AEW has made themselves a viable alternative to WWE for wrestling fans after their first ever show, Double or Nothing, was a huge success.

One of the matches at Double or Nothing has set what kind of tone AEW will have as a brand moving forward. That match was Cody Rhodes vs Dustin Rhodes.

After a violent and bloody contest, Cody won the match before asking his brother if he would be his tag team partner at Fight for the Fallen vs The Young Bucks, to which Dustin accepted the offer.

The bigger message to take away from this match was that AEW is going for a much more bloodier and violent look with their product when compared to WWE, making it much more about physical wrestling.

Cody explained as such during a recent interview with ComicBook, essentially stating that AEW on TNT will be a much more violent programme rather than PG programming WWE offers.

He said: “Well this is a bigger conversation but I’ll bring it up. Wrestling fans and wrestling analysts have debated how they analyze wrestling. Do they analyze it as sport or do they analyze it as entertainment? I’m not going to tell you which it is because everyone should already know which it is.

"Which means we should be held to the same standard that Hollywood, that movies, that TV, that Broadway [are]. I don’t mean to sound pretentious in saying that but we should be held to those same standards.

"When it comes to violence in our industry, when it comes to blood, when it comes to those things it should never be a topic but I love that it is and I understand why. But when it comes up it just ... You’ve got to pick a lane. If that makes any sense.”

The executive vice president of AEW continued: “It doesn’t help that half of social media remain in this gray, it’s not black or white, but you got to pick a lane. This isn’t ballet, in terms of the physical side of it.

"It can get rather hairy and I did not anticipate the amount of blood but if you’re looking for violence and physical storytelling that’s a big part of what AEW is going to bring. There’s not any guidelines to how our pay-per-views are going to be. They’re treated as a sport centric product.

"You can see it in the NBA Finals, somebody gets their eye busted. You see it in boxing, somebody gets a hematoma on their forehead. It happens and it will happen at AEW.”

If anyone had any concerns that AEW would end up being a similar product to WWE, these words from Cody should put their worries to rest.