6 Positive statements from AEW’s Double or Nothing
It all started when wrestling journalist Dave Meltzer doubted that wrestling promotion, Ring of Honor, could hold an event with over 10,000 fans watching at once.
This led to a one-off independent pay-per-view ‘All In’, led by Cody Rhodes and real life brothers, Nick and Matt Jackson, also known as The Young Bucks.
Whilst there were many great matches on the pay-per-view, the bigger success came from the fact that a wrestling promotion outside of the WWE could generate such a huge live audience.
From this one pay-per-view, it led to the same people create a new wrestling promotion, All Elite Wrestling, with the backing of billionaire Shahid Khan and his son Tony Khan.
In their short history, they’ve gone from strength to strength recruiting the likes of Chris Jericho, the Lucha Brothers, and Kenny Omega.
However, four months in and even though there was excitement and rumours about the promotion having a weekly show that could contend with the WWE, there was nothing officially confirmed to the rest of the world.
Nevertheless, a few weeks before AEW’s inaugural pay-per-view, Double or Nothing, the television deal was announced and everything has changed.
Double or Nothing was one of the biggest talking points in wrestling this year but it needed to deliver on the night to make a strong statement that AEW is here to stay.
Not only did they deliver on the night, but they made some positive statements that means the new promotion could genuinely contend with the WWE.
#6 Accepting wrestlers and championships from different wrestling promotions
Even though the WWE United Kingdom Championship has been defended outside of a WWE ring before, (as Mark Andrews fought Tyler Bate back in January 2017 on an episode of ‘Progress Wrestling’), the fact remains that due to the plethora of active Championships in the WWE, with the 24/7 title having just been added, the United Kingdom Championship is considered one of the less desired titles.
A large part of this is that, outside of NXT UK shows, it is not often seen represented or defended elsewhere in the WWE.
In stark contrast, at AEW’s inaugural pay-per-view, Double or Nothing, not only did it feature wrestlers who still have contracts with other wrestling promotions, but also featured Championships too.
In the penultimate match of the night, The Young Bucks successfully defended their AAA World Tag Team Championships against the Lucha Brothers, Pentagon Jr and Fenix, who are currently contracted to a number of other promotions, including Impact Wrestling.
This is a positive step is for two reasons. Firstly, it shows that wrestlers have more flexibility joining AEW without having to permanently leave their current promotion as there were other wrestlers on the pay-per-view who still wrestled for other wrestling promotions.
The second positive behind this particular match was that AEW had no qualms recognising other wrestling companies by promoting one of their Championships.
This means that if AEW has advertised other promotions, then a favour can easily be returned if AEW are looking to borrow a few wrestlers for a short period of time.