In lieu of All Elite Wrestling (AEW) celebrating five years this past December, let’s look back at this past year and how it’s set a precedent for how professional wrestling will operate down the road. AEW has been in a weird state ever since August really. Tony Khan’s greed, pettiness and envy have started a gradual decline of AEW.

Firstly the greed. Back in August, AEW’s biggest PPV of the year All in went down. In that match CM Punk faced Samoa Joe for the “Real” AEW World Championship. This match was supposed to be one of the matches that carried the card. A match that was supposed to set the tone for the magnitude of the main event of Adam Cole vs MJF for the AEW Championship.

Unfortunately, the match just didn’t deliver. We knew from roughly halfway through the match that Punk felt unmotivated and the match wasn’t going as planned. Seeing this, Khan made a communication to the ring encouraging both Punk and Joe to get back on track and try to steer the match back on course. Punk took offense to that and after the match, came backstage to the backstage area visibly irate. Not only due to Khan’s comments but also in part due to a backstage altercation with Jack Perry.

Following the event, Punk was put on administrative leave and later, announced in Punks own hometown of the Chicago, was fired for “cause”.

Instead of keeping his mouth shut and not trying to improve the match with two seasoned veterans of the wrestling game, he poked the bear and paid the price for it.

At the time, Punk was the biggest AEW draw on the secondary show collision. On the episode where It was announced that Punk was fired, 472,000 people tuned in to the show. After the announcement, 89,000 people tuned out and viewership dropped 19% to 383,000. That wasn’t all.

After Punk made his triumphant return to WWE, both Collision and Dynamite’s ratings went into the absolute gutter. Monday Night Raw, Friday Night SmackDown and even NXT was beating out both shows week in and week out.

TK felt greedy and paid the price for it.

Secondly is the pettiness. After severely miss-booking Jade Cargill, her contract expired and she entered free agency. Later in September, Cargill officially signed with the WWE. This angered TK beyond anything I’ve ever seen. Losing Cargill was a massive hit to the already low-status Women’s division. Instead of getting a hot Women’s free agent like Trinity Fatu, Kairi Sane or Mercedes Mone, who did TK get? Adam Copeland.

Formally known as Edge, his contract with WWE expired back in June, he took some time to make a decision before signing with AEW and debuting at the WrestleDream PPV.

Jade Cargill signed September 26th. Adam Copeland signed in AEW October 1st. That timing just cannot be coincidental.

The most obvious example of petiness came from October 11th 2023. The MLB playoffs forced Dynamite to move to Tuesday for a week. Tuesday is coincidentally the day of WWE’s developmental brand NXT. Tony Khan armed up loading the dynamite card with 5 title matches, a #1 contenders match and the in-ring debut of Adam Copeland.

NXT responded, putting on Asuka vs Roxanne Perez, John Cena in the corner of Carmelo Hayes, Paul Heyman in the corner of Bron Breakker, Cody Rhodes being the honorary general manager for the night, LA Knight guest refereeing a match between NXT Champion Ilja Dragonov and Dominik Msterio, and to cap it all off the freaking Undertaker made an apperance.

It’s safe to say that NXT took the win by roughly 300,000 people marking its highest viewed episode of the year. Dynamite on the other hand, took a devastating blow to moral as the companies flagship show couldn’t beat the competitors developmental brand.

Again, TK poked the bear and paid the price.

AEW in the last few months have acquired Adam Copeland, Will Ospreay and are now expected to be the landing spot of Mercedes Mone.

WWE have acquired: CM Punk, Jade Cargill, Kairi Sane and are now expected to be the new landing spots of Trinity Fatu (FKA Naomi) as well as Andrade El Idolo as he has just recently departed from AEW.

While this pattern indicates some healthy competition between the two brands, I do fear a very dark future ahead. With WWE and AEW being the two major promotions in Professional Wrestling, I fear that smaller, lesser known promotions like TNA (Impact) and New Japan Pro Wrestling (NJPW) will be left behind and in wake of the rivalry between AEW and WWE, lose there business.