I have been watching since the first All-In. I loved AEW when it first started up, as it felt like a genuine alternative to WWE. It was a comfy two-hour variety show with the odd Kino episode of Dark on YouTube. Do you want violent ECW hardcore matches? Got you covered. Want some fast pace spotfests? We got ya! You want to slow, old grapple wrasslin? Nigga, we got that too! It felt like a great blend of ROH, WWF, WCW, ECW, The Indies, DDT, DragonGate, and NJPW. There were clear issues; the women's division was a fucking joke and killed by Brandi's weird ego project and the failed Baker face push - but it would improve once Shida got the belt and was able to have solid matches, and Baker was doing her entertaining Role Model stuff. However, one of the low-key attractions of AEW was the 80s underdog sports film vibe it had. These plucky undesirables were taking on the sleek, polished, highly corporate WWE machine. You grew attached to many of these literal whose and watched them develop, find their characters, and grow. Despite some of the speedbumps, and odd pieces of booking, we got some kino as fuck long-term storylines, matches, and people gained affection for this group of misfits. Then, 2021 happened. The first half of that year fan-fucking-tastic. But then TK started getting a bit of an ego. All the interviews and stories painted him as some sort of revolutionary - when he was just the funder. He started to think he was some sort of genius booker. Then Phil came in and AEW started becoming all about Phil, often at the expense of the OGs. This was swiftly followed by the roster becoming flooded with NXTjects, who were often presented as a bigger deal than the OGs. This was a head-scratcher, as the OGs had often beaten the NXT crew, so why was TK sucking them up and having them go over the talent people connected with? Then Cody Rhodes left.