AEW Dynamite Celebrates 5 Years of Making Wrestling Better
Images courtesy of AEW
Tonight All Elite Wrestling celebrates something many within the wrestling industry thought would never happen: the fifth anniversary of their flagship TV show, AEW Dynamite, which airs on TBS at 8 p.m. ET.
Since Dynamite launched on TNT on October 2, 2019, it’s provided a serious alternative to American wrestling fans disenchanted with WWE—or, depending on your taste, a nice complement to the dominant company in the industry. Along the way it’s launched two additional TV shows on Turner networks, assembled a roster of some of the greatest pro wrestlers of their era, and become the second most profitable wrestling promotion in history—or will be, after its not-too-secret new TV deal with Warner Brothers Discovery is announced, perhaps as soon as tonight.
Tonight’s Dynamite doesn’t just mark an important anniversary for the company. It also underscores how far the company has come in that time, while also paying tribute to its roots. Tonight’s main event pits Bryan Danielson against Kazuchika Okada, two of the greatest in-ring performers of this century, both of whom were champions and top stars for other companies during AEW’s first year. (When AEW officially launched in 2019, Danielson was the WWE World Champion; when Dynamite launched that October, Okada was New Japan’s IWGP Heavyweight Champion.) And AEW’s history will be celebrated tonight with matches featuring perhaps its two biggest home-made stars, Hangman Adam Page and Britt Baker. AEW has signed some of the biggest names in wrestling, and also helped establish some of the most exciting stars in the business today, showing once again the importance in having a second major national wrestling promotion.
Its growth hasn’t been without its challenges. The pandemic brought a lengthy end to touring and live audiences only five months into Dynamite’s life; without the personal wealth of owner Tony Khan and the support of a media company as significant as Warner Brothers, it’s likely Covid would’ve been the end of AEW. It also lost one of its original top stars, Cody Rhodes, who has helped spearhead WWE to a resurgence in popularity and acclaim. An ill-fated dalliance with mercurial star CM Punk greatly hurt AEW’s public perception among a healthy percentage of the wrestling audience, and further contributed to WWE’s revival when Punk subsequently returned to the company he once despised. And the toxic fandom the internet has incited in all manner of mediums has hit wrestling hard, with AEW, its wrestlers, and its owners a constant target of online invective from critics, WWE stans, and industry insider anti-AEW grifters like Eric Bischoff and Disco Inferno.
Not all of its challenges have come from the outside, though. Although AEW’s major storylines are usually booked with foresight and care, Khan (who is also in charge of creative) has made a number of unforced errors over the years. Stop-start pushes have cooled off once promising stars, it took years for the women’s division to feel as important as the men’s, the once-pivotal tag team scene is at an all-time low, and there’s often a lack of sustained follow-up for wrestlers who aren’t at the top of the card. Somehow technical problems plague Dynamite almost every week, five years in. AEW has given us some of the best wrestling storylines in years—see almost anything involving Hangman Adam Page for proof—but could use more focus and direction on the bottom half of the card. And AEW has also adopted some of WWE’s disreputable employment practices, such as classifying contracted wrestlers as “independent contractors” and unilaterally extending contracts for “injury time.” Along the way, ratings for Dynamite and its sister shows—Rampage and Collision—have dropped faster than the rate at which TBS (its cable home since 2022) has lost homes due to cord-cutting, and live attendance has generally dropped for its non-PPV shows.