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In the late-’90s, the Monday Night Wars were fun for wrestling fans. The competition between WWE and WCW for ratings and fan attention brought the best out of both companies. Competition forced Vince McMahon to abandon the cartoonish style of wrestling he had promoted that appealed widely to young children in favor of an edgier product with characters that catered more to teenagers and young adults.
Each Monday night you could flip back and forth between Nitro and Raw. Both shows were also replayed, so you could watch one and tape the other or watch whichever show you didn’t want after Raw and NItro went off the air. Both companies took shots at each other and it truly was a fun time to be a wrestling fan, especially with talent switching companies to create big moments on TV and PPV when they debuted.
Whatever is going on between WWE and AEW right now is not fun for wrestling fans. WWE has taken their obsession with counter-programming AEW to near psychopathic levels. WWE is secure with their current TV deals. Their new deal to stream PLE’s on ESPN Unlimited is a major step up in visibility from their previous home at Peacock. I quipped to a friend that WWE could run a test pattern of a wrestling ring on TV and not be in any trouble anytime soon.
AEW is doing well, but they aren’t playing on the same field as WWE in terms of the TV deals that they have for their programming. AEW is an alternative to WWE, but they don’t provide the same level of competition to WWE that WCW did. AEW has the money to acquire talent and be a player for free agents, but the company has lost the renegade spirit it had when it launched.
AEW’s ratings and attendance have declined in recent years. The company used to have an underdog spirit that fans could rally behind when it launched, but many of the fans watching AEW programming have fallen off as reflected in the total viewership and the key 18-49 demo for Dynamite and Collision.
AEW COO and booker Tony Khan has been asked about WWE counter-programming AEW in recent months and he’s taken a measured approach with his comments. When asked during yesterday’s AEW All Out media call whether he would move his AEW PPV start times if WWE continued to counter-program AEW events head-to-head, Khan did not commit to doing so.
It feels like this is a very one-sided competition right now with Khan and AEW focusing on their programming and what they’ve got going on instead of firing back in a major way at WWE (although Khan did respond to a troll on Twitter saying WWE was going to put AEW out of business by replying with a GIF of Captain Picard from Star Trek with the caption “That will be the day”).
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WWE started going after AEW by running NXT PLE’s on the same weekend AEW PPVs aired. This weekend is the first time they’ve counter-programmed an AEW PPV with a main brand PLE. WWE had previously also run Saturday Night’s Main Event on NBC and Peacock head-to-head against AEW’s All In: Texas PPV.
There was also a recent report from Jon Alba of Sports Illustrated that stated WWE is helping TNA secure a TV deal for Impact to go head-to-head with Dynamite on Wednesday nights. We have seen AEW and NXT go head-to-head in the past on TV and now it appears WWE might be bringing in their partner, TNA, to help aid them in their obsession with damaging AEW’s business.
So who benefits from what WWE is doing this weekend? Certainly not the fans. At best, the war between AEW and WWE feels like a passive-aggressive one. There aren’t words being traded back and forth between Khan and Triple H anymore.
The shows from both sides aren’t feeding off each other in any tangible way like during the Monday Night Wars. It hardly feels like AEW is driving WWE to be a better product, as WWE is going through a cold spell creatively with its weekly programming being an at best frustrating watch with so many big matches resulting in a non-finish as a result of outside interference on Raw and Smackdown.
AEW has been a much more focused show when it comes to Dynamite (Collision continues feeling more like a throwaway second show that features good wrestling, but nothing happens on that show that feels must-see). Khan has become more focused on taking over creative control of the company as opposed to listening to outside voices and he has taken Dynamite to smaller arenas and venues for TV. These changes are not as a result of WWE’s actions, but instead are the result of an internal audit by Khan to make the product better in 2025.
Khan moved AEW’s PPV to the afternoon this Saturday to avoid going head-to-head with WWE’s Wrestlepalooza, which will air on ESPN Unlimited at 7 p.m. ET to make the best of the situation for fans, who are the real losers when it comes to WWE counter-programming AEW. This is not a war; it is WWE attempting to outright bully AEW out of business.
AEW PPVs tend to run long and be exhausting to watch given that (a) most matches are given a lot of time and (b) the match quality is high more often than not. The last thing I want to do after watching an AEW PPV is watch more wrestling.
WWE had been featuring PLEs that lasted for around two-and-a-half hours, but lately they’ve added more matches and broken away from the five match format and the shows have trended towards three hours. It is going to take a super human to watch and enjoy both shows on Saturday.
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No human that I know wants to watch between eight and nine hours of wrestling in a day, which is a low estimate on the total run time between Wrestlepalooza and All Out: Toronto. What is going on between WWE and AEW is a lose-lose situation for all fans.
I’m looking forward to both shows, but I am not excited to watch all of that wrestling on the same day. It is one thing to flip back and forth between Nitro and Raw during the Monday Night Wars, but it is another to force fans to sit through all of that wrestling in the same day.
The worst part of all of this has been ESPN and WWE’s patronizing response to questions about them counter-programming WWE. WWE and ESPN should stand behind what they are doing, but during ESPN’s media call ahead of Wrestlepalooza this week, ESPN VP of programming and acquisitions Matt Kenny said ESPN wanted a big event for the launch of ESPN Unlimited this month, but he did not say the scheduling had anything to do with competition with AEW.
“Really, it had less to do with any particular wrestling competition, said Kenny. “In fact, we take a holistic view. We know there is competition everywhere. Certainly in the fall on Saturdays, there’s no shortage of college football competition throughout the day. We welcome competition and do take a ‘game on’ approach. We are focused in this particular case to super-serve WWE and wrestling fans on our platforms.”
WWE and ESPN can’t even come out and say they want to put AEW out of business. Are people supposed to believe that WWE got out of its deal with Peacock early and magically a PLE appeared on the calendar for Sept. 20, which is the very same day as AEW’s PPV? It’s ridiculous.
Make no mistake about it, this will not be a fun war for wrestling fans if WWE continues to counter-program AEW. There is nothing about the feud between WWE and AEW that benefits the fans. Both WCW and WWE offered a better wrestling product for a period of time as a result of competition. Both companies traded barbs on TV and talent moved back and forth between both companies in an exciting manner. WWE is just pushing extra content on wrestling fans with no tangible benefit to the predatory scheduling of some of those events.
(Contact Sean at pwtorchsean@gmail.com. Follow him on X @SR_Torch and Bluesky @SeanRadican.)
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