I don’t know, I thought AEW was quite good a couple years ago. But a lot of that was because of the edge given to them by the Punk factor and MJF. The shows, admittedly, felt very duct-taped together and haphazard. At least until they started doing more traditionally structured shows like Collision (which was kinda too little, too late). Another plus for AEW’s past was that the matches were often more enjoyable than what WWE had going on. But since Triple H has taken over and Punk has joined WWE, it seems to have not only switched, but WWE has gone further up in quality than AEW ever reached on all fronts—or at least from what I’ve seen. I’ve been a big fan of Triple H’s management ever since the golden age of NXT.

Funny thing, CM Punk still seems to be the star of AEW (I think he’s technically their champion). But you can only watch him on WWE RAW.

Over the past year (or so) a loud contingent AEW fans have turned into a whiny and bitter bunch. Constantly sharing cringeworthy echo-chamber comments with one another, including such melodramatic gems as the aforementioned “CM Punk is cancer.”
They claim to hate the guy, yet can’t seem to stop discussing him.

To be fair, I didn't watch AEW on a regular basis. Watched a bit when it started, and I would generally tune in for a few weeks when something big happened, like CM Punk signing, Chritian signing, Bryan signing, if something interesting was advertised (i.e. Christian vs Edge) or just sporadically when I happened to have nothing better to do on a wednesday night. So, take my opinion on programming for what it's worth. 

But, TV is about having a consistent cast of chatracters and featuring them each week. And except for a few people, Jericho, Young Bucks, and Orange Cassidy, they don't have that. People kind of float in and float out. You can't really get invested in anyone new if you don't see them regularly. Since the beginning, most characters have just appeared and disappeared with little rhyme or reason. Even at its worst, WWE at least had a reasonably consistent cast of characters. The creative may have been terrible, but at least it was structurally sound.

And, there's also an assumption that everyone is already a huge wrestling fan. For instance, look at Okada. If you weren't already a fan who follows Japanese wrestling, why would you care about him? What has AEW done to make you care? Why should you care about Daniel Bryan fighting a Japanaes senior citizen? Tony Khan just kind of assumes that you follow this stuff like he does and will be as excited as he is, but even WWE is really a bit of a niche product. And AEW really doesn't do a lot of recap packages and such. I'm sure loyal fans appreciate not having to be constantly reminded of things like you are when you watch WWE. But if you're a newer fan trying to get into it, it's hard.

Whether it is/was a good product is completely subjective. But, it was never a product that could viably grow. It had a ceiling as we saw. And as people get older, get married, get other hobbies, get bored, the numbers are going to decline. That's natural, and something that happens to everything. But, when that happens, you have to have a way to draw in new viewers to replace the older ones or better yet, draw in more new viewers then you're losing. And AEW/Tony Khan doesn't know how to do that. Now that the trend is becoming too obvious to deny, he's kind of freaking out, and doing stuff that is making even the fanbase he had start to tune out.

As for the fans... I think all fanbases are toxic. Mainly that's a side effect of social media, where engagement is the name of the game. Part of the reason why I prefer things like message boards where there is no algorithm manipulating things (although trollish voices do still somehow get amplified). But, fans of super niche things do tend to take things more seriously, like ECW fans back in the day. And... at this point, there's not a whole lot of legitimate ways to argue that AEW is doing well, so the discourse is getting more or more trolly. 

I'm going to do an off topic rant :)

Amen on the fanbases comment. But I don't think all of them are toxic, they just have toxic contingents - some are much larger and ridiculous than others (Star Wars, for example). But there are always those fans that want to get all dramatic about how they're victims of adaptations or sequels.

Like this guy below, and there are entire channels and communities dedicated to just hating Star Wars films... and these guys are supposed to be the fans.

At the same time, I think there are a lot of positive elements in fanbases.

For example, when it comes to Foundation, ironically: if you go to the "non-book" subreddit, you have all these whiny people crying about how it is not faithful to the books. Then when you go to the Foundation "Book and Show" subreddit, you don't see any of that - it's all fan analysis and theories about what they did and where it might be going, based on Asimov's books. That said, Foundation isn't a direct re-telling of the Foundation stories; but honestly, those are untranslatable because of the low action and flat characters (at least for the first two and a half books). The TV series does a great job of showing a wide view of what's going on in the Galactic Empire, rather than a bunch of people planning small operations in a small part of the Empire while talking about the wider implications (both through time and space) of the success of said operations.

Witcher was a recent target of slanderous campaigns and harassment of cast and crew on the show.

And the thing about Witcher and Foundation is that both these shows are quite good. I find it difficult to believe people don't really enjoy them unless they're A. not into the genre or (at least) don't care much for TV shows about it, B. Have some kind of sanctimonious victimhood motivation and wish to make it look like the adaptation is attacking them, or C. (specific to Witcher) want it to be based on the games/feel the show and game are in competition.

That's it for my off topic rant.

I guess I phrased that poorly. I don't think all fanbases are toxic, but I think in most cases, the toxic element of the fanbases are the loudest and most prominent. It's not just a social media thing, but that certainly hasn't helped. People are just naturally drawn to more clickbaity things I guess.

According to a video I caught this morning https://youtu.be/_OJdjf4BVEI?si=FAyAmV9kRRHH_8Nh

Wrestling dirt-sheet Dave Meltzer has been lying about CM Punk, claiming that the crowds were chanting “fuck CM Punk” during the episode of AEW where the footage was aired. But the reality seems to be the opposite, and that the crowd was chanting (in favour) CM Punk through the night.

Funny thing as well, when I went to search for the clip, it seems Konnan, Cornette, and others at various points over the past year have multiple videos regarding Meltzer lying about CM Punk in the past.

Looks like it has backfired and destroyed his credibility in a very public way.

There were a couple of videos of the crowd which AEW has somehow managed to DMCA. As far as I could tell it was pretty quiet mostly, definitely a few people chanting CM Punk. It is theoretically possible that some people somewhere else were chanting "fuck CM Punk", but it definitely wasn't loud enough to hear throughout the arena. To be fair, he acknowledged the CM Punk chants during the next Bucks segment. 

I don't think it hurt Dave's credibility... because I don't think he has any credibility. He is obviously incredibly biased. I mean, Kenny Omega has more five star matches than Kurt Angle, Bryan Danielson, Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerero, Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, Ric Flair, The Undertaker, John Cena, AJ Styles, and Rey Mysterio. Combined. Not knocking Kenny Omega at the moment, but... come on. 

The best example of bias is Dave Meltzer trying to defend AEW after his cohost was complaining that his DVR kept missing the ending of Dynamite due to it cutting off at the scheduled stop time instead of the overrun. This is not an issue that occurs when WWE has an overrun. Whatever your opinion on AEW as a whole, this is objectively a bad thing that is pretty much impossible to defend. Yet, Meltzer tries. 

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But, w/e. We're entitled to our biases, and if people find it entertaining to listen to him, who is to tell them how to spend their time. But, people shouldn't be pointing to him as some kind of unbiased wrestling sage, cause that's obviously not the case. Just one opinion out of many. 

What do you guys think of the Undertaker coming back?

I don't know if he's "back". I think it was a one off appearance. Honestly, I think he was there because Stone Cold didn't want to do it. But I was at Mania, and hearing the gong was still pretty cool, especially because nobody expected the Undertaker. 

Those bastards hindered Jinder.

Cameo is nice.

Too bad his body makes him not be able to have any physical matches.

I wish WWE would invested more on cinematic matches but whatever I guess....