What Did You Expect?

On July 13th, 2019, All Elite Wrestling will present its Fight For The Fallen event, in which all profits will be donated to victims of gun violence. The main event for the show (or at least, the one match heavily promoted) is a tag-team match between The Young Bucks and Cody & Dustin Rhodes. It will be broadcast for free on Bleacher Report Live.

Some time ago this week, WWE announced that they would air the EVOLVE 10th Anniversary show live on the WWE Network on, you guessed it, July 13th, 2019. This has caused some fans of AEW as well as AEW executive and top star Kenny Omega to cry foul at a move designed to hurt the upstart promotion's showing.

To these people, I would like ask... what did you expect?

For all of their talk about competition being good for business, the last thing Vince McMahon or anyone within the WWE power structure would want is the presence of viable competition that has the potential to compete on their level as far as product goes. This sort of tactic dates back to when Vince was counter-programming against the Crockett shows back in the 80s. Why do you think events like the Survivor Series and Royal Rumble exist? For the explicit purpose of fucking with Crockett. I need not go into details regarding their tussels with WCW or TNA when those promotions were vying for a piece of that particular real estate.

Surely, the folks at AEW (and their fans) should've known that they'd have an uphill battle. Not only in trying to do what others have failed to do, but do so while fending off any potential attacks against WWE on that particular playfield. If anyone honestly thought that WWE would let AEW become a thing without resorting to underhanded tactics to undermine the whole thing, they're more naive that I would've thought.

In any event, it should be an interesting night of wrestling on July 13th. And one has to wonder if this is going to result in a split in the audience... or maybe, just maybe, both shows might gain their own individual audiences. People cry foul when Nitro debuted... and then it turned out both Nitro and RAW got its own audiences. And really, if that ends up being the case, doesn't everyone win?

In any event, I'm looking forward to the Fyter Fest show this Saturday... and even the FFTF show is piquing my interest... the EVOLVE? Not so much, but I'm not familiar with them... and it'll be on the VOD anyway, so...

Thing are definitely heating up.

HEAT!