I didn’t truly realize this until a few days ago, but WWE over the years successfully had made me think that it was the true, elite brand of professional wrestling. Everything else was the minor leagues (other than WCW for a few years in the 90s). Extreme Championship Wrestling, Ring of Honor, New Japan Pro Wrestling, Xtreme Pro Wrestling, Combat Zone Wrestling, even TNA in its earlier years were all looked upon as inferior. So what if CM Punk was already a super hot heel in Ring of Honor, or that Bryan Danielson was potentially better than Kurt Angle. Did it matter that AJ Styles could probably work circles around anyone in WWE in 2003? What about Christopher Daniels? I never appreciated Tyler Black or Chris Hero. Japan was another story as no one went from there to WWE, and those who did were usually WWE castoffs to begin with. I had high hopes for Tensai after rave reviews of his Japanese run…and he proceeded to become a joke character within a year.

WWE did this to me early in my fandom. As a kid ECW was pretty much the coolest thing around. I wondered how Taz, Sabu, Rob Van Dam and all would fair in a WWF ring. Raven did okay for himself in WCW in 1998. Not great, but he wasn’t a joke or anything, so there was promise from my viewpoint. And the WWF killed that for me with Taz. When Taz showed up at the 2000 Royal Rumble I was all-in on him being a major star, fighting the likes of HHH, Rock and when he came back, Stone Cold. And he wasn’t even close. Two months later he’s fighting in the Hardcore Battle Royal at Wrestlemania. The MAN for ECW was just a lower-card guy in the WWF. Interestingly enough, The Dudley Boyz shook this and became one of the top teams in the WWF, but even then I attributed their success to them changing their attire and acting more “WWF like”, even if that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

At some point I decided that it’s obvious these guys didn’t have what it took to make it in the WWF. Even Raven had floundered in his WWF run. Tajiri, who I remembered fighting Taz for the ECW World Title at Heatwave ’99, became a comedy character who was a Cruiserweight mainstay. Only Rob Van Dam made a huge impact, but then again I always thought RVD was ahead of others in ECW. At some point I just said to myself that anyone outside WWE was probably inferior to anyone in WWE. There were exceptions…but even those exceptions didn’t have me thinking much. Yeah, AJ Styles was clearly great, but would he even go above the Cruiserweight Title in WWE? Same goes for Daniels. Samoa Joe seemed like a bad ass, but when there were rumors he was going to fight John Cena in WWE in the gimmick given to Umaga I just assumed Cena was going over him. And while CM Punk made his way to WWE, I didn’t think much of him or his character until 2009 and the Straight Edge Society. Even when he surprisingly won the World Title in 2008, he didn’t feel like a main eventer (didn’t help that WWE didn’t treat him like one either). There were other misfires along the way: Paul London, Brian Kendrick, Colt Cabana as Scotty Bowman. The indies were the indies and that was that.

CM Punk got the ball rolling for sure in 2011. But even then he was pretty much a WWE guy to me. Still, when he and Danielson ended up holding the World Titles at the same time in early 2012 I felt that perhaps someone like AJ Styles could have done this at one time (not like, five years later, no way). But when WWE rolled out NXT, I didn’t watch it. I’ve been burned too many times in the past. It didn’t help that Adrian Neville, who was also an Internet Wrestling Community darling at one time as Pac, hasn’t really gained much traction. Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens though has helped change the perception, and the Finn Balor push to the Universal title was also helping, but my perception ended up completely changed at Takeover: Brooklyn II.

Austin Aries was a former TNA World Champion and a stereotypical guy who I’d peg for not getting anywhere in WWE. He looked like a star. Bobby Roode I’ve never cared about once, and he GLORIOUSLY looked like a star. And then, the moment Shinsuke Nakamura made his entrance for his NXT Title match against the aforementioned Samoa Joe, I asked myself…

What the hell have I been missing all these years?