Toxic Tuesday: WWE NXT vs AEW Dynamite
Tonight, NXT and AEW Dynamite goes head-to-head on television. Is it pettiness? Or a true war? Or something else? Is Tony Khan pressed while this is business as usual for WWE?
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Tonight, it’s a war between two wrestling brands: WWE’s NXT and AEW’s Dynamite. Normally, AEW Dynamite are on Wednesdays nights. However, due to the sports games being on Wednesdays, the network decided to move AEW Dynamite to tonight, Tuesday October 10, 2023. NXT has always been on Tuesday nights.
AEW, owned & lead by CEO (and all hats) Tony Khan, has always sought after the spotlight and to be in the same conversations as WWE. When AEW had the YouTube shows, they used to run AEW Elevation on Tuesday nights only garnering about 500k views every Tuesday with not a significant increase afterwards. After some time, AEW quietly and sneakily did away with AEW Elevation on YouTube. No press release. No official comment or word as to why this change happened.
WWE NXT wasn’t scared during that time. NXT went on business as usual. NXT develops new stars, tells stories, and remain consistent despite knowing that booking is difficult. NXT doesn’t have random matches put together for the sake of doing so and having the viewer to remember what happen at least two weeks ago to understand what’s currently happening storyline wise.
Tonight, NXT is loaded with huge names because it’s WWE moving around their OWN assets, elevating talent, and making sure that NXT prospers when media rights negations happen. NXT isn’t worried about AEW Dynamite and it’s shown throughout Twitter (mainly).
Tony Khan is definitely worried about tonight’s battle as he can’t stop tweeting about it. The more hype (tweets+attack tweets to fans) behind an event, the less likely it’ll hit the mark.
(https://x.com/TonyKhan/status/1711569209023680897?s=20)
And both shows are 30 minute commercial free while Tony Khan negotiated to get a “Buy-In” for AEW Dynamite. The Buy-In is reserved for AEW PPVs and it’s a pre-show/pre-party and negotiated for a runtime-overtime. This screams desperation.
WWE isn’t worried at all.
While one show — on paper — has less matches than other, that doesn’t mean NXT isn’t going to be without surprises. Often time — if not a lot of the times — AEW does reveal their whole hand when it comes match card delivery. There are no surprises unless it’s a debut which magically the dirt sheets don’t spoil for AEW but can drag CM Punk for months, drag a wrestler that doesn’t have the 2023 hive mind, and more.
NXT has two announced matches and a lot of cameos. Wrestling is a world of both entertainment and sports. In the old days of wrestling, wrestlers would wrestle almost every day of the year and twice on Sundays and that would mess up their bodies completely. It’s ok if wrestlers don’t always wrestle and a show has a nice breathable pace. AEW can learn a thing or two, rather than trying to be the loudest for the sake of being loud.
IMPACT Wrestling survived so long and beat all the odds because they learned to pivot and worry about their own product.
Continuing this imaginary war between WWE and AEW — as lead on by Tony Khan — will only lead to lower stats, and new fans will be discouraged to be a part of the AEW family because of the conversations on Twitter and how toxic it becomes.
Now, if fans talk to their friends in the real world about AEW, there might be a small chance to convert them to a fan but let’s be honest, most conversions happen online and social media.
The only reason why AEW did well in the UK is because UK fans are missing something new. Being surrounded by the same things for years can get boring and turn into a numbing routine. This happens everywhere! I’m bored of NYC.
Of course, fans are happy for the hometown wrestlers and promotions, everyone works super hard on their craft — not discrediting that at all — but from a growth standpoint, at what point does it becomes fresh when everything has been done before? Same matches with the same wrestlers for the same belts. Wrestling has always been about sharing resources — until Vince McMahon decided to create a monopoly — that’s why a promotion will book an international star to have a match, but it doesn’t go anywhere exciting. You know that the international star will have a 60% chance of losing their match. I’m being generous. I bring this up because countless fans would use the success in the UK as a “point” to counter facts and observations of Tony Khan continuing to tweet out nonsense.
As much as we are connected with social media, it doesn’t do enough for wrestling as a whole. There is wrestling fatigue from trying to watch everything but there should be some type of seamless pipeline to stay in the know (if you want to stay in the know) about everything to get excited when big dream collabrations happens.
Again, tonight is the battle of the shows: AEW Dynamite and WWE NXT.
I’m watching NXT tonight!
See you on the Ring-Side Fan Experience Facebook Wrestling Group to discuss both!
And we’ll chat about this on Wednesday, at around 6pm (please get there early) as a freebie get together on Google Meets.
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