With the pandemic hitting wrestling in the middle of March 2020 and traveling not starting up until July 2021, AEW ended up producing more television from Daily's Place in Jacksonville than they had in front of fans in various arenas throughout the country.
During the pandemic era, AEW showed growth on television that led to the promotion getting a second weekly show on TNT. NXT, which was going head-to-head with AEW Dynamite on Wednesdays, ended up moving nights in April 2021, officially bringing in an end to the Wednesday Night Wars.
Speaking to the Washington Post, AEW President Tony Khan discussed how the pandemic era separated the two promotions.
“The pandemic made it more obvious who was putting more time into the stories, and who was trying to put on more quality national television,” Khan said.
During the pandemic era, WWE went from running an empty Performance Center to setting up the ThunderDome, which featured virtual fans. AEW had wrestlers around ringside throughout the era before allowing select fans in at the end of 2020 due to the open nature of Daily's Place.
When talking about keeping the AEW fanbase happy, Khan noted, “I don’t think you’ll ever please every wrestling fan, but if you can make most of the fans happy most of the time, then you’ll have a great fan base. That passion has been within the fans all along. The fans were just looking for an outlet to express it.”
Adam Cole recently spoke about the passionate AEW fanbase, saying fans feel responsible for AEW's growth. You can find his full comments by clicking here.
Fightful will have live coverage of AEW Rampage beginning at 10 p.m. ET on Friday.