The only major difference I can see between AEW and WWE's style is that the former does piledrivers while the latter doesn't. Other than that, reckless bumps, sometimes dangerous head drops, stiff shots etc, happen all over the place.
The issue with AEW seems to be that they were not really putting their massive, massive roster to good use. Lots of people are relegated to the YouTube shows when they could be doing TV, taking minutes off excessively (and thus harsher on the body) big matches.
Unrelated, I saw a clip of Athena just beating the shit out of a Canadian wrestler (whose name I sadly forgot), and people were saying she was unprofessional - it wasn't necessarily harsher than any Sheamus/GOONTHA match out there. In fact, it's the most Athena had shown personality since who knows when.
Hitting hard can be done safely as well! Clubs to the back, chops to the chest, all that shit looks great and isn't going to give you a concussion!