10 Dream Scenarios For Wrestling's New BOOM Period
4. The Houses Get Better In AEW
What's going on with AEW's attendances?
Excuses are often made on the company's behalf. Local promotion not being great. There isn't a very forgiving budget option like there used to be. Fans are now wise to the reductions offered late in the promotional cycle and are now tentative about buying early. It's not as if there's a danger that they'll miss out.
Legendary promoter Paul Boesch, in his time, sought to simplify an issue that impacts every promotion with a core, no-excuses philosophy: if the house was bad, he'd just given them a main event the people did not want to see.
That - the byproduct of AEW's super-sized roster and rotating cast policy - is an integral part of a problem. What works to avoid over-exposure on television doesn't convince people to come out for the shows in huge numbers.
There is no guarantee that you'll see Jon Moxley, Hangman Page or Bryan Danielson in the main event. Great as Orange Cassidy Vs. Matt Taven was on the night, given that Taven was squashed by Swerve Strickland just weeks later, it was the exact sort of match that compounds the problem. There's every chance you spend your hard-earned on something that really doesn't matter.
AEW might just be inching closer to a more all killer, no filler philosophy, looking at the way in which Kazuchika Okada and Will Ospreay have been presented thus far. More of this is needed.
AEW with the feeling and the gates back is the exclamation point this resurgence needs.