When Tim raised the possibility of resurrecting my old wrestling column, Two out of Three Falls for Mass Movement, I jumped at the chance.  A lot has changed in wrestling since the summer of 2018, when I wrote my last column.  Frankly, around that time I was getting so disillusioned with WWE that I was considering, for the first time since 1992, stopping watching professional wrestling!  

And then AEW happened.

Well, All In happened in Chicago.  And then AEW happened.  And then the pandemic happened.  And then the #SpeakingOut scandal.  And I finally cut ties with WWE programming and the deeply problematic UK indie scene.  I switch loyalties to AEW.  I felt like a kid again, watching wrestling that was actually good, with storylines that made sense.  For a while.  Then Vince McMahon finally leaves WWE for good and I start to hear that the product is finally getting good over there again too.  All In returns, this time to London.  Wembley.  And I’m there in the crowd.  So eager to see my first AEW event that my wife and I ignore the fact that we’ve already booked a week away in the Lake District the weekend of All In and get tickets there anyway.  We leave our idyllic holiday cottage in Windemere to grab an early train down to London, watch the wrestling, and are back in the Lake District by lunchtime the next day, wasting a whole night of our rental and not regretting it for a minute.  

The next year we’re smarter.  No holiday booked for All In weekend and a pilgrimage is made again.  Still keeping us on our toes, the company then announce an unexpected TV taping of Dynamite and Collision in Cardiff, our old home, a few days before we’re due to go to London and we grab tickets for that too.  This is the whole reason we don’t have kids.  So we can do extravagant and stupid shit like this.  Wasting money on wrestling shows instead of on university tuition fees and eighteen years of food, drink and clothing.  More disposable income to spend on merch that won’t fit me after a couple of washes.

But even I, a now diehard AEW fan, could see that things weren’t going in the completely upward trajectory for the company that I had hoped for when I started watching.  And, loyal to CM Punk, the way he had been treated by the company left a bad taste in my mouth.  When he returned to Survivor Series the year before, I had renewed my subscription to the WWE Network.  And I loved seeing Cody Rhodes doing so well there too.  Triple H was doing a great job now that Vince was gone.  WWE felt fresh and different.  Stealing good bits from its rivals, as usual, but doing them with their trademark elevation of production value and sense of historical legacy.  Shit.  One of the things that burnt me out on wrestling back in 2018 was that there was just so much of it.  I felt I never had time to keep up.  Now I’m watching two promotions!  At least with WWE it’s only the pay-per-views (I refuse to call them Premium Live Events), because I can’t be bothered to pay the extra for TNT Sports.

And then WWE comes to Netflix and I’m fucked.  At least 9 hours a week of Raw, Dynamite, Smackdown and Collision.  And I don’t even notice.  Just love how good wrestling has become.  So AEW proved it wasn’t perfect.  No company is.  I’ve been watching WWE since SummerSlam ’91 and for most of those thirty plus years it has sucked more than it’s ever been great.  Hell, for most episodes of Raw the misses are many more than the hits.  But those great moments – those rare and wonderful hits – make it worth all the wasted hours scratching my head in confusion or shouting at the TV screen.  And 2025 WWE has really upped its hit-rate.  Meanwhile, bad AEW is still usually better quality than 9/10 of WWE in terms of actual in-ring product and I love how they’re not afraid to try stuff, even if it doesn’t work.  Who am I kidding?  It’s love.  I thought I’d broken up with WWE and replaced it with AEW but it turns out we found a way to make it work polyamorously.  We’re a Trios team now and I’ve learnt to embrace both company’s faults along with their positives, just as they’ve weathered the commercial dips of my own fandom and learned to accept my occasional tirades against their booking decisions and sporadic need for some time apart, or with other brands (NJPW?  NXT?  TNA?).  

I’m at a point in my life when I realise wrestling will always be in it, and where my attention is split equally between the two current market leaders (sorry Tony Khan – market leader and challenger brand). So I thought it might be a good idea in my first column back in nearly seven years to share with you what I think are the current highs and lows of both companies.  What am I excited about in AEW/WWE in 2025, and what do I wish would lose a retirement match and Rest In Peace for all time?

The Highs:

• John Cena’s heel turn.  I mean how could you not love finally having what we thought would never happen.  WWE played this brilliantly.  Cena had told us for so many years he couldn’t do it to the Make-A-Wish kids that I just didn’t see it coming, especially during his feel-good and nostalgic retirement tour run.  It was the first time I’d been genuinely surprised and delighted by a bit of wrestling booking in a very long time and I just hope they manage to make the rest of the storyline just as thrilling.  
• ‘Timeless’ Toni Storm.  The most entertaining character going in wrestling today.  Her match with Mariah May at Revolution was nothing short of spectacular and her return after All In as the old-school ‘Toni time’ rocker character was hilarious before her transformation back into the ‘Timeless’ one.  Back in the 1990s, Dustin Rhodes attempted to do bizarre old-timey Hollywood with Goldust, and his character, though memorable, never quite fulfilled the promise of its possibility.  Toni Storm is the Goldust I wanted all those years ago.  Just perfect.  And fucking hilarious too!
• Will Ospreay.  Just absolutely everything this guy does is amazing.  Not just the unparalleled matches he’s had in an AEW ring, but his intensely likeable and charismatic promos.  He’s funny, he’s brilliant, and every time he’s on TV is time well spent.  
• Penta.  Penta’s WWE debut and run ever since has been nothing short of extraordinary.  Not least because he lasted for nearly an hour in the Royal Rumble after clearly having both of his feet hit the floor in a botched attempt to skin the cat.  But other than that small glitch, his matches have been fantastic and he brings a compelling energy that WWE hasn’t seen with its other cookie-cutter luchas since Rey Mysterio.  
• C M Punk.  I buy whatever this guy is selling, and the outrage and bitterness between he, Seth Rollins and Roman Reigns, with the extra added intrigue of the ‘Wise Man’, Paul Heyman, is perfect Wrestlemania season chemistry.
• Kenny Omega.  I’m so glad to have Kenny back in AEW, even if Don Callis has convinced me that at any moment his stomach might explode!  Like Ospreay, Omega is a guy who could wrestle the most lacklustre, milquetoast jobber in the business and turn it into a five star match.  I’m here for as many more of those matches he is physically capable of having.
• Wrestlemania.  You can’t not get excited for Wrestlemania season, and this one is shaping up into a doozy.  Vegas got screwed out of a decent ‘Mania in 1993 and it’s time to do it right in Sin City.
• Forbidden Door.  When AEW announced they would not be returning to Wembley this year for All In, and that it would be taking place in Texas instead, in a completely different month, I was pissed.  What seemed like a lovely new wrestling tradition had been pre-emptively aborted just as it got going.  But walking out of Wembley stadium last summer and seeing the signs around Wembley Way promoting Forbidden Door 2025 coming live from London, the same bank holiday weekend as All In usually is, I was appeased.  Since then, however, nothing more has been said about it.  I wait with baited breath to find out what the venue is, what the card will be, but by hook or by crook, if I can get a ticket, I will be there.     
• Netflix Era WWE for International Events.  What a joy it’s been this March watching Raw and Smackdown live at the ‘proper’ time because Netflix can actually stream globally whenever they want to.  Instead of a London show or a Barcelona show being a pre-record with spoilers on the internet hours before it airs, we got to watch things happen when they happen.  More of this please!
• The Hurt Syndicate.  These guys are just cool and have the best music in the business right now.  They hurt people, and they made a real life business decision to stick together and keep doing a gimmick they believe in.  What’s not to like?
• AEW programming in general.  Although I’m back watching WWE, there’s no denying the fact that every show, every week, on AEW has better in-ring wrestling than even a WWE pay-per-view can guarantee.  Not only that, but the commentary teams are a blast, and their intelligence and natural banter – including warts and all mistakes – always add to the in-ring product rather than detract.  I include the regular special guests in that, like Don Callis, Daddy Magic, Toni Storm, etc.  Even if an AEW show has a bunch of random matches thrown together with little to no story and wrestlers I barely know, it will still be the best hour or two of wrestling on TV that week.  It really is “where the best wrestle”.

The Lows:

• Moxley’s Deathriders.  Never have I been so bored by a heavyweight champion than I have been by Jon Moxley since he lost all aspects of his personality and just became a grunty murderer in a permanent bad mood with a cheating team of disciples all equally void of character now as he.  When they put that plastic bag over Bryan Danielson’s face to win the gold, it was shocking in all the wrong ways.  Stupid even.  Wrestling requires a suspension of disbelief and attempted homicide bends that suspension to the point of breaking.  Couple that with the belt in a suitcase gimmick and the fact this whole thing seems to be based on a storyline entirely in Moxley’s head, which he has yet to meaningfully communicate to the audience, and this whole angle has only been a negative for the business.  It made the most prestigious belt in the business in 2024 become utterly meaningless by 2025.  The sooner Moxley loses the gold and the Deathriders disband, the happier I’ll be.
• The Wyatt Sicks.  Another faction introduced via attempted murder, but this time, given the supernatural element, it was totally acceptable and I was totlly into it.  But the longer time has gone on the more clear it becomes that Bray Wyatt was a generational talent and without his unique and twisted mind the legacy of the Wyatts feels like depressing dress up than anything as truly revolutionary as The Fiend ever was.
• Too Many AEW Tournaments.  I love a good bracket in any sport, and I loved how AEW brought these sorts of tournaments back when it started as a company.  But these days it feels like long-term storytelling has been sacrificed at times so that a thrown-together tournament can determine a number one contender.  And there are so many names for these tournaments – and titles in AEW – that the prestige of winning them becomes watered down.  I love the Owen, I love the Continental Classic.  Let’s leave it at that and stop having almost monthly tournament for every title in the company.
• ‘Hangman’ Adam Page.  I don’t get it.  I’ve never got it.  The guy just comes across as an unlikeable asshole.  He appeared this way on day one and he still does.  He’s the king of unexplained storylines and personality changes (remember his unresolved drinking problem years ago?) and the ‘cowboy shit’, to me, is simply shit.  No doubt he’s a great wrestler, and I even like his matches, but I just never get interested in his feuds because they always seem so arbitrary and emotionally overblown.
• Yeet.  Sorry Jey Uso – I really loved the vibe of you winning the Royal Rumble and know it will be great to see you beat Gunther at Wrestlemania.  But this whole thing has been booked to either be boringly predictable, or disappointing, and neither one makes me want to buy Wrestlemania to find out.  This is not main event material.  We all know you deserve your spot, and Gunther’s whole snobby better-than-everyone-else bit has been played out.  The story bores me, and the lengthy Yeeting entrance that’s more exciting than the match itself reeks the stink of the Ultimate Warrior.  That they’ve got you suddenly ‘slipping’ and missing spears is just embarrassing.  
• Only giving us time-calls on matches as a signal that it’s going to be a time-limit draw.  AEW’s reintroduction of time limits has been genius, and led to some brilliant moments of legitimate fan desire to see a rematch because the time-limit draw was so damn good we want to see a winner.  But in recent times it seems we only ever hear the time-calls on TV if the match is going to run out of time, or if they are teasing that it might.  It needs to be consistent.  Every match.  So that we are lured into a false sense of security again and feel genuine delight when the time runs out and forces a draw.
• Netflix era WWE for Smackdown commercials.  While live Raw is great, and I don’t even mind actual commercials airing on Netflix if it saves me a few quid each month, I can’t stand being forced for two and a half minutes on a Smackdown re-stream to watch the ‘Thanks for watching’ message in multiple languages without being able to fast-forward through.  Lovely as the random pictures of wrestlers are, it is an enforced time-suck with no positive as a viewer.
• Cope.  I love Adam Copeland.  I get not being able to use the name Edge.  But I was fine with Copeland as the alternative.  His real name.  I even loved the purposefully misspelled ‘lEDGEnd’ merch.  But telling us you’re now called ‘Cope’ feels a bit too much like the unpopular kid at school announcing themselves a new nickname that no one has ever used and no one ever will.  Let us love you, Adam.  Stop making it difficult by breaking your leg and then changing your name.  
• All In Texas.  Despite my excitement for Forbidden Door, I still think AEW really screwed the pooch on taking All In out of London.  They’d made themselves a lovely annual tradition and loyal fanbase, and then they went and threw it away.  Stupid move.  A huge event in Texas with a different name and an All In London at a smaller venue would have served all the needs they had for brand growth in the US and recalibrating the UK/European audience numbers.  It feels like a mistake to take the relaunched and exciting Wembley event away so soon after it began.
• Both companies being so thirsty for social media likes.  It was ever thus, but as the world has become even more inane thanks to social media influencers, the people the companies are courting just seem worse and worse.  It’s bad enough having Logan Paul be a part of my life whether I want it or not, and spots in the Royal Rumble being given over to people like IShowSpeed, but having to endure Costco Guys “boom” promos on AEW so frequently is driving me crazy.  Here’s an idea: get the likes and shares by just being good at what you do.  The biggest social media moments in WWE have been things like CM Punk coming back and John Cena turning heel.  Be known for what you do, not for whose asses you kissed.
• ROH.  I don’t mind ROH existing as an independent entity, but the constant crossover when it’s convenient to AEW is distracting and annoying.  It’s been several years now and I’m still not biting.  Keep the streams separate and let AEW fans enjoy their product without giving up time to sell a feud or PPV we have no investment in.  If the two rosters can’t be independently sustained, let ROH die.  No one out there is believing that Tony Khan’s ROH is the same as the original company.  It’s always been just a more successful version of WWE’s ill-fated ECW product.  Ride the success, let it earn it on its own merits (like OG Ring of Honor did), and if it can’t, let it be over.

That said, opinions are like assholes.  Everybody’s got one, and they stink.  These are just mine and someone with different tastes might completely disagree.  Both companies are trying to serve an audience that will never be satisfied.  A Sisyphean task neither will ever achieve perfectly.  No need to get defensive if you’re opinion is different.  Write your own column and shout into the wind about it too.  You know that no matter how long that list of lows might get, we’ll be watching anyway.  We’re lifers now.  We couldn’t switch off even if we wanted to.

Until next time…

DaN McKee

www.everythingdanmckee.com

My book, Anarchist Atheist Punk Rock Teacher, is available from Earth Island Books and wherever you get your reading material.

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