Not sure why you would care if you’re a wrestling fan. I don’t watch football hoping it appeals to casual fans. Couldn’t give a toss about that.
On the whole garbage wrestling stuff. I do agree, I think it’s shit and nonsensical but AEW produces 3 hours of TV every week. There’s good content in those 3 hours. It’s like WWE with their comedy skits. They have 7 hours of TV to cover, they mix in some comedy here and there. I used to find the certain R-Truth segments hilarious over the years. The Ezekiel stuff wasn’t that bad.
Both shows offer variety, as long as the good shit is good I’m fine with it.
Going to surprisingly dissent and say the blood stuff falls on the Wrestlers more than AEW itself. These guys whinged (Especially Moxley) about creative freedom that was lacking in WWE. It was one of the big selling points of a company like AEW just as it was starting up. AEW gives them the floor and this is the best they can offer.
Again even in the Attitude Era creative freedom was limited depending on the Wrestlers because most of them are quite frankly clueless.
Tony definitely needs to push back on it more though. Pretty much every week there’s blood, sometimes in different segments as well. I think the occasions in which they were used this week made sense but the impact would be bigger if it wasn’t overused in heatless matches.
I’m definitely starting to worry if TNT is actually happy with this shit. If it wasn’t something would’ve happened by now but it seems like they’re doubling down with AEW having a Shark week episode not too long ago and now the Game Of Thrones promotional episode of Dynamite next week.
I can already tell Bryan v Garcia will have lots and lots of blood.
Tony isn’t experienced enough to grapple with the Wrestlers, I wouldn’t be surprised if he thought that shit was awesome too. He’s relying on their expertise.
I can accept that with guys like Jericho and Mox. I presume lots of freedom has been negotiated in their contracts.
Although, let’s not forget the smoking incident. TNT warned AEW they would be cancelled after Jericho smoked a cigar on an episode and they’ve never done it since.
He’s a nerd who the wrestlers took advantage of for years to negotiate overpaid contracts lol.
Any man that hired a bunch of Indy guys to be his executives doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s not a great booker and doesn’t promote a great product and that’s why he’s sunk so much money into something that still doesn’t do great numbers.
Again, from the inside of the AEW bubble that makes sense. But people consume wrestling in the same way as they do other sports because it’s not entirely a sport.
I am a wrestling fan, but I am likely to only watch AEW casually, and the extent to which I’m willing to do so has changed a lot within the last year. A year ago I was happy to watch a whole Dynamite or Rampage or indeed buy a PPV. I wouldn’t do any of those things now because I know a significant part of each show is going to be something I’m not interested in because there’s no real effort to make it accessible to a fan who fancies watching the odd bit of wrestling from them. And that means there’s no hook to come back for more.
It does less than a million viewers weekly it’s a company that hasn’t moved that far forward from its inception. It’s been 3 years now with a lot of money sunk into it and it still hasn’t really shown it can draw new fans to the business.
AEW has an audience and it’ll stay appealing to that audience and the numbers it does are definitely enough to keep its TV deal and keep some decent ad revenue coming through the door.
But growing the industry is about bringing in new fans and right now AEW doesn’t do that
Tbf a niche product isn’t the worst thing in the world. When ECW got it’s TV deal with TNN it stabilised around 0.8-1.2 rating in 1999-2000 and never grew beyond that. It’s okay to do your own thing.
AEW mistake is promising something that can’t be met. Just like TNA going head to head with Raw. It changed the expectations. WWE is difficult to beat. Period. All that hype created expectations that just wasn’t going to be met. WCW had a much better starting base before the launch of Nitro.
On it’s own what AEW is doing isn’t bad (Except the overspending, I don’t understand any wrestling company mass recruiting wrestlers, bloated rosters was one of the lessons meant to be learnt from WCW but whatevs) but as a company ‘taking on’ WWE yeah it looks poor.
Request—any one have the old clip of Orton on a table, gets up at the last second to RKO someone (I forget who) coming off the top rope through the table?
