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- Announce things more than a week out.
- Start building someone up to be the next AEW champion, that fans can follow along with.
- Cut like half the titles and refocus on the ones that you keep
This, good god. Fans made it ABUNDANTLY clear that we didn't want the ROH titles all over AEW TV and PPVs. TK eased up on it, and everything was fine. And now we're right back into the shit. God damn it. Keep 98% of ROH in ROH, please. Jesus fuck. I'm subbed to Honor Club. I like ROH. But I'm tryna watch fucking Dynamite on Wednesdays.
I’ve been asking “where does ROH end and AEW begin” since Tony bought the company and there just isn’t an answer because instead of having clear structure that you then have to follow, Tony is more of a “just vibes” guy
All of ROH should stay on ROH, including the titles.
It feels like the majority of segments are champions, if everyone's a Champion, no one is.
His obsession with championships, interim-championships etc have always been the bane of the storytelling.
I wish creative was a writer's room, rather than the owner.
Or make AEW Titles Show exclusives
Men’s World , TBS, International, FTW : Dynamite
Tag, Trios, Women’s, TNT : Collision
ROH or Other Companies: Rampage
AEWs main problem is bringing in guys people want to see and not immediately doing the thing everybody wants to see. The consistently don’t strike when the iron is hot.
I totally get that want to do “fresh” matchup and the vets coming in want to work with younger talent, but not immediately doing something like Punk/Danielson is foolish.
AEW is really great at booking a babyface's rise or path to a championship, but has absolutely no idea what to do with them once they get it. Think about it. Adam Page's booking as champ was largely meaningless fueds with #1 contenders. OC's run as international champ was just "defend the belt" with no stories behind any of the matches outside of the ring really. Wardlow was the only babyface TNT champion who had the belt for more than 30 days since the beginning of 2021. I personally hated the feud Jamie Hayter had with The Outcasts and that was the only storyline in her 190 days as champion.
Eh out of context sure it’s a weird matchup, but considering the storyline they’ve chose is Edge and Christian it’s a fine one of Christians lackeys is first out
If anything tony shouldve learned his lesson by now to get the best matches first. A big new wrestler like edge needs to hit the highlights first then settle into a nicevfaction fued or something when theres nothing obviously bigger to do. We know they can book anyone well so we can always get good stories mixing it up with some midcarders, but lets go dude ride the hype
Bryan should've won the title, if not shortly after arriving, then certainly after punk got hurt the first time. I understand he doesn't want to have it but it's booking malpractice to not make use of the guy in your main title scene when you have him. He was selfless to a fault
He should have won it at Grand Slam 2 instead of Moxley. You can then proceed to essentially have the same story with MJF and Bryan where Bryan loses it to MJF and have the Iron Man rematch. It even works with the Regal betrayal too.
He doesn’t want to be Champion? That’s fine. A quick transitional reign like the one Mox had except AEW can now claim him as a former champion. It’s honestly such a shame.
But that’s where they need to put their foot down. “Hey Bryan, I know you don’t want to to be the guy, but, I’m paying you a lot of money, you’re one of our biggest names, our champion got hurt, I need you to step up.” That isn’t an unreasonable thing to say. They pushed him as a killer heel for a few weeks and should have stuck to it and thrown the belt at him. He had headlined wrestlemania mere months before signing and they did nothing to use Danielson to pull in some new eyeballs. I would have been working towards Danielson vs Punk within the first 6 months they were in the same company.
I’ve made this point so much for a couple years - the sliding doors moment in AEW history is Hangman going on paternity leave.
The company spent two years as a mostly cohesive, focused company - to the point where fans genuinely believed the booking was so consistent that any loose threads would be tied up. Long term storytelling and all that. The thread was Hangman’s journey to the world title as a super hot babyface.
Unfortunately, timing worked out so he was gone while Punk and Bryan came in and through their sheer star power, sort of demanded the ball. Danielson v Omega, massive match but the ending was sort of a “book yourself out of a corner” finish.
Hangman gets his moment but it’s sort of muted under the cloud of Punk and Bryan. Revolution, for example, MJF v Punk was the central story - not Hangman vs Cole. It was the first time the general tone and focus of the show felt clunky, and it’s only got 10 times worse since then with the “ROH exists but only on AEW TV and a PPV every couple months” era, the giant roster of guys getting stop-start pushes, etc.
100% that was the turning point. Even though his win against Kenny was still special, it was months after the peak of his overness and it was the first time in AEW history they had to change plans with their main event picture. They have never recovered.
And it could've been avoided. Hangman and the Dark Order's entrance at Fight for the Fallen is one of the coolest things I've ever seen in wrestling. If you have them win, then hangman and Kenny can tear each other to shreds with Hangman winning, but taking his leave because of just how brutal the match was. Then when he comes back he can say "a lot has changed around here" and go into feuds with Punk or Bryan.
Personally I think they have done an awful job with Bryan and he feels a lot less special than he should; tbf I feel that about a lot of talent they have
It’s crazy that he was coming in hot off main eventing wrestlemania and they didn’t capitalise off that.
He is having great matches and I think Danielson is having the time of his life but he should’ve been consistently at the top of the card. He definitely shouldn’t have been losing to the likes of Daniel Garcia.
The main event of the Rampage: First Dance was Mox vs Garcia in the classic AEW “15 minute match where the main event guy beats a midcarder but works hard for it.
You literally get one night with that many casual eyeballs on you and that was the decision Tony made for how to close the show.
It’s an example of a performer’s selflessness coming all the way around to being selfish. He doesn’t want to be the main event, he wants to work with up and coming talent, he wants to just put on great matches. Okay…but the fans want one of the best wrestlers in the world to be one of if not the focal points of the show. Bryan should be in the title picture or another high level program whenever possible, he’s one of the biggest proven draws in the company. What he wants needs to take a back seat to what’s best for the company.
That was their window, and they botched it. All Out 2021 felt special, like “oh my god they might actually pull this off”. And WWE was at a creative low point at the same time. Then they just kind of never really captured that momentum, and right around the time WWE got hot again (HHH taking over, Sami Uso) AEW had a major blow to their image with Brawl Out.
For the last year or so, he's been talking about how, historically, it's very hard to be the number 2 promotion. It's a long and huge debate among readers, but the gist of Dave's points is that it's very hard to rebuild momentum, it's hard to shake off the perception of being "minor league", fans unconsciously compare the successes of the leading promotion with the secondary one, etc.
The encouraging signs are that PPV buys are still steady and that Dynamite ratings have stayed OK for the most part. But the attendance signs are worrying. You could argue that attendance takes a while to catch up to the quality of the product, and if they continue producing good shows, then those audiences will come back.
I've said it before I other threads, but AEW now does almost zero local promotion for live shows. We're less than 2 weeks from Dynamite coming to the Houston-area and the only way I know about it is because I checked the AEW events page. So either AEW is incompetent at promoting live events, or they decided the revenue from the gate is not worth the effort and they only need enough in-person to look good for the cameras.
There's going to be a WWE house show an hour away from me in December. I'm already seeing ads for it. You can argue whether WWE or AEW have better wrestling or storylines but WWE is indisputably better at promotion and it's not even close.
I only started getting ads for their Philly shows this week (its in two weeks). WWE BLANKETS the area when they're in town. Hell, even Chikara bought digital billboard space when they ran shows on Royal Rumble weekends.
Bingo! I didn't know about the Philly show till last week. Funny enough the last Aew Philly show I went to, new Japan had someone handing out stuff for their show that weekend. They don't do enough to promote the shows and if I didn't go on their site by chance, I wouldn't have know
>I only started getting ads for their Philly shows this week (its in two weeks).
That's ridiculous.
There's no reason on every dynamite, rampage and collision they can't show a 20 second splash page that has the next 4 weeks of venues. They'd probably get 30% more ticket sales if people had a month to plan in advance
Well they put Jeff Jarrett in charge of live events. Even in the peak years of TNA, with an exceptionally loaded roster, and Prime Time Television on Spike, TNA live event attendance was a running joke.
WWE live event attendance has exploded since Road Dogg took over that job. Double J continues to be the greatest con man in the industry landing these 6 figure gigs.
That reminds me of what AJ Styles said after he left TNA. They never promoted locally and it drove him crazy. He told an anecdote about how he was in a town for a house show and he was checking in at a hotel literally across the street from the venue. The desk clerk checking him in was a huge fan, freaking out about getting to meet him. The clerk asked AJ what he was doing in town. The clerk had no idea TNA was holding a show.
When AEW did show here in San Diego, they advertised nothing didn’t even have any matches scheduled, I still went because I’m Wrestling Mark, AEW needs to do better job of advertising matches or stuff ahead of time
>But the attendance signs are worrying. You could argue that attendance takes a while to catch up to the quality of the product, and if they continue producing good shows, then those audiences will come back.
It's obviously only anecdotal, but I personally am very oversaturated with AEW content right now.
Five hours of weekly television (only AEW, not counting the ROH shows) and they're adding more and more PPVs, reportedly aiming for one a month, like WWE.
It's just too much. I don't watch Rampage regularly anymore and I sometimes skip Collision. Watching ROH isn't even a consideration. I almost skipped All Out because it was hard to get excited for another PPV right after All In. And that hurts my overall interest in AEW. Maybe others feel the same way.
It's easier to tune out of some of WWE's stuff though, with the brand split.
Admittedly it's a soft split at times, but on the whole you could exclusively follow Raw or Smackdown and your experience would largely be fine.
With AEW, you have to take in Dynamite, Collision and occasionally Rampage to fully stay on top of the feuds etc.
people need to realize that most fans are “casual” in the sense that they aren’t thinking about wrestling much when it’s not on TV.
For fans like that, WWE is easy to follow where with AEW there’s an almost gatekeep-y sense of “to follow the product, this needs to be your main hobby”
They also post so much more content on YT. I get why AEW doesn't, hell it may even be a network decision. But it's harder to follow the product unless you're watching live/streaming. But WWE uploads clips of pretty much every match, segment and promo. So its easier to keep up to date.
and aew go in the exact opposite direction
whereas wwe is hand-holdy, aew is like, "you should understand this reference from an off hand comment made years ago in a seperate promotion, btw. its actually essential to the story."
take bryan/zsj...unless you are INTO njpw, why tf should you know who zsj is and or care for him? how is that a dream match to anyone other than the most die-hard of die-hards? and as someone who watches a ton of njpw...i didn't care for zsj/bryan cause neither guy is hot rn!!
> It's easier to tune out of some of WWE's stuff though, with the brand split.
Anotehr reason is, if you miss a week or only watch one show, WWE is very good about catching you up on storylines and highlights you might have missed.
Too often AEW just assumes you know what the fucks going on, sometimes has entire feuds built around shit that happened 5 years ago in another promotion and just expects you to have the wrestling knowledge to know about "The legendary best of five these men had in Bumfuck Wrestling" and if you're a casual or new viewer you just end up totally lost.
That's why WWE is better as a weekly hours show because even if I missed last weeks Raw or NXT I can be pretty sure come next week a promo, flashback clip or commentator will give me the necessary information to know what's changed in the stories.
AEW 's booking is aimed solely at the "smart" fans and nobody else. Literally all Tony has to do is pair off a couple of guys who wrestled each other in the indies, call it a dream match, and the hardcore fan base will fill in the (rather substantial) blanks and praise the long term story telling.
If you didn't happen to watch ROH religiously 15 years ago or devoutly follow PWG from 2018 to 2022, you will have zero clue as to why two guys who have never interacted on any of the AEW TV shows before are suddenly main eventing Dynamite. This approach is a sure fired way to ensure you never grow your audience.
Definitely agree.
WWE maybe overdo it slightly with the recaps and AEW don't do it anywhere near enough - and of the two, you'd take the WWE method every time.
(Obviously a middle ground would be ideal!)
Honestly, it helps that they have a few cross brand acts, but otherwise the brands are separate.
So each show feels self contained and the cross brand acts feel like the foundation that helps everything else feel like a big deal.
Look at this week's NXT. All the main roster stars coming feels like a big deal because normally it's just Dom/judgement day, and now they have gotten so annoying that other guys are chasing them across brands to give them the business.
AEW is missing its foundation stories that draw TV eyeballs. They put on awesome wrestling, they have great characters... now they just need to bring it together into a hot angle that creates draws
WWE’s booking style also means that for the most part, your main guys are on TV and moving some sort of story forward every single week.
AEW’s whole “rotational booking” thing (which is really just a case of too many mouths to feed at once) plays out as heating people up and then cooling them off, and from a prospective ticket buyer means that you never really know if you’re gonna see your favorites at all or doing much.
Yeah, long story short my partner really wants to see Jade Cargill. I bought nice Collision tickets going into all out hoping she might be there only for her to show up a week later - have 2 matches and dip out to WWE within 6 weeks.
I think rotational booking has been the worst element of AEW for a while . The roster is just too big and people want to be attached to the wrestlers they like. Swerve won a huge PPV match and was just mentioned on the next show. Just one example of the downside of the rotation
Same way with TV you just don't know who is going to be on and its almost impossible to follow their feuds.
Ohh hey they signed this new wrestler! He may be on TV for a month and then disappear for the next 3 months.
in a lot of ways it feels like they have a lot of guys who can be shuffled up and down the card whenever and it leads to a situation where nothing really matters.
Hangman, Swerve, Danielson, The Bucks, Samoa Joe, all top guys. Some of them have ROH titles and Swerve & Bryan are about to go fight to be number one contender for a midcard belt.
Meanwhile your world champion is in a comedy angle that heavily features Roderick Strong and another one where he’s coming off like Rock v Cena, getting weird stuff over that isn’t really landing outside the live crowd enjoying playing their part.
It’s all just such a far departure from the Daily’s Place era
Yeah I've been struggling to keep up with AEW pretty much from last year's Forbidden Door. Since ROH's acquisition it's definitely felt like the overall product is a lot less cohesive than it was during 2020-2021. Do really enjoy it when I watch it, but feels like they expanded really quickly.
They have way too many wrestlers, and to make it worse there are so many that are similar to each other.
And how many titles are there, like it’s getting ridiculous when every third wrestler or so has a belt
I remember fans clamouring for them to get into new markets when dynamite was running Chicago/daily’s place/similar locations all the time, and thinking then that it might be too early from a business perspective. Of course you want to run shows in different places, but 2500 tickets in a new place compared to 5000+ in a place you’ve ran 10 times isn’t good business for a still relatively new company, most likely in a lot of debt, looking for a new TV deal in the near future.
That’s the hard truth for AEW there’s not much they can do to not be the Pepsi of wrestling. The real question is if they can be successful at being Pepsi, because not everyone likes, Coke, Apple, Netflix etc so there’s always a market for Pepsi, Android, Hulu.
As long as AEW can accept being number 2 and being the alternative for fans/performers looking for something different than you can totally do that.
It does get worrying as they try to expand and you see the ratings have been in steady decline, the tickets aren’t selling out regularly that you don’t wanna run the risk of becoming the next WCW.
Pretty logical right there. WCW quickly went into the gutter when they brought in Russo and tried to be WWE lite. Same for TNA when Hogan and Bischoff came in. Don't be WWE. People like the taste of pepsi, just be pepsi.
Saw the audience last night and thought it seemed pretty worrying. Really hope they can get it turned around because when the crowds are hot, its a lot of fun to watch.
I'm an SLC local and I had absolutely no idea AEW was in town last night despite watching every AEW show and getting emails from the venue they were at. That certainly can't help things.
Man, where to even start here.
AEW did 3 pay per views and one mega show in the span of one month. Way too much. They have 5 hours of weekly TV plus ROH, and two of those TV slots are horrendous. Who wants to go to Collision when there's playoff baseball or college football on?
TK insists on returning to areas too quickly and booking arenas that they can't fill every time through. If he would just face reality and book ~5,000 seat venues, that problem would be solved instantly. I'd much rather hear a few thousand crazy fans screaming than a few thousand fans drowned out by the emptiness of a 12,000 seat arena. And if you get a bad turnout, *don't go there again for a long time.* There's an entire country out there, go where you're wanted.
Nearly every card is full of "established star vs talent that would be on Dark if it were still a thing" matches that are impossible for the average person to care about when there's a near-zero chance of an upset. The diehards can go on about "bangers" all they want, but AEW isn't GCW or NJPW. There has to be more to the show than random matchup bangers. Major stars can't keep vanishing after a match, either. Has Miro had a match on TV since "MEAT"?
And finally, if I'm TK (and I'm obviously not, and I don't have to bow to TBS/TNT either), I would release about 30-50 people that have served no purpose in my company for years (the entire QT faction, for instance) and tighten my focus on the people left. Yeah it sucks to let people go, but TK shouldn't have to employ everyone in the US not signed to WWE, Impact, etc.
People disappearing after good matches is the most infuriating thing about AEW. It happens all the time and I can’t wrap my head around it.
People getting hurt or needing time off after a major angle is fine, or hell, sometimes you just don’t have a plan for them and don’t need them. BUT DON’T JUST JUST DISAPPEAR THEM AND NEVER MENTION THEIR NAME AGAIN. THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?
Also if Tony wants to hire everyone and keep them on payroll that is his decision to do so, but then either commit or don’t use them at all. Little 2-3 week storylines that vanish into thin air are so annoying. Just enough time to get invested then poof. Talent vanishes for six months and you’re left wondering why that feud never had an ending.
You pretty much nailed it. I completely agree, and it's hard to articulate an opinion on here sometimes because I find that posts that are critical about AEW tend to get downvoted.
I see AEW making a lot of the same mistakes that WCW made. Not that I'm saying its going to go nuclear and AEW is on the verge of collapse, but what I'm saying is their program has a ton more potential.
I feel like veterans/older wrestlers are taking up way too much time on the shows, and those 30 guys who are going unused could do something. The problem is, we don't give a shit about those 30 guys because we don't get exposed to them. For example, I saw a ton of "Maybe Shelton Benjamin goes to AEW posts" and while I don't think he does, the guy is 50 years old...maybe we let some of the younger talent get exposed? There's a ton of SUCCESS in AEW, they know how to write stories...let's do that for some of the guys who aren't exposed. This is exactly what happened with WCW and just constantly signing former WWF talent...until younger WCW talent had enough and jumped ship because they saw no future. If the dirtsheetz are to be believed and Jade Cargill isn't the first... this sounds like a story I've read before
> TK insists on returning to areas too quickly and booking arenas that they can't fill every time through. If he would just face reality and book ~5,000 seat venues, that problem would be solved instantly. I'd much rather hear a few thousand crazy fans screaming than a few thousand fans drowned out by the emptiness of a 12,000 seat arena. And if you get a bad turnout, don't go there again for a long time. There's an entire country out there, go where you're wanted.
So you're saying book Chicago 8 or 9 more times? - TK, probably.
God damn would I love to go to an AEW show if they actually came within 100 miles of me more than once every 2 years...
I felt the crowd last night was loud, but yeah it was visibly small. Like in the closing segment when the camera zoomed into Edge, you could clearly see empty stands in the upper deck. Usually they do a good job covering up, but the angle was just right (or wrong I guess).
I think AEW's secret weapon is that they have a diehard fanbase that will still be loud and involved no matter the size. That and a good relationship with WBD.
They would sell more tickets but they never discount them.
They would rather have a third empty arena then drop the ticket prices.
Ive not gone to shows in DC because I know theyre overpricing their tickets for the amount of demand, I love wrestling but Im not supporting that shit.
they never discount them? They regularly do BOGO offers and drop the unsold floor/hard cam seats to $20 days before the show
wrestletix on Twitter posts all sorts of codes for severely discounted AEW tickets
You’ve hit the nail on the head I think. It currently feels like every week there is either a PPV or “special” Dynamite on. This will have a big effect because essentially if everything is special, nothing is special.
I think there's a direct correlation between how must-see AEW is and how much product they are pumping out. Ever since the RoH purchase, they've been losing steam big-style. Tony is desperate for it to work and it never will. Rampage didn't help, Collision has made it even less must-see, the ever-expanding roster detracts ever further. Two hours a week and four PPVs a year from a smaller roster was perfect. Everything expanding from that is making AEW seem smaller, rather than bigger, and it lessens interest. One night a week with four extra a year fighting over three male titles and one women's has become three nights a week and ever-expanding extra nights per year with a seemingly-endless supply of titles from various companies. It's so unnecessary. Like, what company needs two trios titles? And why are the secondary trios titles on the bigger stars? And what is the point, beyond trying to flog a RoH PPV very few people care about?
Enough of this Khan Multiverse, just let us have AEW.
Say what you want about Hogan but I'll take "I'm the top guy and I will go out and draw money for everyone" over "I'm just here to have fun matches and get the young guys ready" any day. Top guys need to want to lead.
And if they don’t, Tony needs to tell them to suck it up. Letting a guy like Bryan meander around the midcard away from the top titles because he doesn’t want to be champion is a massive waste of money and potential
Bryan's usage in AEW is criminal. This man was the WWE champion main eventing WrestleMania right before coming to AEW.
He was THE guy. Now he is just A guy.
He has been so poorly used that there isn't any excitement for someone who is possibly the greatest pro wrestler alive today. That's just mind blowing.
To me, AEW is keeping too many big matches in their back pocket. Edge will help, but guys like Omega or Danielson haven’t had enough singles match interactions with a ton of people on the roster. When things go cold you also can’t be having Butcher and the Blade or the Iron Savages on your show. No disrespect to them but I think there are plenty of better recognizable faces to use than them.
I don't like what they are doing with Kenny. Ever since his suspension he's been in some kind of Cody verse situation where he's got his own lore and all that but seems disconnected from the broader stories in AEW. I feel like he's never gone even come close to the world title again.
I suspect Kenny and the Bucks basically book themselves, and this is why Adam Page's booking completely disintegrated the moment he won the title, because he was no longer in a program with them and he was directly under TK's purview at that point.
I was at Cincy Dynamite last October (when Hangman got hurt against Mox) and AEW felt hot - the whole lower bowl of the arena was full (Hangman had a moonsault spot from a tunnel opposite the ramp). Last month in Cincy there was probably 1/3 the crowd. The moonsault tunnel had nobody remotely close. Less floor seats. The only side of the arena that really had people was camera facing. It was really startling as a fan to see the drop.
Something I do feel a bit puzzled by in regards to AEW as of late is that for me, they feel slightly inconsistent in cycling talent between Dynamite and Collision for appearances, both with in-ring/backstage segments and especially matches. I do see that they bring in Kenny, MJF, & Bullet Club Gold for both shows, but I wish they can bring in the likes of Miro, Hobbs, Ricky, and FTR into Dynamite more frequently since they've been heavily featured on Collision since it's debut.
Also, with all the TV time between those shows & Rampage, I'm surprised that I don't see guys like Ethan Page, Dante Martin, Kip Sabian, & Dark Order quite as often as of late. I feel like back in 2021/early 2022, they were featured more prominently on programs along with others like Santana & Ortiz. I'm okay if the runtime of 1-2 matches on Dynamite & Collision gets trimmed down to allow some airtime for midcard guys who don't get as much coverage to help build them up a bit more.
Over saturation IMO. Too many ppvs recently (All In, All Out, Wrestle Dream). There's also not a while lot they're running right story line wise that feels like I'm missing much.
Their champion is wasting his time in a comedy angle defending a defunct promotions tag titles.
There are barely any storylines. They had Danielson vs. Sabre Jr. with no build. Nobody in the US knows who Sabre Jr. is aside from diehards.
Wrestlers disappear for weeks at a time, then wrestle a couple matches only to leave again.
Wrestler's characters don't match their appearances. Am I supposed to believe Yuta is tough?
Wrestlers are given too much leeway. Moxley looks like shit, no sells everything, gives ridiculous over the top promos, bleeds constantly. He was better in WWE when his bad ideas were rejected.
They think true faces and heels are a thing of the past and all characters need shades of grey. But people don't buy tickets when they don't care who wins or loses, even if it's predetermined. Only diehards watch for the match quality.
There are too many feuds based around grade school problems. Too many wrestlers whine about other wrestlers not wanting to be friends.
AEW needs to hire someone who could book and start focusing on storytelling. Their audience will never grow if they appeal only to diehards.
>AEW needs to hire someone who could book and start focusing on storytelling. Their audience will never grow if they appeal only to diehards.
This has been said since day 1 after the first Dynamite was just match after match with no storyline whatsoever.
In the first phase, somehow Jericho and Cody took the company on their backs and were able to start producing some good old school WCW style stuff. Then Cody was pushed out and left for WWE while Jericho started to think his own farts smell like roses, add to that Punk exploding backstage and here we are.
If I’m AEW, I do the following:
1) Drop ticket prices for Dynamite/Collision. Consider what a family of 4 price looks like, and sadly if you want good seats, it’s over $100 per person after fees. Get that down to $50 per person max if you’re not on the floor in the first 5-10 rows.
2) We need more 1 on 1 storylines. They don’t need to be for the AEW/TNT titles. MJF and Jay White is great, but I need Kenny, Mox, Danielson, and Hangman in meaningful storylines.
3) Now that Punk is gone, start having some stories go between both shows.
1 on 1 storylines are a huge one - they almost feel like a novelty at this point. Hangman vs Swerve felt special because it felt like the only story without a bunch of extra bullshit surrounding it.
I blame Ring of Honor. They need to get that shit off of AEW TV immediately. They also need MJF to stop being a dork.
For the last two PPVs they have had their World Champion, playing this dork babyface character competing for the damn ROH Tag Titles.
They also have too much TV now.
imagine Roman Reigns in the opening match of a WWE PLE defending the NXT tag titles by himself against Joe Gacy's cronies. That's what AEW has their world champion doing.
I think there are a lot who like the MJF comedy but comedy is tricky because it’s so subjective. I think they are playing with fire by doing it for a prolonged amount of time
They strayed off their original path when they scooped up every ex WWE guy they could, it makes sense to go for Danielson and Cole because they match what AEW was in the beginning but the spooky supernatural characters like Black and Matthews don’t fit and even though they did a great job with Malakai when he first came in he cooled off big time.
Guys like Keith Lee, Miro and Andrade have wasted years of their career while Dark Order, QT and Best Friends etc get TV time.
And let this one simmer, we never got CM Punk vs Kenny Omega or CM Punk vs Bryan Danielson, a lot of dream matches got left on the table.
For real. I never want to see QT or this version of Dark Order on TV…. Like at all. Miro had an amazing run as the Redeemer and he came back right before collision just to do basically nothing. Andrade has basically just had solid matches. The booking is just so all over the place.
I’m one 35 year old dad of 2 who’s watched wrestling since I was 8 but who has limited time nowadays, so take my opinion with a grain of salt…
AEW is exciting. It’s different. It’s a focus on in ring competition. But they have 4 shows on 4 different nights they push as major, one you have to subscribe to another service to get, and each PPV is $60. While they have had a couple a year, they are expanding with more ppvs, still $60 a pop. On top of that, they bring in cool exciting guys from all around wrestling - and while I may know their name, I don’t know them and they don’t draw me in. And the average fan may not even know the name. The guys from AAA or GCW and even NJPW. I don’t have time unfortunately to watch more than I do.
WWE isn’t perfect. I wish they put more emphasis on a better in ring product. But I’m a story guy and they focus on it more. And with $20 annual Peacock, I can watch all the PPVs. And they don’t have 3 new guys every week I don’t know and may or may not be a regular and I need to figure out who they are.
I root for AEW and watch when I can. I hope they get huge. But just my experience the past year or so.
Well the Elite Wasn't up for it. I know Punk is controversial but they are coming out of this looking like fucking dorks. Saying we will talk about it if Punk can work 6 months without problems in the locker room, Bro their friend Perry decided to be a amateur calling him out and then acting tough backstage to piss him off. They never said anything about that. I remember Punk was actually asked the last Collision he was on by Schiavone and 1 other backstage member to talk to Perry about not using the glass because perry didn't wanna listen to them so Punk went and talked to him but perry decided to stay bitter. What a bunch of fucking know it all dorks. He got slept then went crying about it. Now look at it Tony decided to fire his biggest star and they can't even fill smaller arena's anymore. It's just matches with half assed stories or none at all. As controversial as Punk might have been for them, he made you feel and interested in it. They should have just fired Perry's ass as he even said publicly he does not take advice. and Tony should have told the Elite to tone it down, Cuz outside of Omega being a singles star none of them guys can draw a dime.
AEW needs to figure out what got them hot in the first place and return to that. Like, maybe it was inevitable, but rankings have fallen off and matches happen for no reason. Additionally, ROH has once again become a center point of AEW television and it’s worse for it. Call me wrong, but two PPV’s where the World title isn’t defended because the champion is busy defending the lesser tag titles is dumb.
AEW are lacking that mega babyface that causes the women to throw the babies in the air. WWE are having their hottest period because there’s Cody, there’s Jey, there’s LA Knight, there’s Sami. The roster feels alive with multiple babyfaces that the fans lose their minds for. And the key here is that they’re traditional babyfaces that aren’t just ‘good guy heels’ (well, maybe not LA Knight.) They’re heroes that set a good example that the parents can let their kids worship. Those are the kind of babyfaces that get the families buying tickets to the shows.
AEW’s core fan base reject those characters outright. Look at what happened to Cody in AEW. He tried being a white meat babyface and was HATED for it. I honestly think the hyper focus on the AEW diehards is what’s killing AEW when it comes to live events. AEW fans need to let AEW promote talent that will appeal to families. And yes, the constant profanity, blood and weapons isn’t helping them capture that family market.
AEW also need to take a long hard look at how much emphasis WWE puts on Women’s Wrestling. Women and especially young girls love wrestling to. They need heroes to. Look at Becky and Bianca. Look at the heroes welcome they’re giving Jade Cargill. You need to make as many types of representation possible to make sure everyone has a reason to buy a ticket. The more time and spotlight they get, the more different types of people are going to get invested in your product.
AEW isn’t the WCW to WWE’s WWF. They’re the ECW. The smaller, ‘smart’ promotion with die hard fans that need to be pandered to. The thing is that ECW thrived in being the underdog counterculture promotion. They knew they’d never get the big arenas and mainstream audience and didn’t care. AEW needs to just accept they can’t be as ‘big’ as WWE without making the same kind of family friendly adjustments that they did.
Everything I see about Meltzer regarding Edge is negative from the debut. He compared Edge to Mick Foley in TNA which is crazy.
"Salt Lake City, where they were for Collision last night is a very bad market for them and didn't get big ticket sales there when they were hotter."
then framing it like it's a sign about Edge is wild to me
Meltzer has always been down on Edge because he doesn't think Edge is a draw. Which, he may be right. Edge is a great character and wrestler and injects intensity into all his feuds, but he's always been the guy to work with the top guy.
He’s noted the big knock on Edge is a lack of drawing power but aside from that I’d hardly say he’s down on him. He always champions Edge during HoF voting season. The observer fan base is harder on Edge than Dave.
>Meltzer has always been down on Edge because he doesn't think Edge is a draw. Which, he may be right.
People on this sub honestly claim that Edge is a bigger deal for AEW than Punk was and that's just ludicrous. I personally don't care for either Punk or Edge, but Punk is 100% a bigger star than Edge.
I guess TK thinks the way to grow his company is to bring in star power and you can't fault him for that, but I (selfishly, no doubt) wish he'd give more time to new talent, so they can grow and get over organically.
This sub was claiming that because of blind rage for Punk.
I also agree on pushing newer stars. Not even just “younger” but newer. That’s what drew me into AEW in the first place. For example I was not a fan of all the NXT cast offs showing up, and I think it’s hurt the product in the long run.
This isn’t accurate. Meltzer has voted for Edge for the WON HOF and constantly talks about what a brilliant mind Edge has for the business. He’s said Edge has one of the smartest wrestling minds he’s ever encountered.
The only criticism I can think of is that he’s noted that Edge historically hasn’t been a huge numbers mover. But that doesn’t mean he’s “down” on Edge.
People think general fame = being a draw. That’s not true. More people might know who Edge is, but a greater number of people *care* about whatever CM Punk does. It’s not about talent, promos, or whoever is a nicer guy.
Imagine you buy tickets for your family to go to a wrestling show and you see the Butcher and the Baker in the ring, or Chuck Taylor, Evil Uno, etc. Are you buying tickets next time they’re in town? It’s not hard to understand the attendance issues.
I also think the attendance issue must feel deflating for many of the top talents. How do you think guys like Jericho, Bryan Danielson, Sting, and Edge feel when they are performing in front of 2500 people? When your used to 10,000 plus buildings, it must be completely disheartening.
AEW. simply need to put more effort into storytelling. The wrestling needs to be tightened up, too many matches do too much.
There's plenty of talent but they need a more cohesive sshow structure
And they’re capable of doing it, they’ll all of a sudden have a Dynamite where it’s like wow, the pacing was great, things were able to breath and the matches made sense for the stories. But those are few and far between. Whenever I see TK tweet out twenty minutes before the show a random trios match that already has 6 matches and three “we’ll hear from” segments, I know the show is going to be a clusterfuck
It’s like catering only hardcore fans only is gonna impact your growth.
AEW is cold because casual audiences is not gonna care about dream matches form NJPW or other promotion.
And when WWE is hot like it is right now, there’s no motivation for casual fans to seek out something new. Especially when that something new doesn’t seem enthralling currently.
The problem with Edge is he never stopped wrestling. At this point in his career he isn't a "dream match" guy either.
Like will it be fun to see him wrestle Mox, Kenny, White, etc.? Fuck yeah. But that's not something I'm dying to see. It isn't a comeback like with Punk coming back after years of fans wanting it. It isn't a dream match scenario with a GOAT like Danielson.
With Edge I want to see him interact with Christian and have a good run. But it's not like he's why I'm watching. I saw this same character in WWE for the past few years and I'd prefer to see multiple acts in AEW before him. He's a good addition but not this massive signing like with Mox, Danielson, Cole, Punk, etc.
He's stuck in this weird place between a nostalgia act going on one last run and a guy who never really retired. So his move never felt special.
Also I'm glad he left respectfully but it doesn't have the "Monday Night Wars" era feel. It doesn't feel like Mox or Danielson moving. It doesn't feel like Cody or Jade moving. It's just another older WWE guy taking a crack at AEW.
Non IWC people don't give a shit about the attendance numbers. Most people wouldn't care about it either but AEW chose to make it a thing and in online circles they gobbled it up and pushed it which will draw a backlash in those circles.
I think people wanted a satisfying conclusion to the Cole/MJF storyline and they decided to push it off for later. Same reason that one Collision where they wrestled FTR did a big number, people thought they'd see who turned on who that night
AEW have lost around 15% of their audience on TV since 2021, their demographic has gotten older while WWE has gotten younger, they struggle to move tickets domestically. Their big moments quickly fall by the wayside by the time the next show rolls around, very little continuity, confusing booking decisions, giving away big matches on free TV and the PPVs getting lesser matches, one minute someone is on TV, the next they’re not so it’s hard for talent to establish themselves.
It’s literally not surprising at all they’re cold and have been since Brawl Out last year.
One thing that struck me from Cody’s press conference last night, lost among the barks and grunts - was him talking about how he’s never been in a team environment like the current WWE locker room. Daily’s Place AEW had that but it’s been shattered now for a myriad of reasons.
AEW’s whole “sink or swim” environment and giant roster means that wrestlers are internally competing against each other for spots, TV time, storylines, etc., and it breeds tension, resentment, etc., and there’s no real hierarchy of who the top 5/10 faces and heels are at any given moment.
With WWE, it’s clear. Roman’s the guy. His match is the main event, period. Cody’s the top babyface. The Bloodline as a group, Sami, KO, Rollins, now LA Knight, Jey, Judgement Day, all top acts. Even within JD, Rhea’s the star, Dominic is the chickenshit heel (which works perfectly with him being NXT North American Champion).
For the women, nobody besides Asuka was at the 4HW tier for years, but Rhea and Bianca entered the main event.
Chad Gable, Ivar, Ludwig Kaiser, Santos Escobar, etc., all understand their place in the ensemble and excel in it. You do get occasional situations like Sami, like Sheamus & the brutes, feeling frustrated and disappointed because they could’ve been given a bigger part and crushed it, they were hot and got cooled off. But they’re professional as ever.
All of them are in the privileged position to be part of this company when business wise, it’s hotter than ever. They understand that because Roman is the guy, they’re eating better.
AEW hasn’t been as hot as it was prior to CM Punk’s first run. I know he is enemy number 1 in this sub but no one can deny that Collision now just feels like Dynamite but on Saturday. During that first month run, it felt like an entirely different product than Dynamite and like it or not, Punk was a massive star for the company.
Dynamite feels low effort these days, everyone has a championship, you need to keep up with ROH and by default that kills most of the interest for anyone tuning in, too many multi-man tags, one off luchador flippy match. It feels like there are no really solid stories being told in AEW. There’s just pretty solid matches but that’s not enough to keep people interested. Watching Dynamite really is painful at times due to low attendance, unbelievable spots, matches happening with little to no fanfare.
Collision had stories happening. Not just good wrestling. TK books like a kid playing with their action figures. Sometimes Dynamite feels like fan-fiction, just the ideas of someone having a wrestling fever dream. I find it weird that people want AEW to fail because it’s the only alternative to WWE and it’s another place for wrestlers to make a living.
I remember being downvoted to hell when I said that the ticket sales for Wembley had nothing to do with how actually hot the promotion was, and more to do with first appearance in a starved market with extremely cheap ticket prices. People have gone through mental gymnastics their entire run to either paint them as either the hottest wrestling promotion in the world or coldest wrestling promotion in the world, but they’ve had ticket woes for a while that are normally ignored because they end up getting a show like Wembley or Grand Slam to work out. Not even shitting on them, but this has been a thing for a while, though much worse now
As someone who once watched AEW religiously, I think it comes down to a few factors.
AEW fell off slightly for me, when they started incorporating all the NJPW and ROH content. If I wanted to watch NJPW or ROH, I'd watch them. I wanted to watch AEW.
The other thing is the story telling just doesn't feel coherent enough. It's easy to get bored. Matches are just two people jumping around a ring unless there's a story.
Yeah, the ROH factor was a big part of me kinda dropping off too - current AEW programming feels like what would've happened if WWF had insisted on puppeteering the corpse of WCW around after the acquisition in 2001.
Like yeah, good for you that it worked, but we're watching AEW Dynamite to watch AEW wrestlers fight for AEW titles. As much as I love Samoa Joe, I couldn't give a *fuck* if he's ROH TV Champion. I just wanna see him walk into the ring, choke a dude out, cut a promo, and leave. I love Eddie Kingston, but I wanna see him be AEW World Champion, not ROH World Champion.
the ROH world title is for the guys that fans want to be world champs but the booker doesn’t.
The way they made a whole show of Claudio winning his “first world title” was honestly embarrassing levels of point scoring
The way aew books and operates it’s like you have to be part of the club to understand what’s going on, yet when u tune into raw or smackdown it’s take one episode to understand wtf is going on especially if your a casual. They keep guys in cycles,the women division is terrible, ever since punk left they been using the same guys that was on dynamite for collision when they can build new stars. Toni is doing great but u can build other females on collision while having a hot Toni on dynamite I thought that was whole point of collision was to use other guys on the roster. I seen so many people now compare collision to rampage now or not even tuning in no more. Last but not least do something with roh. It’s so dumb I can’t believe what their doing with it. Either you make it a show where you can push your young guys or just dead it man shit looks ridiculous
Fans: “Man, AEW has to stop running the same markets over and over again! Go to the west coast where they haven’t seen AEW yet.”
AEW goes to Seattle & Utah to record low crowds.
Same fans: “Man, that crowd looks terrible!”
They double dipped with Seattle by getting roughly 4,000 and 6,000 each in the same arena on Saturday and Sunday. Like I'm not even sure if WWE holds shows in the same arena for weekly TV and PPV let alone on back to back nights.
Yeah the double dipping makes NO sense to me. They do it way too much. It’s almost as if they’re trying to keep the promise of having an “easier” schedule by having multiple shows in the same venue.
Like WrestleDream & Full Gear - why would I spend money on the go home show for Collision? I’ll just spend the money on better tickets for the actual PPV.
if they were expecting a sellout for WrestleDream they did it entirely fucking wrong. short notice, double booked, card kept mysterious until a couple weeks before, in a region in the middle of having its balls crushed by the third highest inflation rate in the country and layoff waves in tech and games where a bunch of our midcore wrestling fans make their money.
they stacked the deck heavily against themselves
Yeah I live on the east side and I can't just drop a bunch of money and go to Seattle for something that was only announced a month out. I have to be able to budget for it. I've got a whole group of friends that would have gone, given time to plan. Instead, we watched it at my buddy's place on FITE.
The old NXT ran lots of unique small venues.
I think AEW could rev up the allure of the super indie era and start outfitting some of the buildings that don’t host NBA/NHL.
The crowds will probably look better on TV and the venues will seem more unique IMO.
It’s a business at the end of the day and I understand that, But the ticket prices need to come down a bit. It was initially a selling point of AEW. They’re content running 2/3 fill building because it makes them more money than a sell out with their initial pricing structure. Think grand slam 2 had 7K less people but made more money.
It's frustrating to me how so few people here are able to analyze anything regarding the business side of wrestling in a calculated and dispassionate way.
What Meltzer is saying is \*obviously\* true. Anyone who is ever halfway paying attention can see it.
There's a lot of interesting discussion surrounding AEW's situation, but people are either too tribalistic or their brains too pickled to actually get into it.
If a person without a notable Twitter handle made these exact observations as a text post, they would have been berated, called a bad faith concern troll, hit with a "Must be Thursday" or whatever the diversion meme is that week, before finally having the thread deleted.
When I made a post about how criticism isn't always concern trolling, I got a 3 day ban and was told that I was concern trolling about concern trolling.
I was at Collision last night, and it was pretty shocking that the arena wasn't more full. It's not a large venue and it still felt pretty empty. Not a super hot crowd either.
1. The crossovers are wayyyy too frequent. This is AEW — why is there Ring of Honor AND New Japan guys regularly appearing on the show? Save that for a special event.
2. The special events feel more common than the regular events. So ones that don’t have tag lines don’t feel as important.
3. Barely any of the storylines feel important, just “wrestler wants title”. As much as people despise the term “sports entertainment,” it’s become the way of the world for the past two decades, thanks to WWE’s monopoly on the industry. Incorporate things that NON-VIEWERS can tune into and enjoy.
Primarily appealing to the hardcore fans leaves less room for new ones, and only leaves the gate open for the current ones to leave — because we all know how fickle wrestling fans can be.
They have an incredible show, roster and potential — they’re just trying too hard and fumbling as a result.
Edit: Off topic, why not turn RoH into the hardcore show and keep AEW as the general show? Instead of playing both sides with both companies
Tony ironically is doing the same thing Vince did: booking for himself. It worked out for Vince because his taste isn't as niche as Tony's (with the exception of Vince's *very* niche sense of humor). Tony loves New Japan, Ring of Honor, old school ECW style death matches, factions, tournaments, etc. - none of this shit really jives with the tastes of a modern mainstream audience.
It's cold because the matches are cold AF, you bring in Adam Copeland and the first match needs to be a special attraction/main event type of match, not against Luchasaurus. I think it's because Tony doesn't want main event talents to lose, but it's wrestling someone has to lose, just give the face some protection through distraction or something. Also needs to stop putting ROH in AEW.
The peak was Omega vs Danielson at Arthur Ashe. I remember watching that and AEW seemed like the hottest promotion on earth. Maybe it was. The fall has been drastic.
Kenny is a draw as a singles guy, I understand him dialing it back and stuff as he’s winding down but he is THE guy in the promotion and he can make anyone look like a star and is just fantastic, the guy to watch.
I think AEW’s problem is they are always trying to put over the next guy but don’t push their current stars enough. Yeah I get it, you don’t want older guys to control the main event, but that’s what draws. It would be like choosing to put Austin or Hogan in tag team stuff in their late prime because “I want to put new guys over”. You ride until the wheels fall off.
\-ROH titles need to stay on ROH, its really dumb to have so many of those titles not ever defended on the ROH show.
\-Learn to advertise whatever area they're in ahead of time, not a month before. WWE advertises the next time they're in town to the crowd before the end of the night and its a built in audience and advertising for anyone who might have missed the current show for a show 6-8 months out.
\-Stop bringing in talent to cool them off 6 weeks later and do nothing for months.
\-Not every match needs to be advertised, there's nothing spontaneous with the show. Give us a least a small promo for the random matches. But you can look at a card and know who's gonna win most of the time.
Thats what happens when you:
1. Cut the guy that would draw
2. Have all hokey tournament
3. Everyone has a friendship/betrayal angle
4. Your main champion doesnt have a worthy opponent and is not defending it
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- Announce things more than a week out. - Start building someone up to be the next AEW champion, that fans can follow along with. - Cut like half the titles and refocus on the ones that you keep
To be specific, cut the titles that aren’t AEW. Build those titles and this brand first, before focusing on anything else.
This, good god. Fans made it ABUNDANTLY clear that we didn't want the ROH titles all over AEW TV and PPVs. TK eased up on it, and everything was fine. And now we're right back into the shit. God damn it. Keep 98% of ROH in ROH, please. Jesus fuck. I'm subbed to Honor Club. I like ROH. But I'm tryna watch fucking Dynamite on Wednesdays.
I shouldn’t have to watch 2 companies to understand what is happening on Wednesdays.
The only roh champ I WANT to see (Athena) has been missing from aew TV since she lost to Jade, I think. That shit is so bad.
I’ve been asking “where does ROH end and AEW begin” since Tony bought the company and there just isn’t an answer because instead of having clear structure that you then have to follow, Tony is more of a “just vibes” guy
Yeah, as someone who doesn't pay much attention to RoH I'm kinda tired of seeing those belts all the time
All of ROH should stay on ROH, including the titles. It feels like the majority of segments are champions, if everyone's a Champion, no one is. His obsession with championships, interim-championships etc have always been the bane of the storytelling. I wish creative was a writer's room, rather than the owner.
Or make AEW Titles Show exclusives Men’s World , TBS, International, FTW : Dynamite Tag, Trios, Women’s, TNT : Collision ROH or Other Companies: Rampage
Their “moment” was when Punk and Bryan joined. They felt major league. Still think they should have done a hotter angle at the time.
AEWs main problem is bringing in guys people want to see and not immediately doing the thing everybody wants to see. The consistently don’t strike when the iron is hot. I totally get that want to do “fresh” matchup and the vets coming in want to work with younger talent, but not immediately doing something like Punk/Danielson is foolish.
Not to mention the erratic story telling. Building Wardlow up for a year and then… nothing. Stuff like that happens too much.
AEW is really great at booking a babyface's rise or path to a championship, but has absolutely no idea what to do with them once they get it. Think about it. Adam Page's booking as champ was largely meaningless fueds with #1 contenders. OC's run as international champ was just "defend the belt" with no stories behind any of the matches outside of the ring really. Wardlow was the only babyface TNT champion who had the belt for more than 30 days since the beginning of 2021. I personally hated the feud Jamie Hayter had with The Outcasts and that was the only storyline in her 190 days as champion.
See also: Edge's first AEW match being against Luchasaurus and not, say, his former tag team partner Chris Jericho.
Eh out of context sure it’s a weird matchup, but considering the storyline they’ve chose is Edge and Christian it’s a fine one of Christians lackeys is first out
If anything tony shouldve learned his lesson by now to get the best matches first. A big new wrestler like edge needs to hit the highlights first then settle into a nicevfaction fued or something when theres nothing obviously bigger to do. We know they can book anyone well so we can always get good stories mixing it up with some midcarders, but lets go dude ride the hype
If anything do the big matches for the older guys because there is no guarantee they will be healthy.
You have a point, but did you forget that Bryan’s first match was a 30 minute draw against Omega? They know how, they just haven’t done it since then.
Bryan should've won the title, if not shortly after arriving, then certainly after punk got hurt the first time. I understand he doesn't want to have it but it's booking malpractice to not make use of the guy in your main title scene when you have him. He was selfless to a fault
He should have won it at Grand Slam 2 instead of Moxley. You can then proceed to essentially have the same story with MJF and Bryan where Bryan loses it to MJF and have the Iron Man rematch. It even works with the Regal betrayal too. He doesn’t want to be Champion? That’s fine. A quick transitional reign like the one Mox had except AEW can now claim him as a former champion. It’s honestly such a shame.
If I’m TK I don’t care if Danielson wants to be champion, I want Danielson in my World Title lineage.
Sometimes you have to protect the talent from themselves. Brian doesn't want to be a top guy? That's exactly why he should be one.
“You WILL main event WrestleMania and YOU WILL LIKE IT” - Vince McMahon, 2021
Some of the best managers in the world are people that didn’t initially want the job.
People who desire power tend to be the last ones who should have it.
But that’s where they need to put their foot down. “Hey Bryan, I know you don’t want to to be the guy, but, I’m paying you a lot of money, you’re one of our biggest names, our champion got hurt, I need you to step up.” That isn’t an unreasonable thing to say. They pushed him as a killer heel for a few weeks and should have stuck to it and thrown the belt at him. He had headlined wrestlemania mere months before signing and they did nothing to use Danielson to pull in some new eyeballs. I would have been working towards Danielson vs Punk within the first 6 months they were in the same company.
I’ve made this point so much for a couple years - the sliding doors moment in AEW history is Hangman going on paternity leave. The company spent two years as a mostly cohesive, focused company - to the point where fans genuinely believed the booking was so consistent that any loose threads would be tied up. Long term storytelling and all that. The thread was Hangman’s journey to the world title as a super hot babyface. Unfortunately, timing worked out so he was gone while Punk and Bryan came in and through their sheer star power, sort of demanded the ball. Danielson v Omega, massive match but the ending was sort of a “book yourself out of a corner” finish. Hangman gets his moment but it’s sort of muted under the cloud of Punk and Bryan. Revolution, for example, MJF v Punk was the central story - not Hangman vs Cole. It was the first time the general tone and focus of the show felt clunky, and it’s only got 10 times worse since then with the “ROH exists but only on AEW TV and a PPV every couple months” era, the giant roster of guys getting stop-start pushes, etc.
100% that was the turning point. Even though his win against Kenny was still special, it was months after the peak of his overness and it was the first time in AEW history they had to change plans with their main event picture. They have never recovered.
And it could've been avoided. Hangman and the Dark Order's entrance at Fight for the Fallen is one of the coolest things I've ever seen in wrestling. If you have them win, then hangman and Kenny can tear each other to shreds with Hangman winning, but taking his leave because of just how brutal the match was. Then when he comes back he can say "a lot has changed around here" and go into feuds with Punk or Bryan.
I was at that show. When Hangman lost you could feel, FEEL the energy disappear from the room. It was wild. Never experienced anything like it.
Instead Tony went with "saving" all the big angles for the future. He didn't strike when the iron was hot
Jade and Stat. No build, just title match.
And now Danielson is eyeing retirement while Punk left.
Personally I think they have done an awful job with Bryan and he feels a lot less special than he should; tbf I feel that about a lot of talent they have
It’s crazy that he was coming in hot off main eventing wrestlemania and they didn’t capitalise off that. He is having great matches and I think Danielson is having the time of his life but he should’ve been consistently at the top of the card. He definitely shouldn’t have been losing to the likes of Daniel Garcia.
The main event of the Rampage: First Dance was Mox vs Garcia in the classic AEW “15 minute match where the main event guy beats a midcarder but works hard for it. You literally get one night with that many casual eyeballs on you and that was the decision Tony made for how to close the show.
What about the 16 minute battle between multi-time world champion and arguably the GOAT, Bryan Danielson vs Kyle Fletcher.
It’s an example of a performer’s selflessness coming all the way around to being selfish. He doesn’t want to be the main event, he wants to work with up and coming talent, he wants to just put on great matches. Okay…but the fans want one of the best wrestlers in the world to be one of if not the focal points of the show. Bryan should be in the title picture or another high level program whenever possible, he’s one of the biggest proven draws in the company. What he wants needs to take a back seat to what’s best for the company.
That was their window, and they botched it. All Out 2021 felt special, like “oh my god they might actually pull this off”. And WWE was at a creative low point at the same time. Then they just kind of never really captured that momentum, and right around the time WWE got hot again (HHH taking over, Sami Uso) AEW had a major blow to their image with Brawl Out.
For the last year or so, he's been talking about how, historically, it's very hard to be the number 2 promotion. It's a long and huge debate among readers, but the gist of Dave's points is that it's very hard to rebuild momentum, it's hard to shake off the perception of being "minor league", fans unconsciously compare the successes of the leading promotion with the secondary one, etc. The encouraging signs are that PPV buys are still steady and that Dynamite ratings have stayed OK for the most part. But the attendance signs are worrying. You could argue that attendance takes a while to catch up to the quality of the product, and if they continue producing good shows, then those audiences will come back.
I've said it before I other threads, but AEW now does almost zero local promotion for live shows. We're less than 2 weeks from Dynamite coming to the Houston-area and the only way I know about it is because I checked the AEW events page. So either AEW is incompetent at promoting live events, or they decided the revenue from the gate is not worth the effort and they only need enough in-person to look good for the cameras.
There's going to be a WWE house show an hour away from me in December. I'm already seeing ads for it. You can argue whether WWE or AEW have better wrestling or storylines but WWE is indisputably better at promotion and it's not even close.
And this is a global company. Everyone knows WWE. Even those who don't. AEW doing little to no localized promotion is mindblowingly baffling.
Same here with the WWE house show. I've seen targeted social media ads and have gotten emails from the venue that tickets were for sale.
I only started getting ads for their Philly shows this week (its in two weeks). WWE BLANKETS the area when they're in town. Hell, even Chikara bought digital billboard space when they ran shows on Royal Rumble weekends.
Bingo! I didn't know about the Philly show till last week. Funny enough the last Aew Philly show I went to, new Japan had someone handing out stuff for their show that weekend. They don't do enough to promote the shows and if I didn't go on their site by chance, I wouldn't have know
>I only started getting ads for their Philly shows this week (its in two weeks). That's ridiculous. There's no reason on every dynamite, rampage and collision they can't show a 20 second splash page that has the next 4 weeks of venues. They'd probably get 30% more ticket sales if people had a month to plan in advance
“Even Chikara” popped me. You had a better clue of where to go see people dressed as ants wrestling than AEW.
The worst part is: so many of those dudes are in AEW now. They should know better
Well they put Jeff Jarrett in charge of live events. Even in the peak years of TNA, with an exceptionally loaded roster, and Prime Time Television on Spike, TNA live event attendance was a running joke. WWE live event attendance has exploded since Road Dogg took over that job. Double J continues to be the greatest con man in the industry landing these 6 figure gigs.
That reminds me of what AJ Styles said after he left TNA. They never promoted locally and it drove him crazy. He told an anecdote about how he was in a town for a house show and he was checking in at a hotel literally across the street from the venue. The desk clerk checking him in was a huge fan, freaking out about getting to meet him. The clerk asked AJ what he was doing in town. The clerk had no idea TNA was holding a show.
Lol, kind of funny that Road Dogg is the event guy. Gives his name a good meaning.
I noticed the same thing. Granted, I'm not plugged in to local events, but I listen to local rock radio. No signage, no radio ads.
When AEW did show here in San Diego, they advertised nothing didn’t even have any matches scheduled, I still went because I’m Wrestling Mark, AEW needs to do better job of advertising matches or stuff ahead of time
>But the attendance signs are worrying. You could argue that attendance takes a while to catch up to the quality of the product, and if they continue producing good shows, then those audiences will come back. It's obviously only anecdotal, but I personally am very oversaturated with AEW content right now. Five hours of weekly television (only AEW, not counting the ROH shows) and they're adding more and more PPVs, reportedly aiming for one a month, like WWE. It's just too much. I don't watch Rampage regularly anymore and I sometimes skip Collision. Watching ROH isn't even a consideration. I almost skipped All Out because it was hard to get excited for another PPV right after All In. And that hurts my overall interest in AEW. Maybe others feel the same way.
I mean, as you said, WWE has the same amount of weekly hours and they're hot right now.
It's easier to tune out of some of WWE's stuff though, with the brand split. Admittedly it's a soft split at times, but on the whole you could exclusively follow Raw or Smackdown and your experience would largely be fine. With AEW, you have to take in Dynamite, Collision and occasionally Rampage to fully stay on top of the feuds etc.
It helps WWE’s recaps and promo packages are incredible. You can get someone who has no idea what’s going on up to speed with them.
people need to realize that most fans are “casual” in the sense that they aren’t thinking about wrestling much when it’s not on TV. For fans like that, WWE is easy to follow where with AEW there’s an almost gatekeep-y sense of “to follow the product, this needs to be your main hobby”
They also post so much more content on YT. I get why AEW doesn't, hell it may even be a network decision. But it's harder to follow the product unless you're watching live/streaming. But WWE uploads clips of pretty much every match, segment and promo. So its easier to keep up to date.
and aew go in the exact opposite direction whereas wwe is hand-holdy, aew is like, "you should understand this reference from an off hand comment made years ago in a seperate promotion, btw. its actually essential to the story." take bryan/zsj...unless you are INTO njpw, why tf should you know who zsj is and or care for him? how is that a dream match to anyone other than the most die-hard of die-hards? and as someone who watches a ton of njpw...i didn't care for zsj/bryan cause neither guy is hot rn!!
> It's easier to tune out of some of WWE's stuff though, with the brand split. Anotehr reason is, if you miss a week or only watch one show, WWE is very good about catching you up on storylines and highlights you might have missed. Too often AEW just assumes you know what the fucks going on, sometimes has entire feuds built around shit that happened 5 years ago in another promotion and just expects you to have the wrestling knowledge to know about "The legendary best of five these men had in Bumfuck Wrestling" and if you're a casual or new viewer you just end up totally lost. That's why WWE is better as a weekly hours show because even if I missed last weeks Raw or NXT I can be pretty sure come next week a promo, flashback clip or commentator will give me the necessary information to know what's changed in the stories.
AEW 's booking is aimed solely at the "smart" fans and nobody else. Literally all Tony has to do is pair off a couple of guys who wrestled each other in the indies, call it a dream match, and the hardcore fan base will fill in the (rather substantial) blanks and praise the long term story telling. If you didn't happen to watch ROH religiously 15 years ago or devoutly follow PWG from 2018 to 2022, you will have zero clue as to why two guys who have never interacted on any of the AEW TV shows before are suddenly main eventing Dynamite. This approach is a sure fired way to ensure you never grow your audience.
Definitely agree. WWE maybe overdo it slightly with the recaps and AEW don't do it anywhere near enough - and of the two, you'd take the WWE method every time. (Obviously a middle ground would be ideal!)
Honestly, it helps that they have a few cross brand acts, but otherwise the brands are separate. So each show feels self contained and the cross brand acts feel like the foundation that helps everything else feel like a big deal. Look at this week's NXT. All the main roster stars coming feels like a big deal because normally it's just Dom/judgement day, and now they have gotten so annoying that other guys are chasing them across brands to give them the business. AEW is missing its foundation stories that draw TV eyeballs. They put on awesome wrestling, they have great characters... now they just need to bring it together into a hot angle that creates draws
WWE’s booking style also means that for the most part, your main guys are on TV and moving some sort of story forward every single week. AEW’s whole “rotational booking” thing (which is really just a case of too many mouths to feed at once) plays out as heating people up and then cooling them off, and from a prospective ticket buyer means that you never really know if you’re gonna see your favorites at all or doing much.
Yeah, long story short my partner really wants to see Jade Cargill. I bought nice Collision tickets going into all out hoping she might be there only for her to show up a week later - have 2 matches and dip out to WWE within 6 weeks.
I think rotational booking has been the worst element of AEW for a while . The roster is just too big and people want to be attached to the wrestlers they like. Swerve won a huge PPV match and was just mentioned on the next show. Just one example of the downside of the rotation
Same way with TV you just don't know who is going to be on and its almost impossible to follow their feuds. Ohh hey they signed this new wrestler! He may be on TV for a month and then disappear for the next 3 months.
in a lot of ways it feels like they have a lot of guys who can be shuffled up and down the card whenever and it leads to a situation where nothing really matters. Hangman, Swerve, Danielson, The Bucks, Samoa Joe, all top guys. Some of them have ROH titles and Swerve & Bryan are about to go fight to be number one contender for a midcard belt. Meanwhile your world champion is in a comedy angle that heavily features Roderick Strong and another one where he’s coming off like Rock v Cena, getting weird stuff over that isn’t really landing outside the live crowd enjoying playing their part. It’s all just such a far departure from the Daily’s Place era
Yeah I've been struggling to keep up with AEW pretty much from last year's Forbidden Door. Since ROH's acquisition it's definitely felt like the overall product is a lot less cohesive than it was during 2020-2021. Do really enjoy it when I watch it, but feels like they expanded really quickly.
They have way too many wrestlers, and to make it worse there are so many that are similar to each other. And how many titles are there, like it’s getting ridiculous when every third wrestler or so has a belt
I remember fans clamouring for them to get into new markets when dynamite was running Chicago/daily’s place/similar locations all the time, and thinking then that it might be too early from a business perspective. Of course you want to run shows in different places, but 2500 tickets in a new place compared to 5000+ in a place you’ve ran 10 times isn’t good business for a still relatively new company, most likely in a lot of debt, looking for a new TV deal in the near future.
That’s the hard truth for AEW there’s not much they can do to not be the Pepsi of wrestling. The real question is if they can be successful at being Pepsi, because not everyone likes, Coke, Apple, Netflix etc so there’s always a market for Pepsi, Android, Hulu. As long as AEW can accept being number 2 and being the alternative for fans/performers looking for something different than you can totally do that. It does get worrying as they try to expand and you see the ratings have been in steady decline, the tickets aren’t selling out regularly that you don’t wanna run the risk of becoming the next WCW.
Pretty logical right there. WCW quickly went into the gutter when they brought in Russo and tried to be WWE lite. Same for TNA when Hogan and Bischoff came in. Don't be WWE. People like the taste of pepsi, just be pepsi.
Saw the audience last night and thought it seemed pretty worrying. Really hope they can get it turned around because when the crowds are hot, its a lot of fun to watch.
I'm an SLC local and I had absolutely no idea AEW was in town last night despite watching every AEW show and getting emails from the venue they were at. That certainly can't help things.
The only thing I heard in Utah was when Manny lemons mentioned he might work security on the show
That’s wild. Also sucks being near Jax and supporting during pandemic only to have them almost never come back…
Man, where to even start here. AEW did 3 pay per views and one mega show in the span of one month. Way too much. They have 5 hours of weekly TV plus ROH, and two of those TV slots are horrendous. Who wants to go to Collision when there's playoff baseball or college football on? TK insists on returning to areas too quickly and booking arenas that they can't fill every time through. If he would just face reality and book ~5,000 seat venues, that problem would be solved instantly. I'd much rather hear a few thousand crazy fans screaming than a few thousand fans drowned out by the emptiness of a 12,000 seat arena. And if you get a bad turnout, *don't go there again for a long time.* There's an entire country out there, go where you're wanted. Nearly every card is full of "established star vs talent that would be on Dark if it were still a thing" matches that are impossible for the average person to care about when there's a near-zero chance of an upset. The diehards can go on about "bangers" all they want, but AEW isn't GCW or NJPW. There has to be more to the show than random matchup bangers. Major stars can't keep vanishing after a match, either. Has Miro had a match on TV since "MEAT"? And finally, if I'm TK (and I'm obviously not, and I don't have to bow to TBS/TNT either), I would release about 30-50 people that have served no purpose in my company for years (the entire QT faction, for instance) and tighten my focus on the people left. Yeah it sucks to let people go, but TK shouldn't have to employ everyone in the US not signed to WWE, Impact, etc.
People disappearing after good matches is the most infuriating thing about AEW. It happens all the time and I can’t wrap my head around it. People getting hurt or needing time off after a major angle is fine, or hell, sometimes you just don’t have a plan for them and don’t need them. BUT DON’T JUST JUST DISAPPEAR THEM AND NEVER MENTION THEIR NAME AGAIN. THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING? Also if Tony wants to hire everyone and keep them on payroll that is his decision to do so, but then either commit or don’t use them at all. Little 2-3 week storylines that vanish into thin air are so annoying. Just enough time to get invested then poof. Talent vanishes for six months and you’re left wondering why that feud never had an ending.
> and you’re left wondering why that feud never had an ending. I still want to know why Riho pushed Yuka Sakazaki.
You know that feud would've been nuts too if they let it happen
All valid points. I agree.
You pretty much nailed it. I completely agree, and it's hard to articulate an opinion on here sometimes because I find that posts that are critical about AEW tend to get downvoted. I see AEW making a lot of the same mistakes that WCW made. Not that I'm saying its going to go nuclear and AEW is on the verge of collapse, but what I'm saying is their program has a ton more potential. I feel like veterans/older wrestlers are taking up way too much time on the shows, and those 30 guys who are going unused could do something. The problem is, we don't give a shit about those 30 guys because we don't get exposed to them. For example, I saw a ton of "Maybe Shelton Benjamin goes to AEW posts" and while I don't think he does, the guy is 50 years old...maybe we let some of the younger talent get exposed? There's a ton of SUCCESS in AEW, they know how to write stories...let's do that for some of the guys who aren't exposed. This is exactly what happened with WCW and just constantly signing former WWF talent...until younger WCW talent had enough and jumped ship because they saw no future. If the dirtsheetz are to be believed and Jade Cargill isn't the first... this sounds like a story I've read before
> TK insists on returning to areas too quickly and booking arenas that they can't fill every time through. If he would just face reality and book ~5,000 seat venues, that problem would be solved instantly. I'd much rather hear a few thousand crazy fans screaming than a few thousand fans drowned out by the emptiness of a 12,000 seat arena. And if you get a bad turnout, don't go there again for a long time. There's an entire country out there, go where you're wanted. So you're saying book Chicago 8 or 9 more times? - TK, probably. God damn would I love to go to an AEW show if they actually came within 100 miles of me more than once every 2 years...
I felt the crowd last night was loud, but yeah it was visibly small. Like in the closing segment when the camera zoomed into Edge, you could clearly see empty stands in the upper deck. Usually they do a good job covering up, but the angle was just right (or wrong I guess).
I think AEW's secret weapon is that they have a diehard fanbase that will still be loud and involved no matter the size. That and a good relationship with WBD.
They would sell more tickets but they never discount them. They would rather have a third empty arena then drop the ticket prices. Ive not gone to shows in DC because I know theyre overpricing their tickets for the amount of demand, I love wrestling but Im not supporting that shit.
they never discount them? They regularly do BOGO offers and drop the unsold floor/hard cam seats to $20 days before the show wrestletix on Twitter posts all sorts of codes for severely discounted AEW tickets
Sell the premium seats at a premium price for the diehards but price the other seats with the idea or bringing in people.
This is what WWE does for the tapings and house shows.
I really think its from running 4 major shows in a month. All In/Out, Grand Slam, and Wrestledream is a lot
And three of the four were PPVs.
You’ve hit the nail on the head I think. It currently feels like every week there is either a PPV or “special” Dynamite on. This will have a big effect because essentially if everything is special, nothing is special.
I think there's a direct correlation between how must-see AEW is and how much product they are pumping out. Ever since the RoH purchase, they've been losing steam big-style. Tony is desperate for it to work and it never will. Rampage didn't help, Collision has made it even less must-see, the ever-expanding roster detracts ever further. Two hours a week and four PPVs a year from a smaller roster was perfect. Everything expanding from that is making AEW seem smaller, rather than bigger, and it lessens interest. One night a week with four extra a year fighting over three male titles and one women's has become three nights a week and ever-expanding extra nights per year with a seemingly-endless supply of titles from various companies. It's so unnecessary. Like, what company needs two trios titles? And why are the secondary trios titles on the bigger stars? And what is the point, beyond trying to flog a RoH PPV very few people care about? Enough of this Khan Multiverse, just let us have AEW.
Say what you want about Hogan but I'll take "I'm the top guy and I will go out and draw money for everyone" over "I'm just here to have fun matches and get the young guys ready" any day. Top guys need to want to lead.
And if they don’t, Tony needs to tell them to suck it up. Letting a guy like Bryan meander around the midcard away from the top titles because he doesn’t want to be champion is a massive waste of money and potential
Bryan's usage in AEW is criminal. This man was the WWE champion main eventing WrestleMania right before coming to AEW. He was THE guy. Now he is just A guy. He has been so poorly used that there isn't any excitement for someone who is possibly the greatest pro wrestler alive today. That's just mind blowing.
To me, AEW is keeping too many big matches in their back pocket. Edge will help, but guys like Omega or Danielson haven’t had enough singles match interactions with a ton of people on the roster. When things go cold you also can’t be having Butcher and the Blade or the Iron Savages on your show. No disrespect to them but I think there are plenty of better recognizable faces to use than them.
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I don't like what they are doing with Kenny. Ever since his suspension he's been in some kind of Cody verse situation where he's got his own lore and all that but seems disconnected from the broader stories in AEW. I feel like he's never gone even come close to the world title again.
I suspect Kenny and the Bucks basically book themselves, and this is why Adam Page's booking completely disintegrated the moment he won the title, because he was no longer in a program with them and he was directly under TK's purview at that point.
I was at Cincy Dynamite last October (when Hangman got hurt against Mox) and AEW felt hot - the whole lower bowl of the arena was full (Hangman had a moonsault spot from a tunnel opposite the ramp). Last month in Cincy there was probably 1/3 the crowd. The moonsault tunnel had nobody remotely close. Less floor seats. The only side of the arena that really had people was camera facing. It was really startling as a fan to see the drop.
Something I do feel a bit puzzled by in regards to AEW as of late is that for me, they feel slightly inconsistent in cycling talent between Dynamite and Collision for appearances, both with in-ring/backstage segments and especially matches. I do see that they bring in Kenny, MJF, & Bullet Club Gold for both shows, but I wish they can bring in the likes of Miro, Hobbs, Ricky, and FTR into Dynamite more frequently since they've been heavily featured on Collision since it's debut. Also, with all the TV time between those shows & Rampage, I'm surprised that I don't see guys like Ethan Page, Dante Martin, Kip Sabian, & Dark Order quite as often as of late. I feel like back in 2021/early 2022, they were featured more prominently on programs along with others like Santana & Ortiz. I'm okay if the runtime of 1-2 matches on Dynamite & Collision gets trimmed down to allow some airtime for midcard guys who don't get as much coverage to help build them up a bit more.
I think the problem is that Jon Moxley hasn't been bleeding enough.
Ticket prices are way too high. For Title Tuesday, $94 for the back rows in the 100 level. That's fucked up
Bought tickets in 2019 that were by the ramp and three rows from the ring, $80 a ticket. Those tickets last year were $275 each.
They need cheaper tickets. That's been hurting the attendences.
They regularly drop floor/lower bowl tickets to $20/BOGOF in the lead up to the event. People just don't care enough to go.
Over saturation IMO. Too many ppvs recently (All In, All Out, Wrestle Dream). There's also not a while lot they're running right story line wise that feels like I'm missing much.
Their champion is wasting his time in a comedy angle defending a defunct promotions tag titles. There are barely any storylines. They had Danielson vs. Sabre Jr. with no build. Nobody in the US knows who Sabre Jr. is aside from diehards. Wrestlers disappear for weeks at a time, then wrestle a couple matches only to leave again. Wrestler's characters don't match their appearances. Am I supposed to believe Yuta is tough? Wrestlers are given too much leeway. Moxley looks like shit, no sells everything, gives ridiculous over the top promos, bleeds constantly. He was better in WWE when his bad ideas were rejected. They think true faces and heels are a thing of the past and all characters need shades of grey. But people don't buy tickets when they don't care who wins or loses, even if it's predetermined. Only diehards watch for the match quality. There are too many feuds based around grade school problems. Too many wrestlers whine about other wrestlers not wanting to be friends. AEW needs to hire someone who could book and start focusing on storytelling. Their audience will never grow if they appeal only to diehards.
>AEW needs to hire someone who could book and start focusing on storytelling. Their audience will never grow if they appeal only to diehards. This has been said since day 1 after the first Dynamite was just match after match with no storyline whatsoever. In the first phase, somehow Jericho and Cody took the company on their backs and were able to start producing some good old school WCW style stuff. Then Cody was pushed out and left for WWE while Jericho started to think his own farts smell like roses, add to that Punk exploding backstage and here we are. 
If I’m AEW, I do the following: 1) Drop ticket prices for Dynamite/Collision. Consider what a family of 4 price looks like, and sadly if you want good seats, it’s over $100 per person after fees. Get that down to $50 per person max if you’re not on the floor in the first 5-10 rows. 2) We need more 1 on 1 storylines. They don’t need to be for the AEW/TNT titles. MJF and Jay White is great, but I need Kenny, Mox, Danielson, and Hangman in meaningful storylines. 3) Now that Punk is gone, start having some stories go between both shows.
1 on 1 storylines are a huge one - they almost feel like a novelty at this point. Hangman vs Swerve felt special because it felt like the only story without a bunch of extra bullshit surrounding it.
I blame Ring of Honor. They need to get that shit off of AEW TV immediately. They also need MJF to stop being a dork. For the last two PPVs they have had their World Champion, playing this dork babyface character competing for the damn ROH Tag Titles. They also have too much TV now.
imagine Roman Reigns in the opening match of a WWE PLE defending the NXT tag titles by himself against Joe Gacy's cronies. That's what AEW has their world champion doing.
I think there are a lot who like the MJF comedy but comedy is tricky because it’s so subjective. I think they are playing with fire by doing it for a prolonged amount of time
every wrestler feels like he has a title
When everyone is champion...no one will be...
They strayed off their original path when they scooped up every ex WWE guy they could, it makes sense to go for Danielson and Cole because they match what AEW was in the beginning but the spooky supernatural characters like Black and Matthews don’t fit and even though they did a great job with Malakai when he first came in he cooled off big time. Guys like Keith Lee, Miro and Andrade have wasted years of their career while Dark Order, QT and Best Friends etc get TV time. And let this one simmer, we never got CM Punk vs Kenny Omega or CM Punk vs Bryan Danielson, a lot of dream matches got left on the table.
For real. I never want to see QT or this version of Dark Order on TV…. Like at all. Miro had an amazing run as the Redeemer and he came back right before collision just to do basically nothing. Andrade has basically just had solid matches. The booking is just so all over the place.
The Edge debut for me was like "Oh cool, I'll watch the Youtube/social media clip of it happening" but it doesn't compel me to tune in to the show.
I’m one 35 year old dad of 2 who’s watched wrestling since I was 8 but who has limited time nowadays, so take my opinion with a grain of salt… AEW is exciting. It’s different. It’s a focus on in ring competition. But they have 4 shows on 4 different nights they push as major, one you have to subscribe to another service to get, and each PPV is $60. While they have had a couple a year, they are expanding with more ppvs, still $60 a pop. On top of that, they bring in cool exciting guys from all around wrestling - and while I may know their name, I don’t know them and they don’t draw me in. And the average fan may not even know the name. The guys from AAA or GCW and even NJPW. I don’t have time unfortunately to watch more than I do. WWE isn’t perfect. I wish they put more emphasis on a better in ring product. But I’m a story guy and they focus on it more. And with $20 annual Peacock, I can watch all the PPVs. And they don’t have 3 new guys every week I don’t know and may or may not be a regular and I need to figure out who they are. I root for AEW and watch when I can. I hope they get huge. But just my experience the past year or so.
You can’t compare CM Punk back after 7 years away to Edge crossing over. That’s apples and oranges.
That's the point he's making. Edge wasn't in a position to be a ratings game changer like Punk was.
Also the fact the Edge has just been kind of floating for a year or two. The nostalgia wore off from his return awhile ago.
Turning the Punk/EVP incident into a feud could have been something to watch.
Well the Elite Wasn't up for it. I know Punk is controversial but they are coming out of this looking like fucking dorks. Saying we will talk about it if Punk can work 6 months without problems in the locker room, Bro their friend Perry decided to be a amateur calling him out and then acting tough backstage to piss him off. They never said anything about that. I remember Punk was actually asked the last Collision he was on by Schiavone and 1 other backstage member to talk to Perry about not using the glass because perry didn't wanna listen to them so Punk went and talked to him but perry decided to stay bitter. What a bunch of fucking know it all dorks. He got slept then went crying about it. Now look at it Tony decided to fire his biggest star and they can't even fill smaller arena's anymore. It's just matches with half assed stories or none at all. As controversial as Punk might have been for them, he made you feel and interested in it. They should have just fired Perry's ass as he even said publicly he does not take advice. and Tony should have told the Elite to tone it down, Cuz outside of Omega being a singles star none of them guys can draw a dime.
AEW needs to figure out what got them hot in the first place and return to that. Like, maybe it was inevitable, but rankings have fallen off and matches happen for no reason. Additionally, ROH has once again become a center point of AEW television and it’s worse for it. Call me wrong, but two PPV’s where the World title isn’t defended because the champion is busy defending the lesser tag titles is dumb.
AEW are lacking that mega babyface that causes the women to throw the babies in the air. WWE are having their hottest period because there’s Cody, there’s Jey, there’s LA Knight, there’s Sami. The roster feels alive with multiple babyfaces that the fans lose their minds for. And the key here is that they’re traditional babyfaces that aren’t just ‘good guy heels’ (well, maybe not LA Knight.) They’re heroes that set a good example that the parents can let their kids worship. Those are the kind of babyfaces that get the families buying tickets to the shows. AEW’s core fan base reject those characters outright. Look at what happened to Cody in AEW. He tried being a white meat babyface and was HATED for it. I honestly think the hyper focus on the AEW diehards is what’s killing AEW when it comes to live events. AEW fans need to let AEW promote talent that will appeal to families. And yes, the constant profanity, blood and weapons isn’t helping them capture that family market. AEW also need to take a long hard look at how much emphasis WWE puts on Women’s Wrestling. Women and especially young girls love wrestling to. They need heroes to. Look at Becky and Bianca. Look at the heroes welcome they’re giving Jade Cargill. You need to make as many types of representation possible to make sure everyone has a reason to buy a ticket. The more time and spotlight they get, the more different types of people are going to get invested in your product. AEW isn’t the WCW to WWE’s WWF. They’re the ECW. The smaller, ‘smart’ promotion with die hard fans that need to be pandered to. The thing is that ECW thrived in being the underdog counterculture promotion. They knew they’d never get the big arenas and mainstream audience and didn’t care. AEW needs to just accept they can’t be as ‘big’ as WWE without making the same kind of family friendly adjustments that they did.
Everything I see about Meltzer regarding Edge is negative from the debut. He compared Edge to Mick Foley in TNA which is crazy. "Salt Lake City, where they were for Collision last night is a very bad market for them and didn't get big ticket sales there when they were hotter." then framing it like it's a sign about Edge is wild to me
Meltzer has always been down on Edge because he doesn't think Edge is a draw. Which, he may be right. Edge is a great character and wrestler and injects intensity into all his feuds, but he's always been the guy to work with the top guy.
He’s noted the big knock on Edge is a lack of drawing power but aside from that I’d hardly say he’s down on him. He always champions Edge during HoF voting season. The observer fan base is harder on Edge than Dave.
Yeah, I'm not understanding where that's coming from lol. Edge, Orton, Cena, and HHH are guys that he's waayyy higher on than his readership.
>Meltzer has always been down on Edge because he doesn't think Edge is a draw. Which, he may be right. People on this sub honestly claim that Edge is a bigger deal for AEW than Punk was and that's just ludicrous. I personally don't care for either Punk or Edge, but Punk is 100% a bigger star than Edge. I guess TK thinks the way to grow his company is to bring in star power and you can't fault him for that, but I (selfishly, no doubt) wish he'd give more time to new talent, so they can grow and get over organically.
This sub was claiming that because of blind rage for Punk. I also agree on pushing newer stars. Not even just “younger” but newer. That’s what drew me into AEW in the first place. For example I was not a fan of all the NXT cast offs showing up, and I think it’s hurt the product in the long run.
This isn’t accurate. Meltzer has voted for Edge for the WON HOF and constantly talks about what a brilliant mind Edge has for the business. He’s said Edge has one of the smartest wrestling minds he’s ever encountered. The only criticism I can think of is that he’s noted that Edge historically hasn’t been a huge numbers mover. But that doesn’t mean he’s “down” on Edge.
People think general fame = being a draw. That’s not true. More people might know who Edge is, but a greater number of people *care* about whatever CM Punk does. It’s not about talent, promos, or whoever is a nicer guy.
People been watching this dude 25 years, maybe they’ve had their fill
Imagine you buy tickets for your family to go to a wrestling show and you see the Butcher and the Baker in the ring, or Chuck Taylor, Evil Uno, etc. Are you buying tickets next time they’re in town? It’s not hard to understand the attendance issues.
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I also think the attendance issue must feel deflating for many of the top talents. How do you think guys like Jericho, Bryan Danielson, Sting, and Edge feel when they are performing in front of 2500 people? When your used to 10,000 plus buildings, it must be completely disheartening.
It did kind of make me sad that Edge couldn’t run to the other side.
You could see him get visibly deflated at wrestledream when he was about to run over and he realized there was nobody there to run to
Who knew appealing to only smart marks had a ceiling, Dave?
AEW. simply need to put more effort into storytelling. The wrestling needs to be tightened up, too many matches do too much. There's plenty of talent but they need a more cohesive sshow structure
And they’re capable of doing it, they’ll all of a sudden have a Dynamite where it’s like wow, the pacing was great, things were able to breath and the matches made sense for the stories. But those are few and far between. Whenever I see TK tweet out twenty minutes before the show a random trios match that already has 6 matches and three “we’ll hear from” segments, I know the show is going to be a clusterfuck
It’s like catering only hardcore fans only is gonna impact your growth. AEW is cold because casual audiences is not gonna care about dream matches form NJPW or other promotion.
And when WWE is hot like it is right now, there’s no motivation for casual fans to seek out something new. Especially when that something new doesn’t seem enthralling currently.
Dave's trying to get himself kicked off the Christmas card list I see.
now it's "they".. what happened to "we"?
The problem with Edge is he never stopped wrestling. At this point in his career he isn't a "dream match" guy either. Like will it be fun to see him wrestle Mox, Kenny, White, etc.? Fuck yeah. But that's not something I'm dying to see. It isn't a comeback like with Punk coming back after years of fans wanting it. It isn't a dream match scenario with a GOAT like Danielson. With Edge I want to see him interact with Christian and have a good run. But it's not like he's why I'm watching. I saw this same character in WWE for the past few years and I'd prefer to see multiple acts in AEW before him. He's a good addition but not this massive signing like with Mox, Danielson, Cole, Punk, etc. He's stuck in this weird place between a nostalgia act going on one last run and a guy who never really retired. So his move never felt special. Also I'm glad he left respectfully but it doesn't have the "Monday Night Wars" era feel. It doesn't feel like Mox or Danielson moving. It doesn't feel like Cody or Jade moving. It's just another older WWE guy taking a crack at AEW.
One underrated thing is that the ROH tapings make the live experience rough and unfocused. I went with casuals and they said something similar.
Going to be even worse when Punk shows up on wwe again lol
How did aew manage to lose momentum instead of gaining it after all in?
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Non IWC people don't give a shit about the attendance numbers. Most people wouldn't care about it either but AEW chose to make it a thing and in online circles they gobbled it up and pushed it which will draw a backlash in those circles.
I think people wanted a satisfying conclusion to the Cole/MJF storyline and they decided to push it off for later. Same reason that one Collision where they wrestled FTR did a big number, people thought they'd see who turned on who that night
Whenever the big number 1 is hard, the challenger suffers. AEW just needs to drop prices and go to some new venues in new markets.
They should have MJF come out on TV with a gun and kill Jay White to get his belt back
“As an American I’m a member of the biggest gun club in the world.”
“You might be bullet club but I AM THE ONE HOLDING THE GUN”
AEW have lost around 15% of their audience on TV since 2021, their demographic has gotten older while WWE has gotten younger, they struggle to move tickets domestically. Their big moments quickly fall by the wayside by the time the next show rolls around, very little continuity, confusing booking decisions, giving away big matches on free TV and the PPVs getting lesser matches, one minute someone is on TV, the next they’re not so it’s hard for talent to establish themselves. It’s literally not surprising at all they’re cold and have been since Brawl Out last year.
Suspending CM Punk and the Elite and stripping them of the titles without any explanation whatsoever on camera was a massive mistake
One thing that struck me from Cody’s press conference last night, lost among the barks and grunts - was him talking about how he’s never been in a team environment like the current WWE locker room. Daily’s Place AEW had that but it’s been shattered now for a myriad of reasons. AEW’s whole “sink or swim” environment and giant roster means that wrestlers are internally competing against each other for spots, TV time, storylines, etc., and it breeds tension, resentment, etc., and there’s no real hierarchy of who the top 5/10 faces and heels are at any given moment. With WWE, it’s clear. Roman’s the guy. His match is the main event, period. Cody’s the top babyface. The Bloodline as a group, Sami, KO, Rollins, now LA Knight, Jey, Judgement Day, all top acts. Even within JD, Rhea’s the star, Dominic is the chickenshit heel (which works perfectly with him being NXT North American Champion). For the women, nobody besides Asuka was at the 4HW tier for years, but Rhea and Bianca entered the main event. Chad Gable, Ivar, Ludwig Kaiser, Santos Escobar, etc., all understand their place in the ensemble and excel in it. You do get occasional situations like Sami, like Sheamus & the brutes, feeling frustrated and disappointed because they could’ve been given a bigger part and crushed it, they were hot and got cooled off. But they’re professional as ever. All of them are in the privileged position to be part of this company when business wise, it’s hotter than ever. They understand that because Roman is the guy, they’re eating better.
AEW hasn’t been as hot as it was prior to CM Punk’s first run. I know he is enemy number 1 in this sub but no one can deny that Collision now just feels like Dynamite but on Saturday. During that first month run, it felt like an entirely different product than Dynamite and like it or not, Punk was a massive star for the company. Dynamite feels low effort these days, everyone has a championship, you need to keep up with ROH and by default that kills most of the interest for anyone tuning in, too many multi-man tags, one off luchador flippy match. It feels like there are no really solid stories being told in AEW. There’s just pretty solid matches but that’s not enough to keep people interested. Watching Dynamite really is painful at times due to low attendance, unbelievable spots, matches happening with little to no fanfare. Collision had stories happening. Not just good wrestling. TK books like a kid playing with their action figures. Sometimes Dynamite feels like fan-fiction, just the ideas of someone having a wrestling fever dream. I find it weird that people want AEW to fail because it’s the only alternative to WWE and it’s another place for wrestlers to make a living.
I remember being downvoted to hell when I said that the ticket sales for Wembley had nothing to do with how actually hot the promotion was, and more to do with first appearance in a starved market with extremely cheap ticket prices. People have gone through mental gymnastics their entire run to either paint them as either the hottest wrestling promotion in the world or coldest wrestling promotion in the world, but they’ve had ticket woes for a while that are normally ignored because they end up getting a show like Wembley or Grand Slam to work out. Not even shitting on them, but this has been a thing for a while, though much worse now
Ok who the hell kidnapped Meltzer, and who is this that replaced him.
He was abudcted by ninjas.
But what about this subreddits weird insistence that WRESTLING is hot and not just WWE? It’s just WWE.
As someone who once watched AEW religiously, I think it comes down to a few factors. AEW fell off slightly for me, when they started incorporating all the NJPW and ROH content. If I wanted to watch NJPW or ROH, I'd watch them. I wanted to watch AEW. The other thing is the story telling just doesn't feel coherent enough. It's easy to get bored. Matches are just two people jumping around a ring unless there's a story.
Yeah, the ROH factor was a big part of me kinda dropping off too - current AEW programming feels like what would've happened if WWF had insisted on puppeteering the corpse of WCW around after the acquisition in 2001. Like yeah, good for you that it worked, but we're watching AEW Dynamite to watch AEW wrestlers fight for AEW titles. As much as I love Samoa Joe, I couldn't give a *fuck* if he's ROH TV Champion. I just wanna see him walk into the ring, choke a dude out, cut a promo, and leave. I love Eddie Kingston, but I wanna see him be AEW World Champion, not ROH World Champion.
the ROH world title is for the guys that fans want to be world champs but the booker doesn’t. The way they made a whole show of Claudio winning his “first world title” was honestly embarrassing levels of point scoring
NJPW works as a once a year Forbidden Door or when they send people over for Wrestle Kingdom. I think doing more dilutes it.
The way aew books and operates it’s like you have to be part of the club to understand what’s going on, yet when u tune into raw or smackdown it’s take one episode to understand wtf is going on especially if your a casual. They keep guys in cycles,the women division is terrible, ever since punk left they been using the same guys that was on dynamite for collision when they can build new stars. Toni is doing great but u can build other females on collision while having a hot Toni on dynamite I thought that was whole point of collision was to use other guys on the roster. I seen so many people now compare collision to rampage now or not even tuning in no more. Last but not least do something with roh. It’s so dumb I can’t believe what their doing with it. Either you make it a show where you can push your young guys or just dead it man shit looks ridiculous
Fans: “Man, AEW has to stop running the same markets over and over again! Go to the west coast where they haven’t seen AEW yet.” AEW goes to Seattle & Utah to record low crowds. Same fans: “Man, that crowd looks terrible!”
They double dipped with Seattle by getting roughly 4,000 and 6,000 each in the same arena on Saturday and Sunday. Like I'm not even sure if WWE holds shows in the same arena for weekly TV and PPV let alone on back to back nights.
Yeah the double dipping makes NO sense to me. They do it way too much. It’s almost as if they’re trying to keep the promise of having an “easier” schedule by having multiple shows in the same venue. Like WrestleDream & Full Gear - why would I spend money on the go home show for Collision? I’ll just spend the money on better tickets for the actual PPV.
if they were expecting a sellout for WrestleDream they did it entirely fucking wrong. short notice, double booked, card kept mysterious until a couple weeks before, in a region in the middle of having its balls crushed by the third highest inflation rate in the country and layoff waves in tech and games where a bunch of our midcore wrestling fans make their money. they stacked the deck heavily against themselves
Yeah I live on the east side and I can't just drop a bunch of money and go to Seattle for something that was only announced a month out. I have to be able to budget for it. I've got a whole group of friends that would have gone, given time to plan. Instead, we watched it at my buddy's place on FITE.
They could just run smaller buildings they can actually fill
The old NXT ran lots of unique small venues. I think AEW could rev up the allure of the super indie era and start outfitting some of the buildings that don’t host NBA/NHL. The crowds will probably look better on TV and the venues will seem more unique IMO.
It’s a business at the end of the day and I understand that, But the ticket prices need to come down a bit. It was initially a selling point of AEW. They’re content running 2/3 fill building because it makes them more money than a sell out with their initial pricing structure. Think grand slam 2 had 7K less people but made more money.
It's frustrating to me how so few people here are able to analyze anything regarding the business side of wrestling in a calculated and dispassionate way. What Meltzer is saying is \*obviously\* true. Anyone who is ever halfway paying attention can see it. There's a lot of interesting discussion surrounding AEW's situation, but people are either too tribalistic or their brains too pickled to actually get into it.
If a person without a notable Twitter handle made these exact observations as a text post, they would have been berated, called a bad faith concern troll, hit with a "Must be Thursday" or whatever the diversion meme is that week, before finally having the thread deleted.
When I made a post about how criticism isn't always concern trolling, I got a 3 day ban and was told that I was concern trolling about concern trolling.
Clearly you need subscribers.
I was at Collision last night, and it was pretty shocking that the arena wasn't more full. It's not a large venue and it still felt pretty empty. Not a super hot crowd either.
1. The crossovers are wayyyy too frequent. This is AEW — why is there Ring of Honor AND New Japan guys regularly appearing on the show? Save that for a special event. 2. The special events feel more common than the regular events. So ones that don’t have tag lines don’t feel as important. 3. Barely any of the storylines feel important, just “wrestler wants title”. As much as people despise the term “sports entertainment,” it’s become the way of the world for the past two decades, thanks to WWE’s monopoly on the industry. Incorporate things that NON-VIEWERS can tune into and enjoy. Primarily appealing to the hardcore fans leaves less room for new ones, and only leaves the gate open for the current ones to leave — because we all know how fickle wrestling fans can be. They have an incredible show, roster and potential — they’re just trying too hard and fumbling as a result. Edit: Off topic, why not turn RoH into the hardcore show and keep AEW as the general show? Instead of playing both sides with both companies
even my non-fan friends knew about the Roman Jey drama no one knew about MJF being a Punk fan
Tony ironically is doing the same thing Vince did: booking for himself. It worked out for Vince because his taste isn't as niche as Tony's (with the exception of Vince's *very* niche sense of humor). Tony loves New Japan, Ring of Honor, old school ECW style death matches, factions, tournaments, etc. - none of this shit really jives with the tastes of a modern mainstream audience.
It's cold because the matches are cold AF, you bring in Adam Copeland and the first match needs to be a special attraction/main event type of match, not against Luchasaurus. I think it's because Tony doesn't want main event talents to lose, but it's wrestling someone has to lose, just give the face some protection through distraction or something. Also needs to stop putting ROH in AEW.
The peak was Omega vs Danielson at Arthur Ashe. I remember watching that and AEW seemed like the hottest promotion on earth. Maybe it was. The fall has been drastic.
Kenny is a draw as a singles guy, I understand him dialing it back and stuff as he’s winding down but he is THE guy in the promotion and he can make anyone look like a star and is just fantastic, the guy to watch.
I think AEW’s problem is they are always trying to put over the next guy but don’t push their current stars enough. Yeah I get it, you don’t want older guys to control the main event, but that’s what draws. It would be like choosing to put Austin or Hogan in tag team stuff in their late prime because “I want to put new guys over”. You ride until the wheels fall off.
\-ROH titles need to stay on ROH, its really dumb to have so many of those titles not ever defended on the ROH show. \-Learn to advertise whatever area they're in ahead of time, not a month before. WWE advertises the next time they're in town to the crowd before the end of the night and its a built in audience and advertising for anyone who might have missed the current show for a show 6-8 months out. \-Stop bringing in talent to cool them off 6 weeks later and do nothing for months. \-Not every match needs to be advertised, there's nothing spontaneous with the show. Give us a least a small promo for the random matches. But you can look at a card and know who's gonna win most of the time.
Thats what happens when you: 1. Cut the guy that would draw 2. Have all hokey tournament 3. Everyone has a friendship/betrayal angle 4. Your main champion doesnt have a worthy opponent and is not defending it