>>14574129There's a temptation to sell out hard to whoever's popular at the moment because it gets eyes on your fed, but it doesn't pay off in the long-term because those guys will get old and none of your natural talent will actually be respected. AEW, for some reason, thought that paypigging everyone in Japan was different from TNA paypigging everyone from WWE. It's not. Outside talent is perfectly fine, but you need to actually build the brand and setting of your fed so that not just the wrestlers feel important, but the show itself and the events wrestlers participate in. While WWE was burying an entire generation of wrestlers in the 2000's and 2010's, they were wisely building up their brand, the nostalgia, and the prestige of various accolades. That's why they're basically immortal. Even if WWE somehow went out of business, another company would immediately buy them out and continue using the WWE-branding - AEW would literally rebrand to WWE.
