6 months ago
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AEW/Lee South
Ever since AEW debuted in 2019, battle lines have been drawn on social media within the wrestling fandom, specifically as it pertains to the promotion as an alternative to WWE. Much of the wrestling discourse among fans of either product is treated as a binary comparative, with many seemingly dedicated to dismissing one in lieu of the other and vice versa. Shortly before her AEW in-ring debut at Double or Nothing 2024, Mercedes Mone — a relatively new face in AEW but a multi-time world champion in WWE — gave her take on the subject in an interview with US Weekly.
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"I feel like there should be no competition when it's between companies," Mone said. "It just needs to be competition between the wrestlers, seeing who wants to be the main event of the show, to make the most money. I'm competing with everybody here in AEW to let them know I'm the face of the company. I'm not competing with any other company."
Mone believes the perception of interpromotional competition isn't a product of the real world.
"A lot of things just trail from the internet," she said. "People are just so in their phones. Going on the internet and bragging and complaining, they're not actually living in the real world. When they come out into the real world and they actually go to wrestling shows and enjoy things with wrestling fans, they know that this is all just so much fun. People just like to drag things and be mean on the internet just to be mean. When they come to these shows, it's a whole different feeling."
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Mone's opinion on wrestling tribalism is similar to views expressed by other AEW stars in the recent past, including MJF, Saraya, and Adam Copeland. Notably, two of Mone's friends who work for WWE, Bayley and Naomi, were present in Boston for her AEW debut back in March.
