Yeah I'm thinking AEW will get the first watch at least for the first few weeks. At this point NXT is a known quantity, AEW is something unknown as a TV product that will probably be entertaining for all sorts of reasons.

So apparently NXT tonight is commercial free for the first 30 minutes & they're opening with Riddle/Cole. WWE really trying to go all out.

6 minutes ago, Coffey said:

So apparently NXT tonight is commercial free for the first 30 minutes & they're opening with Riddle/Cole. WWE really trying to go all out.

....and a 15 minute overrun at the end too!

 

It must be nice for the NXT guys & girls to know the ONLY reason they got on TV is to fuck around with fellow workers who are only trying to make a good living.

Fucking hell lads, here we go. T minus 5 minutes.

1 hour ago, El-P said:

It must be nice for the NXT guys & girls to know the ONLY reason they got on TV is to fuck around with fellow workers who are only trying to make a good living.

Dinner at the Cole/Baker household must be fun.

"Good luck on USA, dear" "Hope we run you out of business honey"

Io's ass is out of this world. She came out looking like a star too. Then Mia Yim came out and it felt really deflated.

Cole/Riddle I wasn't paying a lot of attention to because Cody/Sammy pulled me in. 

Finn going back to NXT I guess is good if they're going to try to make NXT a big deal. Cause he's not done anything on the main roster really. 

Finn's new haircut is not good

Are both hours of NXT on USA now?  I checked Hulu this morning, and the Oct 2 episode of NXT was 59 minutes.  Are they cutting it down like they do/did Raw and Smackdown?

Dave was very sure that NXT would win the ratings war up until the morning of the shows, where he felt AEW had superior buzz. Also said that it was fed back to him that far more people watched AEW than NXT via Playstation, while obviously acknowledging that that's not a representative sample size. 

15 hours ago, Coffey said:

Io's ass is out of this world. She came out looking like a star too. Then Mia Yim came out and it felt really deflated.

Io has so much charisma it's not even funny. She doesn't needs to speak a word of english to connect to a crowd. It still amazes me that WWE still have the mindset that their foreign talent have to fit in with all the others when it comes to promo work. 

2 hours ago, Log said:

Are both hours of NXT on USA now?  I checked Hulu this morning, and the Oct 2 episode of NXT was 59 minutes.  Are they cutting it down like they do/did Raw and Smackdown?

Hmm....so that means that Sportsnet 360 up here in Canada will show the Hulu version every week prior to Smackdown then....

2 hours ago, FMKK said:

Dave was very sure that NXT would win the ratings war up until the morning of the shows, where he felt AEW had superior buzz. Also said that it was fed back to him that far more people watched AEW than NXT via Playstation, while obviously acknowledging that that's not a representative sample size. 

I know several people that were lapsed fans and watched AEW and NXT wasn't even on their radar. I think AEW did a good job of casting a wide net while WWE counter programmed with the idea of they were fighting over the same group of fans they see at their shows. 

And when there were hot women in the crowd during the Monday Night Wars, absolutely none of them were there for the goofy Disco Inferno, whose real life face somehow looked like a caricature drawn by a street artist.

48 minutes ago, Mad Dog said:

I know several people that were lapsed fans and watched AEW and NXT wasn't even on their radar. I think AEW did a good job of casting a wide net while WWE counter programmed with the idea of they were fighting over the same group of fans they see at their shows. 

Yeah, it just felt like a bigger buzz show. The real test is keeping up that interest though.

Of course, the usual suspects who were jumping on Dave for downplaying expectations before are now jumping on him for trying to will and AEW win into existence. 

46 minutes ago, C.S. said:

And when there were hot women in the crowd during the Monday Night Wars, absolutely none of them were there for the goofy Disco Inferno, whose real life face somehow looked like a caricature drawn by a street artist.

I'm sure those hot girls are absolutely loving hanging around with nobody WCW midcarder.

Getting paid models to sit on a couch and pose for a picture for you isn't much of an accomplishment, especially if you're bribing them with liquor.

The rating they pulled in Charlotte is kind of eye opening. They might actually pull in a lot of old WCW fans. 

20 hours ago, El-P said:

It must be nice for the NXT guys & girls to know the ONLY reason they got on TV is to fuck around with fellow workers who are only trying to make a good living.

Or, USA is trying to offset the loss of RAW along with the Chrisley reality show empire likely going down in flames. WWE keeps the USA network somewhat viable.

Which leads me to this question: is there hope that NXT will fail? I don't ask that sarcastically. It feels that a lot of fans are now finding ways to take dumps on NXT, for whatever reason. Why?

Honestly because it hasn't been very good since Mania weekend. They have made very poor booking decisions and it has been mediocre at best. 

I also think some people just want it to fail against AEW to humble the WWE a bit. 

30 minutes ago, Burgundy LaRue said:

Which leads me to this question: is there hope that NXT will fail? I don't ask that sarcastically. It feels that a lot of fans are now finding ways to take dumps on NXT, for whatever reason. Why?

Not on my part there isn't. There is hope AEW will succeed, and by that I don't even mean "beat WWE in the ratings", I just mean being able to exist on a large scale and provide a true alternative for both pro-wrestling fans who aren't WWE fans (aka me, for instance) and workers.

But the idea that the WWE and its predatory tactics could take a hit (which sadly in this context means NXT "failing", whatever that means since they are only on TV as a counter program) is indeed appealing. So it's less NXT than "an element of the WWE machine". I mean, the state of mind of many, me included, is "Let us have something else to watch for fuck's sake." Of course, I could live with IMPACT and be happy about it, like I was with LU, but a larger scale alternative is a breath of fresh air.

1 hour ago, FMKK said:

I'm sure those hot girls are absolutely loving hanging around with nobody WCW midcarder.

To the pay window, baby.

(well, he's doing night club business in Vegas, so I guess that's conducive to taking pic with hot girls)

52 minutes ago, Burgundy LaRue said:

Or, USA is trying to offset the loss of RAW along with the Chrisley reality show empire likely going down in flames. WWE keeps the USA network somewhat viable.

Which leads me to this question: is there hope that NXT will fail? I don't ask that sarcastically. It feels that a lot of fans are now finding ways to take dumps on NXT, for whatever reason. Why?

I don't really want it to fail but I feel like it's been coasting on reputation for a while and has lost a good bit of the original charm. It would be nice for that to be rediscovered but if they lose the ratings for a couple of weeks, it's more likely that there's more hotshot matches and main roster names called up. I think it's just quite a bland promotion working a style I'm not hugely fond of (the Takeover mains have been fucking death to me the last year or two tbh). Really, I'm not huge on Gangarno or Cole and I can't listen to Mauro without cringing.

I totally understand the appeal of a wrestling show that has WWE production values but no main roster BS.

EDIT: Also WWE being humbled and seeing consequences for their bad booking that's run off so many fans would be satisfying to some degree I admit.

 

AEW did 878k in just the 18-49 demo.

That wasn't even close. And NXT pulled off all the guns last night.