Daily DeMarco: Is All Elite Wrestling Our Clemson?

Greg DeMarco proves that clickbait can be fun as he compares All Elite Wrestling to the 2018 NCAA Football National Champion Clemson Tigers!

You might read the title of this article and think it’s simply an Search Engine Optimization masterpiece. You’d be right. But it’s also a great topic! Plus if the title got you to click–it worked. You’re already here, let’s have some fun.

All Elite Wrestling = Clemson Tigers?

It’s a crazy stupid comparison, right? Is it? I think there are some eerie similarities, and they are worth exploring. For starters, we need to establish one thing: if Clemson is All Elite Wrestling, that means the Alabama Crimson tide is WWE. That should be obvious, but we’re setting the table here!

Alabama has won 17 “claimed” NCAA National Championships in football. They have a long history of success, and their run with coach Nick Saban is unmatched. Under Saban (the Vince McMahon of this example), Alabama is 141-21 (that’s 87% on the win side), and has won 5 National Championships. They are the definition of success, too big to fail, and have a factory of talent at their disposal.

Sound familiar? It should, because with that last sentence I just described WWE.

Here you have Clemaon, who comes out of nowhere, led by Dabo Swinney (who can either be Cody Rhodes or Tony Kahn, both considerably younger than Vince McMahon–another parallel in this example). Everyone rooted for Clemson to win, much like we are rooting for All Elite Wrestling to succeed.

But the comparisons between AEW and Clemson don’t end there.

Dabo Swinney would have you believe they are “little ol’ Clemson,” much like Cody Rhodes and The Young Bucks want you to think AEW is playing from behind. Clemson is loaded with five-star recruits, amazing facilities, and an infrastructure that is set up for success. All Elite Wrestling has a billionaire ownership, an initial investment of $100 million, and a potential television deal with a Turner network.

We’re not really talking about The Little Engine that could, here. (Damn, I just dated myself with that reference.)

But I can keep going!

The defensive line at Clemson could have gone to the NFL, but they made a decision to stay together and get another shot at Alabama, and win another National Championship. Sound familiar? It should, because I just described what Cody Rhodes, The Young Bucks, and Adam Page all did when they turned away WWE offers to start with AEW.

The first year Clemson got a shot at Alabama, they lost. The second year, they won. Year 3? Alabama won in the semifinal, but in the fourth year Clemson won again. A back and forth battle that sounds an awful lot like WWF vs. WCW, and could very well end up being the story of WWE vs. AEW.

Who Else?

Since we are here, let me clear away any doubt of how I see the pecking order in pro wrestling, at least for the American coverage of the business.

• WWE = Alabama (the biggest dog in the fight)
• All Elite Wrestling = Clemson (the upstart that is biting the heels of the leader, and will likely be getting victories along the way)
• New Japan = Oklahoma (the high powered offense that does very well in their region, has reach beyond it, but doesn’t quite get over the hump in prime time)
• Ring Of Honor = UCF (has a somewhat legitimate claim to presenting the best product, but isn’t at the level they need to be at to get a shot at #1)
• IMPACT Wrestling = Notre Dame (an old school mentality that gets opportunities, refuses to die, but really gets most of what it gets on whatever name value they have left)