How NXT Has Already Won The Wednesday Night War
Perhaps the super-served content era is a clever strategy, after all...
In January, All Elite Wrestling formed with a lofty, rallying cry of a mission statement: to Change The World. And for a time, that felt very much plausible.
Instantly, with WWE shook, talk of billionaire-funded competition spawned talk of bumper contract offers, release requests - even, and this seems almost cruel now, a boom period. The formation rally was chintzy, in a charming sort of way: even the pyro, hardly an eruption, felt in some earnest and different. Ambitious, but humble. The Road To Double Or Nothing series hinted at a very strong grasp of understated, in-depth storytelling abundant in detail and the immersion of realism, and the show itself - a smorgasbord of style and emotion that instantly cast the promotion as a high-end, vital, special proposition - was a smash success.
Some 10 days before the show, AEW announced its potential game-changer of a TV deal in partnership with TNT - formerly the home of WCW. This exacerbated the competition narrative - it's the Monday Night Wars all over again! - which AEW, explicitly or otherwise, conditioned with throne-break flexing and a vocabulary, heavily indebted to sport and competition, not unlike that of WCW's Tony Schiavone, who of course joined the upstart ahead of AEW Dynamite's debut broadcast. Double Or Nothing and the first three Dynamite shows sold out more or less instantly; per the Wrestling Observer's Dave Meltzer, demand was so high for that first show that AEW could have viably promoted in an an open-air stadium. Back in February, AEW was competing with WrestleMania, much less WWE.
In December, it's only competing - barely - with NXT.
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