The Young Bucks Explain What Lessons AEW Learned From TNA’s Failed Attempt to Combat WWE

All Elite Wrestling’s weekly live wrestling show, AEW Dynamite, officially launches on Oct. 2 at the start of what wrestling fans are calling the “Wednesday Night Wars.” WWE’s brand NXT is making the full transition to the USA Network on the same night, giving fans the choice between two prime time live wrestling shows on major cable networks on the same night for the first time since WCW folded in 2001. But, as some fans tend to forget, that previous statement does come with one minor asterisk. Back in 2010 TNA Wrestling, now known as Impact Wrestling, tried to go head-to-head with Monday Night Raw by moving its weekly show, TNA Impact, to Monday night’s on Spike TV. The first episode on January 4, 2010 drew the highest-rated episode in the show’s history, leading to a full move to Monday nights starting on March 8. However by May the ratings had plummeted all the way down to a 0.8, which caused the company to retreat and move the show back to Thursday nights.

TNA/Impact hasn’t reached those same heights as an alternative to WWE since then, serving as somewhat of a cautionary tale to any companies bold enough to try and take on Vince McMahon. But in a new interview with Bleacher Report, The Young Bucks explained how they learned from TNA’s mistakes in launching Dynamite.

“You have to be different,” Nick Jackson said. “You can’t try to be them. The one thing TNA did wrong was try to be a lesser version of them. We can’t be them because we’re not competing with them. We have to be different and we have to listen to the fans.”

“They feel like they’re so neglected,” Matt Jackson stated. “The things that they want, they just don’t get. What we learned early on when we did our first show, All In, was we built this entire show and gave the fans the finishes they wanted, and they came out of that show feeling so good.

“Some of the things they expected, but we learned that it’s OK sometimes if they expect something and they want something, you just give it to them. It’s what a really good television show is,” he continued. “You build to this climax and you’re thinking in the back of your head, ‘Man, when they get to the season finale, they have to do it this way,’ and then just imagine actually doing that.”

Dynamite‘s first episode will take place at the sold-out Capital One Arena in Washington D.C. Meanwhile NXT will air its two-hour live show on USA at Full Sail University in Orlando. Both shows start at 8 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday.