sek69

In the Britt Baker hype video talking about her Pittsburgh roots one of the photos that were shown was of her with Cole. I saw that on the big screen in the arena and wondered if it made it on TV or not.

The issue is that wrestling fans look at the overall number of viewers, but TV networks look at key demos way more. I think AEW ended up ranked #4 in 18-49, and TNT would care about that more than had they finished lower but had more overall viewers. Now that the NBA is back, it should be interesting to see how much synergy there is considering AEW has exceeded TNT's expectations so far.

They will be on Saturdays, not sure what the cable price is. Bleacher Report is the streaming option.

Catching up on Impact and I just watched the Brian Cage-Melissa Santos wedding and it was the most wrestling-est wrestling wedding ever and it was awesome. I kinda wish I could have had Jim Mitchell officiate my wedding.

...but Madison isn't a Hart family member? Or am I missing a joke here? I do like what the current team running IMPACT is doing, it's just a shame they are doing it with the Chernobyl of wrestling companies most people won't want to give (yet another) chance to.

Yeah both shows did pretty good against strong competition. I think a lot of people were expecting much lower drops from both shows.

AEW: 963,000 NXT: 698,000 Going up against the World Series and the start of the NBA season, I was expecting both shows to drop more than that. AEW is still almost tripling in the key demos, but we should all remember NXT wasn't getting super high viewership on the network so 700,000 on cable TV is probably ten times the viewers they ever had prior.

Cain is definitely a bigger fan of lucha than WWE, but I can't fault a guy for going where the money is.

It wasn't a complete sellout, but I would say it was probably at least 80% full not counting the section they left empty for the hard cam/lighting. That's something they are doing differently than WWE. At WWE shows the hard cam is usually on the floor in front of the first row of elevated seats, at this show AEW had the hard cameras (there were 3) placed in front of a row of seats halfway up the section off the floor with lights arranged around them. There was another empty section on that side at the start of the show but it filled up during the first match.

WWE shows have been provably bad and AEW has been a breath of fresh air by making booking choices that used to be commonplace but haven't been in 20 years. Saying it's a matter of "WWE bad, AEW good" just diluting a legit discussion to absurd extremes to cover for the fact WWE has problems that need to be addressed. NXT was really good last night. I have no faith anyone on that show has a chance in hell at succeeding on the main roster for obvious reasons. That is not a "WWE bad, AEW good" argument. There's letting things play out and then there's expecting the scorpion not to sting you when it's been known to do so for decades,

I'm a fair man, so I'll give him credit for mentioning on today's show that just maybe "Pittsburgh is a bad crowd" is just something he's been told by WWE people and that if you put on a good show you'll get a good crowd.

Yeah Cain pulled out of the testing pool and told UFC he retired, so he's going to stick around.

I really want to see Private Party on a AAA show after their match tonight, flippy dudes vs luchadores is a great combination. Speaking of, it was nice to be able to scratch "see the AAA Megacampeon in person" off my wrestling bucket list.

Also after the main event Kenny stopped PAC from Pillmanizing Mox's head, then Hangman came out to challenge PAC for a match at Full Gear.

Just got back from the show, wow was that a fun experience live. Since they don't stop for commercials it was way faster paced than being at a WWE TV taping. There were only two points they stopped, once was before the Cody promo where he was having fun messing with the crowd by getting them to chant different things then saying "you know we're in break, right?". The other was before the main event where Justin Roberts asked people to show off their signs and one was "Sorry about your dead birthday horse". It's also funny how every time WWE is here for TV or PPV, I have to listen to Dave go on and on about how Pittsburgh is a bad, dead crowd. That certainly wasn't the case tonight, people were into every match and it really had the feel of an early 90s ECW show where the crowd feels "this is our show" instead of waiting for the next time the company fucks them over.

The marketplace already did though. They don't have a good record drawing the second time in a market, so running a house show loop seems to fly in the face of what they should have already learned from the shows they've already done. I'm also guessing these shows are going to largely be LA Dojo and Young Lion types filling the card as well, which won't do much to put butts in seats.

Because like it or not it's a major event now since the Saudis want it to be on the level of a Wrestlemania.

The Spiritual Advisor is Jocephus's manager on the indies. I suppose they are going to do a deal where he goes to her to turn things around since James Storm keeps punking him out.

I get that announcing is a personal taste thing, but Justin Roberts always came across as someone who made AEW seem legit rather than a retread. Then again I grew up on the Fink and everyone since has come across as second tier, so it's possible I'm just biased.

I popped for Kingston's "don't steal my heat, Jim" when Cornette tried to speak during his promo. Also Kamille rules as the world's hottest Mike Enos.

Silver King's death seems to have been the moment that finally clued in Lucha promotions to the fact they shouldn't fuck around with having medical personnel on shows.

It's a tough spot isn't it? Sign anyone who's been on TV elsewhere in the last 20 years and they're a WWE cast off. Sign someone who's never been on TV and they get disregarded as an indy nobody. Not just for AEW, but anyone who's not WWE since 2001, it's hard to get anyone who doesn't have some level of WWE stink on them.

So he had surgery on his 4th cervical vertebra so it looks like at best his wrestling career is over, hopeful he's able to have a normal life otherwise.

Seven months of Mid South from 1985 dropped the other day, Rock n Rolls vs Hector and Chavo Guerrero was better than anything any company will put out this week.

For all the crap Dave gets both justified or otherwise, he really does know the business side of wrestling better than all but a handful of people.