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Just watched AEW this week for first time in a while to see what the hype was about for their new signings. Gotta say, did WWE make a mistake missing Will Ospreay? Great promo! Could have been huge in WWE!
And, he still might be. Will did a strong promo, no doubt. But did WWE make a mistake? I can’t say that. Here’s the thing, first they have to decide what he is worth financially to them. Of course they would love to have him, but if Tony Khan offered twice as much, or more, I would have passed to. And, do you pay him more than, say, Kevin Owens or Sami Zayn? That could open up bad feelings among the talent. Plus, WWE has at least 10 men I could make a case to hold one of the two main Titles. It’s not like they are short on talent. That could actually make it harder for Ospreay to break through there. And don’t forget that in his hyped main event match a few weeks ago, his segment did the lowest quarter of the evening. Plus, in the three weeks since Ospreay and Kazuchika Okada signed, the demo has been stagnant and Dynamite has gotten to 800,000 viewers once, and that was exactly 800,000. I think the talk of WWE dropping the ball here is way overstated.
Tony Khan has endless funds and loves to sign WWE talent way above what WWE offers talent. With the tens of millions Tony Khan spent on just 3 wrestlers in one fell swoop, why isn’t TKO concerned about AEW scooping up main event talent when their contracts come up for renewal? Ted Dibiase was right, everyone has a price, so what’s to stop Drew McIntyre, Jey Uso, or Roman Reigns from jumping to AEW for $10 million dollars per year?
To people only looking for money? Nothing. If that is all a talent cares about, they will jump for a big money offer. WWE knows that. I am sure for someone like Roman they would be much more than competitive. The real questions to me are, would top talent want to go there? Tony Khan’s booking is not good. AEW is clearly the number two company. The fans want the talents to do five star bangers every time out, which takes a toll on the body. WWE allows things to breathe, which is better for the wrestler’s bodies. Plus, it’s not like most of the WWE talent that made the jump have become bigger in AEW. So, I think talents will use AEW in negotiations but unless it’s purely about money, WWE will remain the preferred location.
Just curious as to wether you had heard why they decided to play The Rock as a face last week in Memphis. There was no 'gospel', no ripping the crowd. In fact the polar opposite. Why?
I haven’t heard for sure but Rock has a lot of say in what he does and my hunch is that is how he wanted to play it since Memphis means so much to him. I agree with you, it didn’t leave a good impression as he was a total babyface when he shouldn’t have been. What I think he should have done was take the love that he knew he would get and then a few minutes in, turn on the fans by saying how excited he was to come back home and he can’t believe what a dump it has become, something like that. I think all involved forgot that it is a TV show and while what he did worked in the building, it was confusing to the fans watching on TV since Rock had been a total tool until that moment.
By moving Rampage this week to immediately follow Dynamite, Rampage garnered its highest number of viewers in over a year. Clearly, Rampage is AEW's #3 show and is floundering on Friday nights, so do you think it would make sense at this point to add a 3rd hour to Dynamite and scrap Rampage altogether?
Honestly, no. While the number was higher than usual, the drop from the end of Dynamite was precipitous. Dynamite averaged 800,000 viewers. Rampage averaged 541,000. AEW lost 259,000 viewers, 32% of the audience. By comparison, this week Raw averaged 1,744,000 viewers for the first two hours and 1,573,000 for hour three. They lost fewer viewers than Ramage at 171,000 and the percentage was only 10%. I don’t think a third hour of Dynamite is a good thing.
You mentioned on Twitter/X that Chris Jericho was one of the reasons you turned off Dynamite this week. However, during his match, Jericho was in the process of putting a young guy (Hook) over, something his critics would say he doesn't do as much as he should be doing at this point in his career. If he did this more often and the young guy comes out looking stronger than he did before, would you still have an issue with putting Jericho on TV every week?
First, I like that he put over the young guy. I hope it stays that way. With that said, no I don’t want to see him doing it every week because it still means I see too much Jericho and after a while it wouldn’t mean anything if all he did was lose. At his age and physical condition, I would prefer to see him used much more sparingly. Less would mean more with him at this point.
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