that fans can get behind, good builds which lead to good feuds like The LAX Civil War, and keeping Impact Wrestling to 2 hours and not being overkill by extending the show to three hours. If AEW can definitely do what Impact Wrestling did last year in avoiding “trying to be like WWE”, then their future is looking bright.
2. Having Time Constraints - The only issue that I had with The All In PPV event last year was the fact that the main event tag team match as awesome as it had been was very rushed due to time constraints because they ran out of time for the historic five hour PPV. This year All Elite Wrestling definitely needs to bring in people who do top notch production quality like Impact Wrestling did when their production definitely stepped up its game last year so that the time constraints won’t be an issue for AEW this year.
3. Insulting The Intelligence Of Fans - It’s no secret that I’m not the biggest fan of WWE nowadays because I haven’t watched WWE programming on TV in a little over a decade and one of the biggest reasons for that is because they’re extremely guilty of often insulting the intelligence of its fans by creating nonsensical storylines such as a 10 year old child winning The Raw Tag Team Titles at Wrestlemania 34 last year and so-called “comedy segments” that aren’t not funny by having Drake Maverick defile Bobby Roode’s robe. All Elite Wrestling should definitely avoid insulting the intelligence of fans this year by creating sensible storylines that fans can not only be invested in, but also have a few comedy segments that will truly get a laugh out of the fans.
4. Oversaturation - One of the biggest killers of the current WWE product is the extreme oversaturation that has caused millions of long time wrestling fans like myself to turn completely away from the product. Currently The WWE has a total between 35-40 hours of programming in an entire month with the three hour Raw (which is extreme overkill), two hour Smackdown, 1 hour of 205 Live and NXT as well as 4-5 hour PPVs. That’s way too much programming for fans to keep up with which shows that WWE values quantity over quality nowadays. One of the biggest things that All Elite Wrestling must definitely avoid this year is to oversaturate their product is by providing quality programming with good storylines and feuds so that fans won’t feel burnt out and not extending the length of their show to three hours.
5. Not Listening To Their Fans - The WWE is notorious for treating their fans in a very condensing manner nowadays by ignoring the fans. For example, if the fans want certain wrestlers to get pushed, but the company pushes their hand picked favorites instead, the WWE is deliberately telling their fans to “screw y’all’s favorites” because they’re gonna push their hand picked favorites to the moon which often comes to the detriment of fan favorites. The All Elite Wrestling promotion should definitely listen to its fans who voice their views about who they want to see get a push and who they don’t want to see get a push because this will show that AEW will actually care about listening to the fans.
The Conclusion - In order for AEW to make a splash in the wrestling scene in this new tray of 2019, if they avoid doing the five things that I mentioned above in the article, then they could become a major player in the wrestling scene within the next several years.
By Kwame Shakir
