PARKS’S TAKE: Dynamite 300 is reason for pause to appreciate the unlikely scenario of AEW’s lasting success as a WWE challenger brand

AEW aired its 300th episode of Dynamite on Wednesday. It was an arbitrary number in some ways, yet it serves to remind us just how far the company has come since its inception in 2019. Not only that, but the idea of a challenger brand to WWE as strong as AEW has been was once a pipe dream for many fans.

At the end of the Monday Night Wars, there was a lot of excitement despite the death of WWE’s greatest competition. That excitement petered out when it was clear WCW would soon be reduced to ashes. For a time, WCW beat WWE in the almighty television ratings with its flagship Nitro show that revolutionized wrestling on television. It’s worth pointing out that Dynamite has now aired more episodes than Nitro ever did.

After WCW’s demise, WWE was uncontested as the number one promotion in the United States – and they acted like it. Sure, TNA was a fly they had to swat away every once in a while, but never did TNA feel like they were threatening WWE’s spot in the pro wrestling pecking order. They simply didn’t have the management or creative for any period of time to do that.

So WWE ambled on its way through the 2000s and 2010s, increasingly booking for the whims of Vince McMahon rather than for the fans. And that became clear when, even without competition, ratings fell and so did live event attendance. After more than 15 years, longtime fans were resigned to the fact that no one out there had the capital and connections to make a challenger brand work.

Enter Tony Khan. He had both capital and connections but even then, there was no guarantee AEW would make it. WWE had snapped up many independent stars for its NXT brand, the outlet frustrated WWE viewers could go to in order to get the fix of the type of wrestling they wanted to see. Khan nevertheless put together an enviable roster to start and the rest is history.

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For those of us that grew up on wrestling in the 90s, 80, or 70s (or further back than even that), it’s easy to overlook the fact that a whole generation of fans are watching wrestling who know only WWE. They don’t know the territory days, WCW, ECW or any other competition to the brand. We can argue about what “competition” means in this context, but AEW has beaten WWE to enough free agents and WWE has counter-programmed AEW enough that we can see it as such.

Whatever you consider AEW to WWE, and vice-versa, the fact that AEW has made it this far is a feat that should be celebrated and put into perspective. No other promotion of this size, and this level of success, existed outside of WWE in the United States for almost 20 years.

Ratings and attendance may fluctuate, though if there’s any doubt about what kind of power AEW holds in 2025, they’re about a week away from setting records for the largest attendance of a non-WWE PPV in North American history, as well as the largest non-WWE gate in wrestling history. And the beat rolls on.