The Wednesday Night Wars between WWE and AEW was one of the highlights of the past couple of years as each company tried to put on the best product they possibly could. It would eventually end in April after NXT shifted to Tuesdays.
Former WWE Superstar Killian Dain recently spoke to Riju Dasgupta and revealed that WWE NXT Superstars would watch AEW matches.
“Like, so, I think people would love [for] me to say it was this rivalry or whatever else, but the truth is, you know when we were going head-to-head if they had a particularly good match, we’d wanted to watch; we’d watch! You know what I mean? We’d be backstage in the locker room; we’ll be like, ‘Oh, such and such, let’s see that.’ A lot of [them] are our friends, [as is] with a lot of the guys on the roster.
So for us, there was a professional rivalry so far as. Nobody wants to lose or anything like that, but at the same time, we knew it was great for the industry. We knew it was exactly what it was as us growing up watching, when it was WWF and WCW, maybe on a smaller scale, but for a lot of us, in the NXT locker room, it was a good way; an added motivation is probably the best way to put it. Listen, there’s no denying, if there is a really cool match, and we’re not doing something on the show that day, we’d be watching, you know what I mean because there were some crackers at the time.”
