What if Sami Zayn had said more about AEW on WWE Raw?

#1. Giving AEW legitimacy

As counter-intuitive as it may seem, WWE may have reasons to want to help AEW.

The more fans know about WWE and its inner workings, the more surprises tend to come up. In the 1980s, Vince McMahon took over the company and expanded aggressively, including buying out other territories, and raiding top stars from others.

A number of old timers have suggested that, as brilliant as the strategy was from the perspective of competition and positioning WWE on top, it also stunted the business, and WWE’s opportunity to find top stars. After the national expansion, there weren’t other significant platforms for wrestlers to hone their craft and become big deals outside the WWE system.

The last twenty years have seen smaller promotions rebuild with a wider variety of companies gaining traction and cultivating interesting talent. While AEW could pose a threat to WWE, it also means there’s another big time wrestling entity that can develop stars and innovate ideas.

Sami Zayn pushing AEW could, as backwards as it might intuitively seem, function like WWE offering ECW stars air time in the 1990s, giving the smaller promotion the rub, and while treating it like an investment in the long term health of the wrestling industry, and most importantly WWE itself.