NXT VS AEW: LET THEM FIGHT

In 2 sleeps, NXT and AEW will be going head to head.

This is going to be bonkers as hell so let's break this down so far:

NXT has been forced for the two weeks it's been airing live to split the their two-hour show into the first hour being on USA and the second hour being on the WWE Network. That's been a little bit discombobulating from a structure standpoint because they're basically having two main events per week.

But damn, what a couple of weeks it has been.

First and foremost, let's look at this by what I wrote back at the beginning of September (here's a link in case you're lazy). One of my main concerns in the "Who Could Get Hurt" section was that Vince would have potentially significant involvement in NXT, a brand that everyone knows he should keep his decrepit hands off of, and what have we gotten so far? Literally nothing that seems to have his signature style on it. Hell, the first episode started off with an amazing fatal 4-way between Io Shirai, Bianca Belair, Mia Yim, and Candice LeRae to determine the #1 Contender spot to take on Women's champ Shayna Baszler. That, in and of itself, was a big deal and a definite change of pace from anything we're seeing on the main roster shows. For instance, the show didn't begin with any real introduction, other than Hunter hyping up the show to indicate that this is still his baby and he's going to put out the best goddamn product in the world. But there were no promos for any of the contenders; they just came out and beat the living hell out of each other and it was beautiful. What did we get for the opening of the second week? Keith Lee and Dominik Dijakovic having a freakishly entertaining grudge match. It's really been great so far. And the biggest difference? I haven't felt bored. Even when they're doing some matches that I didn't think were that great, I still never felt like they were spinning their wheels which is how I feel about 6 times a night during an episode of Raw or Smackdown.

The ratings on USA have, depending on your point of view, either have been good for a new wrestling show on USA or have been the fucking death knell for NXT. They started with 1.18 million viewers on its first show, and the following week it dropped to 1.006 million viewers. There's almost always a drop from the first to second week of pretty much anything, but this is also a brand-new show with no big-name stars and we're coming up on baseball playoffs and established shows like AMERICAN HORROR STORY that has a built-in rabid fan base in the demographic they want to hit. So while this is far from being horrible news, it's certainly not the big win they wanted. Obviously everyone wants this to be the next big thing, but that's not always the thing that's going to happen. The best shot that NXT has as far as growth is concerned is word-of-mouth.

But this Wednesday, they are going head-to-head with AEW Dynamite (because dynamite has, y'know, NITROglycerin) and this is where things are going to get crazy.

You can bet your bottom dollar that AEW is going to come up bigger than NXT this week, but will it garner main roster numbers as far as its debut? That's extremely unlikely. Again, this is another upstart company looking to make its bones. Since I don't watch... well... anything on TNT, I couldn't tell you how this is being marketed aside from the stuff I've seen on YouTube, but if you're a casual wrestling fan, I don't see how AEW is going to be that much different than NXT from a viewership perspective. Does AEW have big names? Yes, but only one, and that's Chris Fucking Jericho. If the whole theft/loss of the title belt didn't make enough noise on Twitter, Jericho's "little bit of the bubbly" meme went insane on social media so that could bring eyes to the product that they didn't expect. But with USA now having the full two hours of NXT, that could expand the product more because you now don't need the WWE Network to watch the second hour.

But there's still the concern of what will happen now that they're going head-to-head. From all accounts, tonight's episode of Raw brought a lot of Vince's insanity to the show (including an opening segment where a giant blonde white man beat the shit out of a Mexican and his son and a supremely fucked up ending where Lana made out with Bobby Lashley on the stage while Rusev and Seth fought for the Universal title right before the lights went out and Seth ate a Mandible Claw from The Fiend), so if that doesn't push people even more towards an alternative product, I don't know what the hell will. And this is something that I didn't really even think about in my previous column about this upcoming war: will NXT potentially suffer just from being under the WWE brand? Lapsed fans who may have left because of all the Vince bullshit might not be enticed to come back to another WWE show, even if that show is the best thing in pro wrestling at the moment. If I just watched the main roster shows and saw that shit, I'd be thinking, "WWE programming just is not for me at all" and would think that maybe AEW would be a better alternative than more weird racism/sexism that might appear on the other WWE-branded show.

Outside the United States right now though, AEW is already running into trouble. Wrestling is a worldwide community, and right now, would-be AEW fans can only watch AEW live outside the US with a FITE.TV subscription. It's only $4.99, but with all the streaming services around the world that people already pay for, is another $5 a month worth it just to watch a two-hour show live instead of three wrestling shows that they already get in other parts of the world? I don't know.

But AEW isn't the only company with broadcast issues because another monkey in the wrench is as far as WWE is concerned is the current to-do between Fox Broadcasting and Dish Network. As of right now, Fox is shutting out Dish Network subscribers because of some kind of stupid contract dispute that has both companies pointing the finger at one another, and the timing for Dish customers (and also cord-cutters like myself who use Sling, which is owned by Dish) couldn't be worse because this not only means that they're going to be missing football games, but also baseball playoffs and of course the incoming Friday Night Smackdown that will be starting this Friday. I chatted with a Sling employee the other day and basically it was all a bunch of corporate nonsense where they had canned responses for anyone asking about when Fox will be available again, and since they're owned by Dish, they're naturally slamming Fox while Fox is naturally slamming Dish. The only Fox-owned service available on Sling right now for standard users is FX (and FXX, but who gives a flying fuck about that since the only thing anyone ever watches on FXX is THE SIMPSONS and they're going to be exclusive to Disney Plus in a month). So that means no local Fox channels and no Fox Sports channels either. Whatever is actually going on here is going to adversely affect Dish and especially Sling, because if you're already a cord-cutter like myself, I can just switch to Hulu Live for a few bucks more a month and get almost everything I already love (because if anything, I need one channel more than any other and that's TCM with USA coming in at a distant second) and get all the features I'm already paying additionally for, like a cloud-based DVR and the like. Plus Hulu does have some pretty cool original programs and a shitload of movies I can watch (which are mostly on other streaming services like Prime Video). So if Dish can't get their shit together by Thursday and come to some sort of agreement with Fox, we're going to Hulu. The only thing that I'm losing, though, is AXS TV, and I'll be bummed to not have access to New Japan, and they're also getting Impact starting tomorrow, October 1st. While I'm not really into Impact, it's also something I might check out just to have an idea of what it's like now because Impact has their own channel on Pluto TV, and I've never really cared a whole lot about it when it was TNA, but one of my friends is a big TNA/Impact guy so who knows?

I know it's all carnival-barker shit, and I would rather watch wrestling than just about anything else on TV right now, but I'm about to be spoiled for choice. So...


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