In 2019, wrestling became more competitive than it has ever been in recent years with the introduction of AEW as a rival to WWE.

For the first time since the Monday Night Wars vs WCW, WWE has a rival wrestling company to fight against for TV ratings and the attention of wrestling fans.

AEW has been going toe-to-toe with NXT on Wednesday nights, and AEW is coming out on top most of the time.

Back in August, however, Roman Reigns said it would be "generous" to refer to AEW as competition to WWE.

During a recent interview with Sport 1, Cody Rhodes was asked to give his thoughts on what The Big Dog said, to which Cody had nothing but praise for him.

He said: "[Roman] is very, very smart, he has WrestleMania main event under his belt, he has incredible talent. I think at the time, a lot of people were … I don't wanna say naive. People were turning away from it, but there's no turning away now.

"WWE's on a 49 year head start and I tip my hat for that. But what we're doing is to build upon what fans have been talking about for 20 years, what they want from a wrestling product and what perhaps wasn't delivered to them. We want to be the alternative.

"If that means stepping into competition, so be it. It's better to have competition, for me, for Roman, for everybody."

Now we're approaching the three-month mark since AEW started going head-to-head with NXT on Wednesday nights, it would be difficult for anyone to deny that AEW is competition for WWE right now.

Not only is AEW beating NXT in the TV ratings most weeks, but there are also strong rumours that certain wrestlers signed to WWE are refusing to sign new deals so that they can leave and join AEW in the future.

It would be interesting to revisit the topic of AEW being competition for WWE next summer with Regins next summer to see if a year of AEW's existence has changed his thoughts on the topic.