AEW For Beginners: Everything You Need to Know

Although AEW is the biggest alternative to WWE, spoilers: it doesn’t suit everyone, and that’s okay.

It’s not elitist, but realistic. Not everyone’s taste and preferences are fulfilled by AEW. Acknowledging and knowing your wants will make your journey easier to navigate.

If AEW is for you, you’ll find this company unashamed of being a wrestling promotion. One that celebrates all of wrestling’s history. The best stories are treated with care, contain subtlety, nuance, deep psychology, and reality that embody the elements of prestige TV and cinema without telling you they deserve an Emmy nomination.

As an AEW fan, I’m critical of the company’s genuine issues that much criticism fails to discuss or analyze in context. AEW is a company of paradoxes and extremes. I’ll signpost (optional) further reading if you want more nuance.

Expect this to be a warts-and-all guide to discovering if becoming a sicko is right for you.

Jump In Cold

You don’t need to know anything about AEW, its roster, or history to start watching. When I got into wrestling, I knew it was “fake”, but the Smackdown Six made it real.

Watch Dynamite cold on a Wednesday night. Let AEW sell itself to you. The cleanest place to begin is after a PPV cycle. New storylines and feuds will emerge.

Dynamite is AEW’s flagship show where the biggest angles, storyline developments, and matches happen. If you are/were a WWE fan, you will notice a striking difference in pace and action. Unlike Raw or SmackDown, Dynamite is a two-hour sugar rush blitz. It’s not a show about the booking of a wrestling promotion, nor a movie about the sport. Wrestling isn’t the background; it’s the primary storytelling framework.

Dynamite’s pace varies with no set formula. Sometimes, a breathless pace doesn’t give you enough time to process the significance of what’s happened during and after matches or important moments. Some events are rushed through. Catharsis, shock, and emotion poured aside, not allowed to brew. Paradoxically, functional booking with obvious match outcomes and too many minutes can drag.

If you buy an AEW PPV, you will get your money’s worth. The cost is time. My partner, who possibly has ADHD, remarked after attending our third AEW PPV that six hours had blinked by. Inversely, I watch PPVs at home in chunks, making viewing more of a treat than a chore.

As a fan, you can enjoy watching or engaging with AEW your way.

Once you have favorites, then dive into their back catalogue. The AEW’s YouTube channel has plenty of classic matches and moments to make you understand “The Feeling”.

The Wrestling

AEW serves a global buffet of wrestling styles. Styles make fights. Plenty of wrestlers work a character-driven style, from the comic and surprising with The Young Bucks to Orange Cassidy to the violence and realism of Darby Allin and Jon Moxley. Plenty of matches and moves are purposeful and defy traditional wisdom.

The problem with the broad-church approach is that offering a little bit of everything leaves some unsatisfied and underfed. It also creates a different type of homogeneity to WWE.

AEW exhilarates, pushing the envelope of possibility. The stories told physically speak louder than a promo’s verbiage. AEW isn’t concerned with preservation. Detrimentally, this means the spectacular can/is normalized. Some, like The Lucha Brothers, became cogs in the machine rather than standouts.

At its best, the action is emotionally gripping. At times, the disparity between the quality of action and storytelling leaves the physicality emotionless, but never soulless. Even when matches feel functionary or more art for art’s sake, the wrestlers’ love for their craft is unquestionable and infectious.

Storytelling

To suggest AEW doesn’t tell stories feels as smooth-brained and conspiratorial as saying the Earth is flat. Often, AEW has too many stories. The quality ranges from groundbreaking and fresh to formulaic and cliché.

Unlike WWE’s commentary team, AEW’s won’t continuously remind you what’s happened. AEW treats fans as intelligent and trusts our memories, sometimes too much. It’s like an expert professor who forgets that their students lack prior knowledge and the capacity to understand. That can be alienating.

Hangman Adam Page has had two contrasting arcs battling imposter syndrome and self-destruction. Page’s rivalry with MJF has been repeatedly built upon since day one. However, Page is AEW’s main character.

Some wrestlers’ personal arcs seem to receive less thought and effort. See the AEW World Tag Team Championship reign of fellow day-oners, Private Party. Other times, storylines run too long or ignore the fans’ displeasure, like AEW’s refusal to let the devil storyline die. However, the wrestlers have more autonomy and responsibility for maximising their minutes.

Consistency is frustrating. The AEW women’s division has seen incredible genre-pushing storylines and matches involving violence and sapphic love through the female gaze, while simultaneously having a spotlight issue where those female wrestlers not called Mercedes Mone or Toni Storm experienced marginalised and bitty booking.

Knowing and seeing the bar rise time after time makes us expect and want more consistency. It’s the price of creating perfection. Replication isn’t easily sustainable.

Philosophy

What drives the duality of AEW is its philosophy. As best described by MJF, AEW’s “no floaties” policy it’s a double-edged sword. Wrestlers have no safety net. No scripts, no micromanagement, and sometimes, too much freedom. It demands the best from wrestlers.

It has pushed the company’s best to be more than superstars or superheroes. Instead, we have authentic, relatable human beings who are extraordinary athletes. For male fans, it’s created a modern and unapologetic representation of masculinity. Characters like Storm and Cassidy might be exaggerated, but they reflect reality beyond bland, superficial, stereotypical gimmicks.

Yet less protection and more autonomy mean failure isn’t hidden with production gloss. There’s more meritocracy and sometimes more mediocrity. Conversely, failure can lead to greatness and reinvention. Storm went from generic punk and “not cool” to “Timeless” after trial and error. Those who’ve gone from AEW to WWE often keep the presentation and characterisation that got them over.

Irrespective, the creative potholes created hellish roads that still lead to nirvana-like payoffs. Excess and desensitization can be re-adjusted; the magic can be repeated or new sources found. AEW’s violence ranges from comic to Shakespearean.

In many ways, it’s not a bug but a feature that AEW is an imperfect company and always has been, despite older, disenfranchised fans’ claims. At its heart, AEW cares about wrestling and repeatedly tries to please and reward its fanbase. It doesn’t always succeed, but it’s six years old and growing.

Hopefully, see you on Wednesday nights. You know what that means.