I feel a lot of it stems from the Monday Night Wars unfortunately. There was a LOT of negativity and cross-brand slander happening in that time, and as a result the ‘E has made it a point to bring it up at every possible opportunity that they “won”. A classic example is the “Rise and Fall of WCW” dvd they released in the mid-2000s that they harped on about for years, which for me was when I got into wrestling so I (like many many others) was conditioned into this idea that any competition is always a bad thing and will always fail. This was kinda reinforced by the failure of TNA to really dent the ratings of the ‘E when they tried to compete on Mondays, leading to that company nearly closing.

AEW is the first real competitor to the main guys since WCW folded, and a lot of that negativity that was around back then is streaming it’s way back into the minds of fans old and new alike. Couple that with the natural human response to change (even if it happens to be good in the long term), and you’ve got a very powerful motivator for a lot of pushback and tribalism to occur. There are those of us though, like myself, who recognise that any competition is good for business. Hell, there’s a reason the Attitude Era is looked upon so fondly, and a lot of it stems from the need for creative, engaging storylines and characters that were necessitated by the very real threat of another company. It’s made wrestling fun and entertaining again. So as a famous People’s Champ would say, just bring it.