Bully Ray: AEW Is The Closest Thing WWE Has Had To Competition 'In Forever'

AEW’s momentum is growing amongst wrestling fans, and as they overtook WWE Raw in several key ratings demos this week, Bully Ray has declared them the closest thing WWE has had to competition in ‘forever’.

Speaking on Sean Waltman’s Pro Wrestling 4 Life podcast, the two discussed AEW’s growing popularity:

“I think these companies are going in two completely different directions,” started Bully “One company is a traditional pro-wrestling company. The other one is very much, week by week becoming more and more, sports entertainment. AEW is as close to competition as WWE has had in forever. We’ve already seen a little skirmish and how it ended up.”

Bully Ray gave praise to AEW for listening to the fans and looking back at wrestling’s past:

“AEW has the energy and the enthusiasm of the pro-wrestling fanbase. Because they are giving fans everything that these fans feel that they are not getting from the WWE. When you look back in history and you go ‘Okay this worked, and this worked, and this worked. Why don’t we just try to repackage it and do it again? What I’m seeing is Tony Khan and AEW have looked back and said ‘Okay, this worked in ECW, this worked in the Attitude Era, this worked in WCW. I’m gonna put it all together in a big bowl, call it AEW and I’m gonna pour it out there for the wrestling fans to enjoy’”

Bully followed up, saying how Tony Khan’s pro wrestling fandom is a positive for catering to the fans:

“Tony was a huge fan! I mean, as a 12 year old kid, he’s sitting in the third row of the ECW arena. He got to experience a real wrestling revolution live. His eyes saw it, his ears heard it… being a fan all his life. Knowing what worked and what didn’t work.”