>>19234600AEW raided the indy scene to fill its roster at the start and then parked most of them on Dark if they were even booking them on shows at all. Basically anyone who had name value during that mid-late 2010s indie boom got snapped up by them which fucked the entire scene up already, then covid came along right after and spent basically a year or two making running shows unviable which finished off whatever was left.
There are probably dipshits that will blame WWE and NXT but WWE was mostly signing guys who made their name in the previous decade or earlier part of the 2010s. AEW was taking the guys who were hot at the moment and responsible for the at the time ongoing boom. And now that they've killed the indies, they've moved on to fucking up New Japan using the same tactics and guess what? New Japan's attendance is in the toilet partly because of it.
AEW is a piss poor partner for damn near everyone they work with and the only positive they've had is for giving guys presumably decent money to not do shit if you're the type of retard who thinks "get that bag" is the only thing that should matter to anyone. WWE under TKO isn't any better either. The wrestling scene is completely fucked right now.
