>>19467523tl;dr old bingo hall shit is fun BECAUSE it's low rent, AEW can't feel the same due to their scope & that's fine
>did you watch the 2000s indie boom? not at the time because I was 8 when it peaked, but I've watched a lot of it out of curiosity
>Did you like it? sure
>Are there things they did better than AEW? depends. in the case of '00s ROH there's a strong territory influence in the matches & booking that you can see clearly got lost with its successors - even though it had a modern (for the time) cruiserweight focus there was clear reverence for old school booking & psychology in that company. people today look back at the ROH style but not the substance, prob. a consequence of cherrypicking great matches in retrospect with the full shows being inaccessible today
there were a few years where ROH could make an undersized bingo haller working in front of 700 people feel like the most important wrestler in the world to its fans, AEW doesn't really reward that kind of investment well.
ROH/CZW obviously did the war games style of match way better than WWE or AEW (or any non-WCW fed) but that was lightning in a bottle.
the worst IWA-MS matches are the worst shit of all time, but the best are pure unmissable trailer trash spectacles that a big company like AEW could never capture because that's just not the space they're in. same with a match like crazy crusher vs hell storm.
haven't watched much chikara because it isn't my thing. PWG was p. good when they were more their own thing and less of a dream match superindie
>And aside from being on TV having decent audio/video equipment what do you think AEW does do better?appealing to a general audience I guess? sure metrics are down, but there's a reason dynamite is on TV and the ROH brand isn't, AEW does sports entertainment stuff on at least a "WWE decline period" level & a gimmick like orange cassidy had far more viral power than when the same guy was dressing up like an ant in chikara
