Things are already looking bleak for upstart wrestling league AEW (All Extreme Wrestling), as the premiere of the company’s new TV show, AEW Xplosion, included the debut of a ham-and-egger who is a blatantly half-assed ripoff of popular former WWE star Jack Swagger.

Even the newcomer’s name, “Jake Hager,” is such a pathetic knockoff of “Jack Swagger” that fans immediately saw through the thinly veiled plagiarism and began booing the doppelswägger immediately.

Reviews of the AEW Xplosion debut are mixed; whereas some fans are pleased to have an “alternative” to WWE, many more discerning viewers are bemoaning how blatantly the program is ripping off WWE with unoriginal characters like Hager and Kenny Omega (whose name might as well be Zolph Diggler).

The flagrant copying of WWE doesn’t stop there, though. Keen-eyed viewers of Xplosion noticed plenty of other ideas stolen from WWE, including:

  • A four-sided ring. Really, AEW? That’s WWE’s thing. A three-sided ring is what fans want.
  • Matches start and finish with the ringing of a bell. Gee, where have we seen THAT before?!
  • The roster features other WWE has-beens and wannabes, such as Ron Moxley (formerly Seth Rollins of WWE), Luchasaurus (formerly WWE’s Brodus Clay), and Poison singer Bret Michaels pretending to be Chris Jericho (who hasn’t been seen since having a bit too much of the bubbly weeks ago).

Jake Hager reportedly agreed to play the Swagger clone after growing tired of the fake fighting in MMA and yearning try his hand at real, unscripted combat in AEW.

According to sources close to Jack Swagger, the former wrestler is now happily running a website for French voyeurs called “Oui, the Peephole.”

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