Prior to Dynamite's launch in October 2019 this company claimed it would have a sports oriented presentation. It left me hopeful that in a time when New Japan was still popular with grappling nerds that we'd have an English language show that walked The King's Road.
Of course that's not what a lot of American wrestling fans tired with WWE wanted. They wanted "Better WWE" and that's steadily what AEW has become more and more of. Ref bumps, constant interference, corny melodramatic storylines.
It's still on a average an entertaining television show to watch every week but I enjoy this fake sport for (varying degrees of) real violence while people stare at the camera and say "this fake fight says a lot about societal expectations of masculinity". With that in mind, Adam Cole vs MJF hasn't been the greatest violence around (Orange Cassidy's the actual world champion of this company) but it was a treat to watch ~90 000 people inside Wembley Stadium hooting and hollering as the Big Yaoi Story continued.
