Wrestling Thread 5: FKA The Viking Experience • Page 500

Every time I hear him speak, it sounds like he has a cold and I want him to go blow his nose. It's kinda distracting, but he's super entertaining.

 

Brand splits when they actually adhere to the brand split is what's best for WWE. See: The SmackDown Six. WWE has so much talent currently that you don't need to see the same 5 people every single week even with a split, it's just that they are absolutely unwilling to give new faces a chance to shine (apparently without realized that it's also making people dislike their top stars more because of over-saturation)

 

viewership this week

AEW: 1,018,000
NXT: 790,000

 

BLP getting that Scranton money WM weekend

 

Surprised AEW didn’t have more than that.

 

Meanwhile, when you compare week 1 and 2 of AEW (incredibly short sample size)

You see some wildly different faces featured. Week 1 you get MJF, Pac, Cody, Kenny in promoted matches, Week 2, you get Darby, Private Party, Havoc, Britt Baker, etc...Obviously there was a bunch of overlap but there was also some serious diversity in the featured roster.

 

But how will Rosenberg complain about Mauro this week then?????

 

The baseball playoffs are going to affect viewership as well.

 

Yeah two game 5s will kill everything.

one baseball game alone had 6 million viewers

 

AEW was up against a NLDS game 5 on the west coast that went extra innings. Feels like that might explain some of the sag in ratings.

 

The Flyers home opener kept me from watching anything.

 

Hey >1,000,000 is a win no matter the context. That's an absurd amount of people for a company 2 weeks into it's real existence.

 

Even ignoring NXT completely, between Raw and SmackDown, WWE undeniably has the most talented roster of wrestlers perhaps of all time. And yet, even when someone like your IC champ gets on TV, we've been programmed to think that whatever is going to happen doesn't really matter because they're just filling time and checking a box because it's the IC championship and it needs to be on TV for the sake of being on TV. When really, it's like, SHINSUKE NAKAMURA IS YOUR MOTHER FUCKING IC CHAMPION. He should be headlining shows for you, even as the IC champ, and with the depth of your roster, he could be! You could make the IC title the focal point of an entire episode of SD every other week and, for the life of me, cannot understand what Vince's resistance to not cramming everything into 2-3 hour blocks every single week is.

I say Vince, because with how many people have come in and out of creative over the years, there is absolutely no way this point has not been brought up numerous times. Especially with how great NXT is at this exact thing.

Sorry, this is a rant. I'm fucking bored at work while simultaneously being overworked right now and kind of on a caffeine high but it makes me legitimately angry to look at how many talented people WWE has employed right now and that AEW could even be a viable competitor in the first place. And that's not a shot at AEW, I'm super stoked it's here and to have more variety, but there is no excuse for WWE not to be the undeniable standard-bearers.

 

Another note on the ratings is that that’s not counting the TruTV simulcast numbers either. A solid week especially going up against baseball game 5s

 

I thought this weeks Dynamite was a good bit better than last weeks and I thoroughly enjoyed last weeks. Good start for them.

 

Yeah, I'm actually impressed that week 2 of AEW didn't dip more than that, even with the Game 5s. I think everyone there knew it would dip in week 2. Gotta believe that they're insanely happy with over a million viewers

 

Is he not a fan of Mauro, then? I always forget Rosenberg exists.

 

He's constantly railing on Mauro for being "too hyped up" and not pacing things. He always throws in this disclaimer of, "Mauro is fantastic!" but then goes on to list 10 things he hates about Mauro's commentary. To be honest, feels like he tends to be extra critical of Mauro because he's pals with JBL, whether he's aware of it or not.

 

For the better, surely

 

Came to add this. They had another 120K on TruTV for a total of 1.140M. Absolutely respectable given the competition.

 

1.14m for AEW with TruTV simulcast

 

No Usos, Naomi, or Ember in the draft pool.

Usos and Naomi wouldn't be so surprising to be out given they're on a break.

But Ember missing is weird.

 

I wonder what tag teams they will stupidly split up in this draft?

 

vikings

 

I know breaking kayfabe shudnt bother me, but Roman speaking so openly about how he communicates with his opponents and the ref during the match is kinda bad.. Dunno.. He seems super likable here but the stuff he says bothers me for some reason