and i agree gloating about beating them on fs1 is bushleague and only hypes your, heavily bias, base. its like if doanld trump ran a wrestling show.

I've wondered about that 18-34 demo. I remember hearing what t was more valuable than the older demo was because the older demo is more set in their ways and not as easily influenced but is that the case now? The older demo grew up when pop culture was starting to impact society. People age differently nowadays.

young people will always be easier to influence. you dont know what you like until youve lived and taken chances. i dont think thats generational HOWEVER if you convert a customer in their 20s you might be getting 60 years of business. you convert an 80 year old... well its not as lucrative to say the least.

Don't wanna quote Lock Jaw's long post, but TNA was really good from 2005-2008. Maybe even to 2009 - right before Hogan came into play.

Semi-related: I liked that not every match was a bunch of flippy stuff since they had the X Division. I think rasslin is well past separating flippy stuff from other stuff now though.

At this point the demos have basically become the participation trophies of ratings. But they are also accurate, so I get it.

Ignore the fact that we lost every other category and the overall guys because we won this one little segment! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! WWE is a trainwreck of a company.

I actually like AEW for what it is btw. But the way they, and by they I mean mostly Tony Khan, are so full of themselves is kinda off putting in a weird way. He sounds less like the guy in charge and more like a teenage mark every day.

Lots of really good posts here, to be honest. It’s refreshing, because I expected a lot of chest-thumping for AEW. It really is silly.

With the demos, you can tell the reporting is biased because AEW getting killed in women, which is important, is completely brushed over. Vastardikai pointed that out.

It’s great if you can get 18 year old influencers on-board with your content. But do we even have evidence of this? The average age of the AEW fan is something like 47, isn’t it? Plus, I’m fairly certain that when it comes to people with disposable income, the balance has changed since the period where 18-49 men ruled the day. It’s not COMPLETELY different, or different in all cases. But the zeroing in on this demo just suits the story.

If AEW were doing better in viewership, that would be the story. Guaranteed.

Apparently the first and third largest markets in the US weren’t counted for WWE either.

lol I think Cornette referred to Tony Khan as a Millionaire Mark and he was not wrong.

Khan is definitely a mark, and whilst I get bored of talk of ratings or demos or whatever, I definitely appreciate the boundless enthusiasm. I’d be the same way if I had access to deep pockets and could run my own promotion.

We have been telling you for the longest time that most people here have balanaced opinions on AEW.

This. I wonder if Khan had a vivacious EWR discussion group when he was younger. :lol:

He's playing to his base and trying to drum up enthusiasm for the "alternative brand". I get it. It's all peacocking and smoke and mirrors. He's also trying to come off as "one of us" despite being a 2nd generation billionaire. He is clearly a socially awkward guy based off the post-PPV media scrums. I thought he was going to lick CM Punk's penis in front of Dave Meltzer.

At the end of the day though I find their overall show more entertaining than WWE. That's all that matters to me. AEW has me considering paying $50 for a PPV and I haven't done that since WrestleMania XXVIII.

This is all it is, really. I've bought 3 of their PPV's at that price. The last time I paid for a WWE PPV was probably the mania before everything went to the network.

I wish Tony would stop talking about WWE. It doesn't make anything better in any way. I don't really care about demos in ratings personally. Claiming a victory while still losing in total viewers seems really petty to me.

AEW definitely is better since Tony took over booking completely but I don't need to have the curtain raised on everything that happens backstage. I prefer a little more kayfabe than say having shoot interviews at a press conference after a big show or ppv.

WWE also has a decades long history, so it makes sense that they would have a lot of "die hard" older fans who have been watching for a long time

Sorry, I disagree with that. Something has changed. It’s hard to put a finger on it, but I think the general disappointment after the hype Punk and Danielson brought, or being unable to capitalize on All Out has altered people’s perception. Even if you don’t see through the entire product, per se, more people just haven’t been tickled in a sustained way after these biggish moments, and they realize that.

It could just be timing and the product cooling. Their ratings have reflected a more widespread malaise with the product. Dynamite has been cooling off from 1.2 million to 1 million, Rampage down from 1 million to 500k, etc. People have been effected by the product somehow.

And that’s fair enough. It really is. If you feel great spending $150 on this stuff, then I’m glad you’ve gotten the chance to do that. I can’t say the same thing though, and the reason I think it is relevant is because I think for everybody who is stoked to spend $150 on AEW, there are people who would rather not even get paid that amount of money to watch it.

It’s not a sure-fire hit — it’s hit-and-miss.

Imagine how much cooler Tony would look if instead of getting overly excited about specific demos, he took a way more laid-back approach and was like “Hey, it’s cool people look for patterns and stuff. I’m always trying to be better though. I’d love to get more older people watching, earn the respect of more entrenched fans, make believers out of children and really endear ourselves to women. Most of all, I want the people who check us out one week come back the next.”

Like, there’s a way of appearing humble and not pissing on every fan you don’t get.

Tony being a mark is definitely kinda lame but it's double edged sword. Because he is the mark that he is, we get a very fan friendly product that pleases the fan base big time. Sure there are nit picky things we can critique but overall I really enjoy AEW, especially since he began booking and they brought the show back on tour with fans.

I give him some grace because he has no experience with booking but with that said he's been doing a great job.

My biggest critique for AEW is not the booking but the lack of care taken by the agents to prevent spots being repeated throughout a show. Too many guys wrestling like The Bucks essentially. Too many dive spots, leg slaps and super kicks. I would appreciate some care taken to not repeat certain moves in more than one match. That's probably my biggest pet peeve on AEW.

I also really don't like dive spots that don't look painful. When the diver barely touches the guy/guys on the ground and yet the sell it like getting hit by a brick that really makes me roll my eyes.

This is definitely a fair point. It's especially bad when somebody does, say, a throwaway table spot early in the show that is meant to be a major part of the finish to the main.

I realize that most/all matches on Dynamite have their own agent, they usually only have about 5 matches per show so it's good to have an agent dedicated to each match instead of spreading themselves thin. But some sort of pre-show meeting amongst the agents and Tony/Cody or whoever where they can lay out a few key spots to reserve for one match would help tidy things up a bit.

Tony Khan is definitely still playing EWR.

Tony Khan has posted on internet wrestling message boards before. Be hilarious if he still did.

His original user name from the early 2000s (Coach Tony K on DVDVR) was found out but you never know, he could always find another alias.

There’s no real excuse for a booker to be doing the same shit up and down a card. That’s on them to not allow. Agents should also know how structure matches in ways that fit their position on the card. You know if you’ve got a main event, a tag, a mid-card match, etc. You can assess by the people in it, the style they work, what else is on the card, how long you’ve got, etc.

For example, if you’ve got Danielson, Punk, Cole and Omega for a 25-minute tag team match in the middle of the show, even though it’s not the main event, what a smart way to structure that is. You should know how to have threads coming in and out of it. The finish will tell you a lot. If Moxley and Kingston are doing a death match later, you know you probably don’t want much brawling.

Obviously the booker should be direct with these things first and foremost, but the agents could apply more knowledge than they obviously do. And then the wrestlers down from that too. If you’ve got 5 minutes to get over and you’re on the same card as the Bucks, maybe try not to do some leg slap superkicks and dives? Find a better way.

I dunno, industry is on its ass for these reasons and so many more. If guys were smart enough to figure it out on any level, some serious holes could be plugged.

Tony Khan's probably fanning the flames to bring more attention to his product even if it is toxic fandom. He may use this as leverage when it's time to renegotiate tv deals.

Really good page of posts here

I have bought 4 myself at that price, usually making that decision the day of. For me at least, that has nothing to do with the quality of WWE, but the benefit of the WWE Network. If there was no WWE Network, I would certainly buy the Rumble, Mania, and Summerslam every year, and probably one or two other random PPVs or Survivor Series, based on if they had good cards.

That is why the Network was always a great value, because at $9.99 a month I was paying $120 a year instead of $150-250 for a handful of PPVs. Part of the ease of buying an AEW PPV every so often is because I am no longer having to pay that $50 for WWE PPVs.

Going further, with $120 now going to Peacock, which I already had the $9.99 sub for before the Network moved there, I see that as an extra $120.00 for Wrestling in my entertainment budget that no longer goes toward the standalone WWE Network. Putting that towards 2 or 3 AEW PPVs a year is just 9-10 hours of bonus wrestling I get to watch now without feeling like im wasting too much money.

I mentioned this some other week..... but Kenny Omega and Brian Cage both have a thing where they encourage the fans to clap the Terminator theme music. There is absolutely no reason why they can't just tell one of them to stop other than that they don't like to tell people what not to do.

Has Brian Cage done that? Don't remember ever seeing him do that in AEW...

He did it in the one match of his I saw.... that recent one....

Kenny just did it. Last week maybe? Never seen Cage do it.

Cage definitely did it in his match against Starks. I don’t recall Omega doing it in AEW even though the live crowd has done the clap before. I think Omega should get rid of it and let Cage have it. Omega is over and the top guy in the company. Cage is trying to get over as a babyface who can’t talk. Let him have something that can help get fans engaged in his match.

Cage has done that Terminator clap shit since 2015 at least.

i feel like kenny's used it for years too but not sure of the timeframe

either way someone needs to cut it out

I definitely associate the terminator clap with Kenny. I never noticed it with Cage. I am anti-Cage though, I just don't like him. I saw him wrestle RVD at an impact taping and it was terrible, so ever since I really just don't care for him.

I’ve had this feeling for quite a few weeks that Brian Cage is not long for the AEW world. Doing the Terminator clap is insanely stupid/defiant on his part. Silly for two guys to do it.

“I’m of the sentiment that Tony Khan’s doing a lot of talking about nothing,” Booker T said. “Go out and produce a good show. At the end of the day, we’ll know who won, if that’s what we’re looking for, if that’s your goal post, if that’s what you’re trying to score, but all of this talk about what you’re doing and this and that back and forth, I swear man, it sounds like a little school girl saying how pretty she is over the other girls on the school yard. I could be wrong, but to me, that’s what it sounds like. It doesn’t sound like a boss."

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ooker_Pose.jpg

Everyone knows television doesn’t work the way Tony Khan is acting like it works. Makes them look stupid as shit for reacting like they just won Prom Queen. Even though they got less votes.

And Red Velvet's ongoing feud with her cervical spine continued this past week on Dark. She attempted a Spanish Fly from the second rope on Diamante and Scorpioned herself.

Now Tony Khan is out here burying Eric Bischoff and Matt Sydel. He can't help himself, and I very much dislike him. I guarantee this dude's emails have way worse stuff in them than Jon Gruden's. The way he spazzes out at any criticism, I bet he has some good rants in his emails :rofl: