10 Anti-AEW Moves WWE Made Out Of Spite

6. From WWE Network To USA Network

WWE moved NXT's weekly show from its own Network to USA and extended it by an hour as a direct response to AEW Dynamite's launch in 2019.

There are two common counterarguments to this. Neither stacks up.

1. "NXT was on Wednesdays first."

On a streaming platform, not television, which is a considerably more lucrative revenue stream. Plus, the show was an hour shorter.

2. "NXT would've eventually moved onto television anyway."

Pure speculation. Maybe it would have, maybe it wouldn't. There's no way of telling for sure, so the point holds no weight.

AEW announced its deal with WarnerMedia to bring a two-hour weekly show, Dynamite, to TNT on 15 May 2019. Three full months later, WWE confirmed NXT was heading to USA Network, where it would be extended by an hour and air in the exact same timeslot as Dynamite, meaning WWE had willingly entered direct cable competition with a rival promotion for the first time in years.

Hurriedly rushing NXT onto USA two weeks ahead of Dynamite's debut to gain an early foothold over the competition, WWE changed the black and gold brand immensely. Gone was the effective week-to-week booking of hold, replaced with the impatient, relentless hot-shotting of potential money-spinning matches to pop artificial ratings. Hyper-focused on stifling the competition's growth, not itself, NXT became the Wednesday Night Wars' chief aggressor from its first USA episode.

That it ended up losing the War so soundly, outdoing AEW Dynamite only once in the key 18-49 demographic in regular timeslots between October 2019 and April 2021, stands as one of WWE's greatest modern failures.