Watching Heatwave, you can see the improvement in regards to ring work. AEW has a lot to do with it. Although, Hunter and NXT was always more involved on that front than Vince’s WWE was, but Shawn’s NXT is especially coming closer to AEW-style matches. I’m almost wondering if Shawn finally stopped with the “WWE-style” training or not.
I think Vince leaving made things a lot less rigid, at the very least.
Now it's AEW's turn to adapt and get better too (they have fwiw, it's just less evident because they didnt have an awful booker for a decade)
Rising tide and all, even if it doesn't always help others when WWE is on top,, still helps. It took around 4 ish years for WWE to stop fucking around and "stole" a lot of things AEW did right that ppl liked (like ring work). Now AEW can't rest on the laurels of being different, which is good long term because they have the opportunity to carve out their own identity that's more than "better wwe"