How WWE Destroyed Shayna Baszler
Dread it, run from it, it's the WWE main roster.
NXT wasn't quite at its critical peak when WWE made the evidently rash decision to broker a deal with USA Network and extend it to two hours in 2019. But it wasn't far removed from it.
Crucially, in the old format that didn't really matter either. The one-hour weekly Network show was adored by its devotees and built with a precessional regularity to TakeOver specials that were celebrated by the wider fanbase as well as those within the industry.
This was lost in the discourse of October 2019 as WWE armed their once-developmental territory for a cynical ratings war. The black-and-gold brand was fairly robustly constructed around fortnightly television feuds as an accompaniment to longer term angles for the quarterly-ish specials. Adding 60 minutes per week and needing more headline-grabbing main events risked exposing and exploding that system.
And it did.
NXT and AEW Dynamite went head-to-head 75 times. In total viewership, WWE's offering won just 10 of those weekly battles. In securing the eyes of the 18-49 demographic, they managed it only once.
Deservedly so, too. Shayna Baszler was possibly going to lose her title, and it felt like the biggest deal in the f*cking world.
CONT'D...