Report – AEW Suffering From Negativity Backstage

AEW appear to be dealing with some backstage negativity at the moment.

Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Radio has reported that a great deal of the negative feedback has stemmed from people “in and around” AEW. He said,

“They’re grossing a lot of money. It’s interesting because today I’ve gotten so much feedback from people in and around AEW, and it’s a lot of negativity right now.

And I think some of that stems from the show Saturday night obviously was a very poor crowd. It’s interesting because there’s a lot of negativity while at the same time the company’s grossing more money by far than it ever has, the last couple of months. It’s been very, very successful in that sense. As far as turning profit, that’s a very different story. And as far as the value of the company… there’s economic aspects of the company that look really good, but there’s still this feeling (of negativity).

“Understandably in wrestling it’s always ‘who’s number one’, and they are far from number one right now. They were a lot more competitive in things like television ratings and attendance and things like that 18 months ago than they are now.

“So it’s kind of just a really interesting thing where you’ve got a negative perception. Which usually comes when the economics are bad, but the economics are not bad right now… but they’re still worrisome right now in the sense that when you look at the future and you look at the upcoming shows – you don’t see shows that look like you’re gonna be drawing big crowds in too many places.

Economically they’re doing much better than they were at that time (when they were competitive with WWE in ratings/attendance). But, the perception is that they’re not because the live shows (attendance) feed a lot of the perception, and the ratings do, because they’re the two numbers that people look at.”

There’s a feeling backstage that AEW is changing and “becoming something that it wasn’t.” The move is allegedly being seen as someone coming in from WWE and replacing the people who were part of AEW in the first place.