Earlier this morning, after months and months of speculation, All Elite Wrestling finally confirmed their partnership with Turner Media/TNT. While specifics such as date and time weren’t given, this is obviously huge for the wrestling landscape as AEW has jumped to the front of the line in terms of being WWE’s biggest competition.
Cody and The Young Bucks have made it clear that they’re not aiming to fight against the biggest promotion in the world, but speaking to
Variety, AEW Executive Vice President Cody speaks about the wrestling community finally having a true alternative that fans can go to:
“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 Hall of famer Jim Ross – who’s the senior advisor for AEW - also chimed in on the situation stating that,
“AEW has a great opportunity because they’re not underfunded, the leadership has amazing vision, is young and youthful”. Ross also speaks about the all-new promotion competing with WWE, stating that:
"Competition raises everybody’s game. It will raise the wrestlers’ game, the creative people’s game, everybody. Everybody feels a sense of urgency when someone is competing with them. Competitive means being profitable. It doesn’t mean, ‘We have to have this to beat the WWE.’ Our job is not to worry about what WWE is doing, not their TV clearances, not whose in the main event, nothing. With a growing company there are a lot of growing pains. It’s a mix of creative and athletics and a lot of different things. Our focus has to be us, period.”
Cody speaks on seizing on what's currently missing in the WWE, noting that while working for his former employer was great, at the end of the day, it just wasn’t 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.”