It’s been revealed that All Elite Wrestling will launch on TNT later on this fall. The company will bring weekly live wrestling to its audience, and they hope to give wrestling fans a different kind of product. Cody Rhodes recently spoke with Variety about what he believes AEW can be and why it will be different from the WWE.
For many years throughout my youth and plenty of other fans youths, pro wrestling has been essentially just one company, and that’s not really the case. I want to be the sports-centric alternative in the pro wrestling world, and I think we’re on a good path to get there.
WWE has been criticized many times for their product, with many feeling that the company has a strong roster but they don’t know how to utilize it properly. One example of this has been the rivalry between the Usos and the Revival, two of the best tag teams in the world. Instead of focusing on their strengths in-ring, WWE has turned the Usos into pranksters, picking on Scott Dawson and Dash Wilder, giving us segments which saw them shaving each other and scooting across the floor like dogs.
The company’s “entertainment” side is what many blame for the American Nightmare leaving them back in 2016, as he wanted to drop the Stardust character completely and become Cody Rhodes once again. The former NWA Champion said that he wanted to focus on the idea of being more focused on the sport of professional wrestling than the “entertainment” and stated that, while he enjoyed working with the WWE, it wasn’t what he would call wrestling.
As much as I say it was a wonderful job, it wasn’t wrestling. That’s something I’ve learned a lot about, the grittiness and the sports-centric element of the industry that doesn’t exist really anywhere else currently. We have the opportunity to seize that.
With AEW now locked in with TNT, all they have to do now is prove why fans need to tune in. They look to do just that with their first official show, Double or Nothing, on May 25th.
