>>19098911You have to have a very high IQ to truly appreciate All Elite Wrestling. The storytelling is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of wrestling psychology, most of the nuance will go over a casual viewer’s head. There’s also Tony Khan’s frantic booking philosophy, which is deftly woven into the show’s rhythm—his personal philosophy draws heavily from postmodern narrative theory, for instance. The fans understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of the Elite’s meta-feuds, to realize they’re not just stories—they’re commentaries on the concept of wrestling storytelling itself.
As a result, people who dislike AEW truly are idiots—of course they wouldn’t appreciate, for example, the layers of irony in MJF’s promos, the tragic duality of Kenny Omega’s kayfabe-breaking promos, or the existential despair in Hangman Page’s anxious millennial cowboy arc, which itself is a cryptic nod to Sartrean absurdism. I’m smirking right now just imagining one of those brainless WWE drones scratching their heads in confusion while the Bucks superkick another layer of metafiction into reality. What fools… how I pity them.
And yes, by the way, I do have a “Best Bout Machine” tattoo. And no, you cannot see it. It’s for the Elite only.
