Professional wrestling legend and future WWE Hall of Famer John Cena who is a record former sixteen times WWE World Champion recently talked about the biggest rival promotion of WWE, AEW and he revealed if he watched it. He also said that competition is good for WWE.
The All Elite Wrestling came into existence exactly three years ago and in short period of time the promotion has showed a lot of potential. In nearly two decades, WWE is facing some legit competition from a different professional wrestling promotion. The last time some professional wrestling promotion that gave the WWE some competition was WCW.
John Cena Reveals If He Watches AEW
But the promotion got defunct over two decades ago. TNA Wrestling came into existence in 2002 and tried to compete with WWE but failed drastically. The promotion is still in existence but it is a nowhere near in competition. It barely crosses one lakh viewership per show.
The only promotion in the last two decades showed some progress to compete with WWE is the AEW. A lot of professional wrestling pandits and former wrestlers even current wrestlers are considering the new promotion to be the grand daddy of The Mighty WWE in the near future.
When the promotion came into existence back in 2019, nobody took it much seriously even it signed some of the biggest names in professional wrestling just after launching the including the likes of Chris Jericho and Jon Moxley. Slowly it kept on signing some of the biggest names in professional wrestling today including the likes of some of the biggest ex WWE stars like CM Punk and Bryan Danielson.
But even after showing a lot of potential, even after signing a lot of big talents the viewership of AEW is not improving much. It barely crosses one million viewership per show. The story of AEW Rampage is even worse, it only crosses five or six lakh viewership per week.
Whereas WWE crosses one and half million to two million viewership each and every week. Even though the viewership of the WWE has been down by a huge margin and it would be quite difficult for them to improve their viewership in the near future.
But AEW definitely has the chance to improve their viewership. So we can definitely consider AEW as the biggest competition of WWE right now who can definitely dethrone the mighty WWE one day.
John Cena who is a record former sixteen times WWE World Champion recently spoke to ESPN’s Pardon My Take where he talked about the biggest rival promotion of WWE, AEW and he revealed if he watched it. John Cena also said that competition is good for WWE. He said;
“I haven’t watched AEW. Do I think competition is good? I think competition is great. There is internal competition within WWE about performers wanting to be champion, performers wanting to be headliners. I think whenever there is more buzz around an industry, it is good for the industry.
“It forces all of us to be at our best because if you’re not, your segment isn’t going to be good. Your performance is not going to be good, you may not have a future with the company you are with, and repeated bad segments from the group means the company isn’t going to be good, which means the competition will succeed.
“So, I think competition brings out the best in us. For all my time going out there as a performer, I always wanted to do the best I could possibly do, certainly set the tone for wanting to be the best show between Raw and SmackDown, certainly, have eyes on the segments that I was on. I was fueled by a sense of internal competition.”
H/T to WrestlingInc for the quote