Holy shit, I was almost about to concede you were right about something, but then I re-read what I said: “My point is that the shitty but profitable Saudi deal forced their hand. They feltlike they had to use NXT talent…” Context is key. ;) My intended implication was that their hand was forced, because they felt like they had to do something. I don’t agree that they HAD to, but that’s still their hand being forced. You’ll argue this black and blue, but that was my point, and this is me clarifying and being “nice” about it. I also went back to see if I have said it multiple times. I do not think I have.

The SmackDown/NXT crossover happened right around Survivor Series. I think this was the second week of November? You do SmackDown vs. NXT then, I don’t see how it is a massive leap to have NXT at the Survivor Series. It goes to follow.

Should Nexus have gone over John Cena at SummerSlam 2010? The intended story could have been that Raw and SmackDown have too many issues and NXT’s unity was what helped them snatch up some victories. In fact, I think that was an element to the story at some point, although I cannot be sure it wasn’t dropped, butchered or made inconsequential. My argument isn’t that the WWE told this story exceptionally well — just that there are many reasons you wouldn’t just swat down NXT on the night besides “WWE IS TRYING SO HARD TO DESTROY AEW!!!!”

NXT could have taken a huge perception blow had they been steamrolled by Raw and SmackDown. And I think if you were being honest about it, you would admit that had that happened, you’d be one of the people here mocking them for it. It’s damned if they do, damned if they don’t with you. Having them go over on one night doesn’t kill Raw or SmackDown off. It could have been used to fuel more stories (not saying that it WAS, just that it COULD have been). It gives them a little bit of a rub. It doesn’t mean that NXT is now the #1 show in wrestling. Once you have them there, it’s the common sense outcome. You don’t bring them up to lose, lol.

Oh dang! He got you there, King fan. Case closed.

If they didn't HAVE to then their hand wasn't forced. You can't have it both ways. And if their hand wasn't ACTUALLY forced we're already starting on a premise of them doing what they want. Even if they felt compelled to use NXT one night against Smackdown guys, that didn't force them to turn it into a major angle for their next big show. They made a conscious decision to run with the angle.

The development guys SHOULD lose to the main roster stars. If your arm is twisted and you absolutely have to book it (WHICH, AGAIN, THEY DIDN'T), you don't put guys who aren't main roster ready over your main roster. It's fucking stupid. NXT was already perceived as the "minor leagues". Putting up a fight but losing to the major league doesn't hurt anything. Unless your goal is to push your development brand as an equal to your main roster. Which is stupid. Which is my point.

And ultimately your argument against that point is...

Another awkward attempt to shoehorn your AEW obsession into a conversation. I literally mentioned AEW 0 times while you've kept trying to argue against an imaginary "WWE WAS TRYING SO HARD TO DESTROY AEW!!!!” narrative. lol

If you look at the ratings was side by side taking into consideration WWE history and AEW history, AEW has blown away anything WWE has ever done by being such a huge success on cable much quicker than WWF was when it first went on USA.

If you felt like your hand is forced, you are going to act like you have to play the hand. You’re arguing semantics and it’s textbook for you, but that is where the conversation stops. You absolutely can have it both ways. A shotgun wedding doesn’t literally need a shotgun.

Of course they turned it into a major angle for their next big show. It was an inter-promotional issue promoted en route to their next big show. They would have been mocked if they had dropped it too.

There are cases where it is fine to push fresh talent. I don’t know if they used people that weren’t main roster ready on the show. I’m not going to go through each name, but I’m pretty sure most of them were fairly experienced at this point and a lot of them would be featured on the main roster within a year.

Whether NXT was or wasn’t perceived as the “minor leagues” and how intentional that was or wasn’t is a completely different argument. But even taking your point at face value, there are contexts where having the minor league go over has benefits — to both the minor and the major. It doesn’t mean they have to be equal. Ultimately, you can see that NXT was not pushed as equal, is not pushed as equal, and probably was never intended to be equal.

That’s what the Wednesday Night Wars were about, bub. That’s the narrative behind WWE trying to push NXT as an alleged monster against Dynamite, putting them over everyone else and loading them up with top drawing talent like Charlotte. It’s why we’re having this discussion. You bring up Charlotte and NXT every time it comes up like that was some sort of power play, lol.

Do you deny that narrative exists?

You’re trying to appeal to emotion. What is shoehorned in about AEW in a conversation about the Wednesday night ratings between 2019 and the end of Charlotte’s appearances in 2020? Lol, get fucked with that sneaky shit.

Anyway, back to ratings instead of derailing another thread with that disingenuous cunt:

Winter is Coming should see an increase for Dynamite and Rampage, but it will be concerning if it does not. You can only run so many “special shows” before they stop being special. And historically, these things have been unable to hook people for any longer period of time.

913k for Winter Dynamite last year. It was earlier and went up against NXT, which got 658k. I somehow doubt we’re going to get 1.571 million people watching on Wednesday. I think we’re probably looking at about 960k people for Dynamite. They’ll call that a win.

"Other stuff is on TV Wednesday, or Dynamite would likely get about 100 million viewers" ~ Dave Meltzer, direct quote

I literally made the point that they tried to push NXT as a third brand on par with Raw and Smackdown.

That is not the same as the “WWE TRIED THEIR HARDEST TO SQUASH AEW!” argument you decided argue against out of the blue.

It’s shoehorned because it’s literally, 100%, clear as fucking day NOT what was being discussed. Not even remotely. Like... literally 0 to do with AEW and the Wednesday night wars. This should be obvious to anyone with a remotely functioning brain. This entire conversation is available for you and everyone to read. Are you just hoping anyone reading this suffers a traumatic brain injury moments before logging on and what you just said will sound smart? Who are you trying to convince with this batshit crazy rationale?

How braindead/delusional do you plan on getting? You’re reaching new levels at a ridiculous rate.

All the rep and honorary king for a day status for anyone who stops me immediately when I try to engage Noid in a rational conversation from now on.

I know a few people enjoy me guiding him down these insane logic holes he goes down but... Goddamn. I gotta break the constant urge to engage with irrational dipshits. It’s an addiction.

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They’ve never promoted it as being on par with Raw and SmackDown. You’re just wrong, lol. Putting them over on a couple of shows before sending them back down into third tier is not the same thing.

It’s not out of the blue. That was the narrative Dave Meltzer and AEW apologists have pushed since NXT went to the USA Network. Are you going to deny that? I don’t need you to say it to point out that the idea that the Survivor Series and Charlotte going to NXT for a cup of coffee were not plans to shoot NXT into unrivalled air. You’ve read the whole situation wrong, and have for ages, way beyond this thread.

Lol, you’re not rational.

The internet is full of people who think the WWE is run so stupidly, but they’re stupider than the company is. You are the epitome of that. If you cannot understand why the WWE may have chosen to supplement its roster while most of them were stuck over in Saudi Arabia, why they followed that to a logical conclusion, and how this was not them going all out, and how this connects to bullshit being spewed about the WWE’s mentality in how they positioned NXT, then you cannot be helped. You’ve started with the conclusion you want and will just try to insult people who don’t agree with you.

Is anyone confused as to how the WWE apparently trying to push NXT as a legitimate third tier brand connects to the Wednesday Night Wars? Anyone? Man, that shit’s so imaginary. Pretending that happened is just irrational. Lol, fuck off.

Good man, drave. Good man.

Your disingenuous ass is going on ignore. You haven’t made a post with any meat on it in some time. And it’s not worth engaging with the baiting tactics and whataboutism.

It took a lot of embarrassing moments for him to finally go with the fake ignore flex.

Regardless, the temptation of the derp interaction is gone. Christmas has come early for fan.

Making up shit to be mad about was xrod's gimmick for a while. He should sue Noid for infringement.

Noid now has half of the wrestling forum on “fake ignore”. In the end, it’ll just be his little echo chamber and Gertner egging him on for the lulz.

People hate hearing a difference of opinion. Without Noid and xrodmuc this forum would be dead.

Lock Jaw and I are relatively critical of the product. Our opinion doesn’t necessarily align with everyone else’s. We are not assholes about it.

Some people hate it so much that they’ll awkwardly try to push conversations to a completely unrelated subject just so they can bitch about it and then shout out “fallacy!” when it doesn’t work like a Goddamn retard.

Much appreciated, Big Man. :y:

Saw an interesting thing regarding ratings in Canada:

You’ve all heard the narrative that AEW does better than WWE in Canada, right? Or that they’re highly competitive. Then you’ll hear that AEW is more viewed in the UK than WWE, but that doesn’t count because AEW is on free-to-air.

I saw someone point out that the WWE has multiple replays of Raw and SmackDown throughout a week. They also have recap shows that air numerous times. AEW doesn’t have anywhere near the exposure, and basically airs once a week. So comparing a single Raw viewership to AEW’s is disingenuous, because presumably those replays do numbers as well, otherwise other things would be in those slots.

If AEW was really doing great in the ratings, they wouldnt need to spin it every week with a different narrative. I laughed out loud last week when Meltzer made a point to brag that AEW won the 25-54 demo in Canada, which is the "most important" Canadian demo.

Holy shit, he did not? Wow.

If these demos were as comparable and important as Meltzer says, why not just go head-to-head with Raw? You know, instead of comparing two different nights of television with different levels of competition? Because we all know what would happen. They have to pick out these weird, obscure and frankly trivial “victories” which have no wider context.

I’ve seen it pointed out that Danielson’s segments are often among the lowest rated on the show. Turns out turning him heel and having him work extended matches with babyface jobbers may have actually been a silly decision after all. Funny that.

Serious question re: Rampage cancellation:

How does that affect Dynamite’s position with WarnerMedia? When they signed their new deal, the impression given was that they were getting their $45 million a year or whatever for Dynamite + a new show. I’m sure Warner have it in there that they can cancel Rampage and just pay AEW less money, but it’s possible that Warner tries to renegotiate the AEW deal and they really give those fuckers the shaft.

There are some big obstacles facing AEW, between Rampage flopping and Dynamite possibly hitting a wall on TBS. They should be making decisions to grow an audience instead of appealing to a dwindling hardcore one that is going to applaud for the most mind-numbing shit.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Go figure, AEW Dynamite was the most-watched wrestling show overall and 25-54 (Canadian key demo) of the week and maybe highest of the year and among its biggest ever.</p>&mdash; Dave Meltzer (@davemeltzerWON) <a href="https://twitter.com/davemeltzerWON/status/1466538757830578183?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 2, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

But yeah, he is sooooooooo not on AEW's payroll :rofl:

Holy shit. He knows that is absolute bullshit. But to be honest, I don’t think he even needs to be paid. He’s a complete simp for this company.

The thing is, I’m not even sure this denial is helping AEW at all. As annoying as the narrative is, I think ignoring their problems is going to do a lot more long-term damage than short-term good.

The rest of this page is just gonna be Noid over-posting until it’s buried by the next page and the embarrassment can be hidden away.

Just skip the Noid stuff, honestly shittest opinions on the internet which is a pretty big call.

Only thing worth paying attention for is the day Noid accidentally quotes himself and disagrees with his own shit take... its coming.

Our last line of defense is gone. The king has fallen. What a pity.

What makes my opinions shit, Sting Fan? Oh, that they’re backed up by logic and you can’t argue against them? Fucking drone. You could at least try to make demonstrably wrong points against me before falling apart and turning into a total shit-show.

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Vince Russo and Glen Gilberti called it. Punk and Daniels did nothing for the ratings and were not game changers at all. AEW didn't know how to book them because the owner is a dirt sheet mark sheep. Just wait until the TBS move where the ratings will tank even more and watch the AEW marks trying to come up with more and more excuses for why their 30 min matches don't draw.

They’re right. Mainly Disco (let’s not give Russo credit). Every time AEW has had a spike, the people they attract vote with their remotes. It doesn’t fit the narrative that this is the cool, hip product, but it’s the unavoidable reality — people just ain’t that into you.

I don’t blame Punk and I don’t blame Bryan as much as others (and there are good arguments there). I blame the entire philosophy around this product and what it chooses to surround potential draws in.

When AEW goes to TBS, I think it is going to be a bit of an eye-opener for people. I think that when Dynamite came to TNT, it just replaced a movie or something? Dynamite is going to be knocking back people’s sitcom time. Warner might get some feedback from people about wrestling intruding into their leisure time. AEW needs to be more valuable than a sitcom block. A lot of people are predicting a long-term move into the millions. That number is possible on TNT, but their quality holds them back. TBS is in more homes, but it doesn’t mean more people are going to watch it. I can see the move doing a lot of damage to a segment of the audience and them never coming back.

They’ve got a happy accident with the West Coast coming back. But that does not count for hundreds and thousands of people. Which is sad when you think about the population of it. They’re going to need to bring it when they jump, and I don’t think they know how. Evidence: Their inability to hold viewers after they do something to encourage new people to sample.

a TNARICK & Noid tag team? yes please!

Shittest cunt with the shittest arguments :wave:

Ease up on yourself.