AEW Dynamite has been running on Wednesdays ever since it first premiered on TNT back on Oct. 2, and so far the show has managed to bring in more viewers almost every week going up against WWE’s hottest brand, NXT. But even though AEW has been winning the so-called “Wednesday Night Wars,” Cody Rhodes wouldn’t mind seeing the show move to a different night within the next five years. The executive vice president sat down with Atlanta news outlet 11 Alive on Monday and flat-out stated he wanted the change down the road, but he stopped short of saying he wants an outright “Monday Night Wars II” with Monday Night Raw.
“I would like the company, in five years, to be on a different night and competing in the same fashion they are,” Rhodes said. “Not that I don’t love Wednesday nights, but I can tell we have real players and I look at this data. We’re not lying about the revolution anymore, i’s very supported. So I would love to see how it does on another night of the week.”
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“If we had a random storm situation or something popped up and we had to put Dynamite on a Monday night, if that was to happen in this current threshold, I’d still be very confident in what we can do,” he added. “And I’d be confident that our guys would be up for the challenge.”
Based on TNT’s schedule and television deal with the NBA, moving to Tuesday or Thursday nights wouldn’t be viable for Dynamite given how much of the year basketball takes up. That only leaves Mondays and Fridays, both of which have WWE programming that brings in more than two million viewers each week.
In January WarnerMedia announced it had signed a new contract extension with AEW that would keep Dynamite on TNT through (at least) 2023.
“When we launched AEW one year ago, we wanted to start a revolution that would disrupt the wrestling business, but everyone said that it would take a strong weekly television partner to make AEW real in the eyes of everyone — above all, the fans,” AEW president Tony Khan said in the press release. “What virtually no one realized at the time was Kevin Reilly and TNT were committed to this very same movement from Day One, and their belief in us made it possible for AEW to think and act big from the start. Here we are, only three months into Wednesday Night Dynamite, and now we’ve been extended through 2023! We’re now making the ultimate statement that the team of AEW and TNT is here to stay and to bring fans more of the great wrestling that the fans demand and deserve.”
