Talk Of War! AEW vs. WWE

IF IT WASN’T clear before, it became clear the moment Cody Rhodes took a sledgehammer to a very familiar throne at May’s Double or Nothing event.

This means war.

And after months of anticipation over the eventual clash between WWE and the upstart All Elite Wrestling, the first skirmishes began in October with the debut of AEW’s weekly television show on TNT. The show would go head-to-head with WWE’s NXT program, which moved from its original home on the WWE Network to the USA Network.

It’s not WWE’s first war, and it probably won’t be its last. But there are reasons why AEW presents a unique threat to WWE, which has, ultimately, come out on top of all its past promotional battles. While WWE’s experience taking on rival promoters may give it some advantages, AEW’s masterminds have also learned a lot from observing the missteps of WWE’s past challengers—and the recent missteps of WWE itself.

In this special report, examines all sides of the AEW-WWE