AEW's Cody Rhodes Gives His Thoughts On The Wednesday Night Wars
During a recent interview with Yahoo...
When AEW Dynamite debuted on TNT on October 2nd, a new professional wrestling ratings war began as the young promotion went head to head with WWE NXT. Since then, the wrestling world has been enamoured with what has been christened the Wednesday Night Wars.
As the Executive Vice President of All Elite Wrestling, Cody Rhodes has been at the centre of this new ratings war. However, during a recent interview with Yahoo, The American Nightmare downplayed the importance of getting a higher viewership than NXT.
He explained, "our concern is not NXT" and that AEW was instead focussed on its own programming. He did admit that he finds it fun to look at the ratings, but the only information he has taken from them is that more people are watching professional wrestling on Wednesday nights which "is cool."
Cody elaborated: "There’s a romantic way to look at the ratings and say, 'Here we are, it’s the late 1990s again. Every Thursday let’s check em.' It’s fun to look at the ratings but I know internally we’re not having any pep rally speeches. Our concern is not NXT and I believe NXT’s concern is not us. If anyone is going to succeed, we cannot be a reactionary brand. One really good, positive takeaway that the ratings war doesn’t show is that there is a lot less crossover between the fan bases, there’s a lot less of the turning the channel between one and the other. That means there’s a lot of people just watching wrestling on Wednesday nights. Making wrestling destination programming again is cool."
As the Executive Vice President of All Elite Wrestling, Cody Rhodes has been at the centre of this new ratings war. However, during a recent interview with Yahoo, The American Nightmare downplayed the importance of getting a higher viewership than NXT.
He explained, "our concern is not NXT" and that AEW was instead focussed on its own programming. He did admit that he finds it fun to look at the ratings, but the only information he has taken from them is that more people are watching professional wrestling on Wednesday nights which "is cool."
Cody elaborated: "There’s a romantic way to look at the ratings and say, 'Here we are, it’s the late 1990s again. Every Thursday let’s check em.' It’s fun to look at the ratings but I know internally we’re not having any pep rally speeches. Our concern is not NXT and I believe NXT’s concern is not us. If anyone is going to succeed, we cannot be a reactionary brand. One really good, positive takeaway that the ratings war doesn’t show is that there is a lot less crossover between the fan bases, there’s a lot less of the turning the channel between one and the other. That means there’s a lot of people just watching wrestling on Wednesday nights. Making wrestling destination programming again is cool."
Written by Aidan Gibbons
Editor-in-Chief of Cultaholic.com Twitter: @theaidangibbons
