That would be lovely to see. I don’t think anyone would disagree with Swerve leading the company right now.
It’s a real shame every opponent MJF was meant to have got injured along the way and the story has just become a mess.
Theres loads wrong with the product right now but I think a lot of that is co we have such high standards as fans and always think we could book better.
I’m just watching Collision with D.Bryan vs Kingston …. What more can fans ask for?!?
I just can’t wait for the new AEW TV deal to be done - so it can put to rest all the doomsayers - and lock them in as the most financially successful non-WWE company ever.
Collision this week was literally the answer to everyone being super critical of AEW allegedly “changing”.
It was a show filled with absurdly high quality in ring content. Bryan vs. Andrede, Claudio vs. Kingston, Kenny vs. Page, etc.
Yeah they really need some cash desperately…the lights have gone off about 4 times in this show and the devil hasn’t even appeared
I’m a week behind ha ha. There’s been some trash in this episode but I don’t expect the whole show to be just made for me.
lol so two weeks ago @Alex_Patel made a thread about how hot AEW is. Does AEW finally seem hotter than WWE?
And now AEW is cold?
I know the wrestling landscape can change quickly. But this week-to-week back and forth only discourages the long term planning I think most fans want to see all pro-wrestling companies do. Instead of overreacting to one down show or week or month.
This is a great take and thank you for this.
I do think Tony is tarnishing image a little bit coming across as an unhinged, almost delusional, supporter of his product, but I mean that’s who Dana White is too, so who knows.
I think on the whole I’m not complaining about the product I just don’t really understand why fans aren’t more invested in it given that he’s essentially giving you what you asked for in terms of better in ring style. I understand some of the questionable booking and the injuries, etc. and the drama with punk so maybe that’s it
Regarding the Miz, I think like most people the match was a little better than I thought, but I don’t think anyone with half a brain seriously thought the Miz was going to win the title. So if you just wanna watch a match, that is slightly better than you think that most people thought would suck, with an outcome that is an notni question- Sure, I guess that entertains you. But he’s a really bad in ring wrestler, who had no shot of winning and slightly exceeded that. Not sure that’s what we should be going for in 2023.
AEW seems to have two realistic options to grow viewership… become more like WWE (which they don’t want to do) or turn complete “non-fans” into fans (which hasn’t happened en masse in wrestling in over 25 years).
All of the cool and different stuff they do is tailored for a fan base they largely already have. That’s not a knock from an “artistic“ standpoint, but it’s not going to add significant viewership.
Yeah, I guess that’s my point. It’s saying the same thing – to me the product feels hotter. It’s more interesting, more unpredictable, and more fun to watch. It feels like a hot show. Where as WWE feels like the same old stuff. Dynamite will Iikely win best show awards.
Yet and that’s why I put it in quotation marks, by conventional metrics such as audience engagement it’s not the hotter product. Even though if you watch the shows, you would probably think it is.
Swerve is a star for sure. I agree with you a lot of people don’t like it when anyone says something positive about AEW, which is weird. I do think once the TV deal is done, the company is confirmed as sticking around and being profitable that people will go back to enjoying it more.
The booking and storylines are bad. Too many titles and tournaments that don’t lead to anything but more titles and tournaments.
The women are also not treated seriously at all. Another issue I have is people just disappearing for months or weeks at a time with zero or lame explanation.
A big problem is TK trying his best to stick to a storyline and not having the ability to pivot. All this stupid Adam Cole crap should have ended the moment he stupidly jumped off the ramp. Don’t use the guy until he is healthy. No point. But TK is unable to adjust.
The talent is great and is why I tune in. But this devil garbage is killing the company.
You have to remember to, pre AEW if you took all the wrestling fans in North America, I’d argue 90% of them grew up on WWE. As a result, those 90% are conditioned to view wrestling through a “WWE lens”. Tony, kind of caters to that other 10% that enjoyed styles like NJPW better. That is fine to do, but it is going to limit AEW’s growth to a degree. In high school, I watched WCW, but not a single one of my friends did as they just didn’t care about in-ring the same way I did (I’m referencing the cruiserweights here, not the main event), they were more into the WWE soap opera style between Austin-McMahon, DX etc. Now I do think this is shifting with a new generation having a major promotion to watch that is more in-ring focused, but I think it’s going to take about 10 years or so until those fans really start to make an impact when it comes to numbers. The other issue and I think you have spoken about this before, but AEW doesn’t exactly have an atmosphere that lends its self to children. I would take my child to a WWE show, I wouldn’t take my child to an AEW show.
Collision was great this week. That is the kind of show they need to be. Kick ass wrestling with stakes and no bad acting/spooky shit.
Dude didn’t you post two weeks ago about how AEW is hotter than WWE? So if AEW is hotter than WWE. But overall AEW is cold. So the wrestling industry as a whole is cold. Gee I wonder then John and Wai both must be wrong since they described this as the hottest period in wrestling since the Attitude Era.
Sorry for coming off strong there.
I think Alex is posing two different statements.
The first post was - as a wrestling fan, he feels AEW is a hotter product right now.
This thread is - why is the perception by the majority of people that AEW is cold.
Now, I think it is slightly confusing, but for conversation’s sake, I think that’s it.
Yes I think @MarkP summarized it better than I could.
I am essentially trying to say the same thing. I fully believe AEW is the hotter product in terms of watchability. However, by conventional metrics annd audience engagement it’s colder.
I’m just trying to figure out why the discrepancy exists
I saw this in my weekly digest and love the discussions.
My take? Two main reasons:
Look, a lot of it is…bloody. Cool if you like that, but I don’t seek it myself. No way I’m getting my kid involved, too!
I can catch up with Raw without cable via Hulu. We can watch SD live on Fridays + PPV (PLE) on Saturdays.
Not so much with AEW programming. I COULD pay for Fite via VPN…but I could also just listen to John and Wai. They do a wonderful job.
SO, the shit is ice cold with me and worse, I can’t even use AEW as a reference point as I can with the WWE. I could slip in “The Man” or other casual terms. The odds of the phrase “hung bucks” leaving my mouth and a friend knows exactly what I’m referring to is almost 0%
It’s a great point. I would extend that even further to the idea of bringing Collision to Canada. It’s only available on a paid streaming service and I would bet the average wrestling fan in Canada does not regularly watch it.
Which is why you look at some of the ticket sales for Collision in Canadian markets and you see low numbers. I’m in Vancouver and will be going to the Collision here but it will be telling to see how that draws.
A buddy shared this on social media, which he spotted while shopping.
But they’re already hitting local marketing in Ottawa. So I think they’ve learned.
I agree with a good amount of what @kliq wrote, and I also agree that a lot of this is about perception right now, rather than the empirical reality of the product, @Alex_Patel. A few other thoughts:
-The MJF-verse has been a real distraction from in-ring quality, something which AEW hardcores like myself always had plenty of. Even when there were goofy or just plain bad angles on Dynamite, I could just put up with them for a few minutes each week because I knew Kenny and Penta (or whoever) were going to put a clinic on. While the last few weeks, especially on Collision, are clearly a sign of course correction, there’s been almost a full year of Brochacho goofiness being presented as the main focus of the promotion. IMO, that sort of storyline isn’t just bad material in and of itself, but hurts other programs too, because it begins to train fans that entrances and backstage vignettes are the “real” substance of the show, and that it’s okay to sit on your hands during, y’know, the actual wrestling matches.
-To the point about AEW hardcores, I agree with the point the VoW guys often make about AEW now being compared with its own five year history now, rather than against the WWE. Like John said on a Raw review recently, when WWE builds a Nakamura/Cody program by digging back several years into each man’s history and finds parallels, it feels like a masterstroke of storytelling because that company’s presumed that its fans have the memories and attention spans of jack russell terriers on speed for decades. Simple moves like that are easy wins, because they’re a quantum leap beyond what its fans are used to. AEW hasn’t just had a ridiculous back catalog of matches to live up to, it’s also had a rep for rewarding attention to long term and (by pro wrestling standards) subtle cues in the Elite’s programs, MJF’s heel work, and loads of other cases. When even minor gaps in logic appear (or a card is bogged down by kangaroo kick '86 house show BS), that stands out in contrast to the company’s legacy.
-Linking these two points together, when I tune into any wrestling TV show or PPV or whatever, it’s because there’s something about that promotion or that show that is different from what I can see elsewhere. Sometimes that’s as simple as which wrestlers are appearing on it (though there are plenty of wrestlers I love working for companies I don’t watch), but often its deeper and broader than that. When I watch a DDT show I don’t expect them to produce an NJPW-styled show, even if I prefer NJPW to DDT. When I was religiously watching the first few years of NWA Power, it certainly wasn’t because I though the wrestling was better than what I could see on NJPW or the golden age of NXT. It was because those products had a distinct identity which I couldn’t experience anywhere else. Whatever you want to say about Bischoff, he had the right idea with the Nitro blueprint: whatever they’re doing, we do something different (Jesse Collings’ ‘be Red Bull, not another Coke’ analogy is bang on). We could speculate for days about whether the sneaking WWEisms in AEW are due to MJF, due to Mike Mansury, due to Jimmy Jacobs, or whether even we think those changes make for “better” pro wrestling TV. But the problem is that they make the product less distinct from what’s been on the other channel for decades, and they’re leagues ahead in terms of money, media integration, broader cultural clout, and brand loyalty. We all know how TNA bottomed out trying to chase WWE’s tail rather than investing in the talent and qualities which made them different. While, sure, there might be some fans who like the WWEified flavour in AEW, they already have five to seven hours of it on tap a week elsewhere, and will always view AEW as a fallback. How many times have you heard this play out:
“I’ll have a Coke, please.”
“Is Pepsi okay?”
“Oh, sure, that’s fine I guess.”
AEW can’t afford to be Pepsi in this situation, like Jesse alluded to. Be Red Bull. Be iced tea. Be kombucha, FFS. But don’t be a secondary version of Coke.
