The ratings for Wednesday night are officially in, and All Elite Wrestling defeated NXT for the second week in a row. AEW Dynamite finished with 1.01 million viewers and a 0.46 rating in the 18-49 target demographic (eighth overall on cable). Meanwhile NXT finished all the way down in 27th place with a 0.22 rating and 790,000 viewers. While the week marks another victory for AEW, it shows a decline for both shows. NXT posted its lowest rating since jumping to USA by losing 101,000 viewers while AEW dropped by 328,000 viewers.
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There are a few factors you can attribute to that. AEW’s 1.4 million viewers from last week was likely boosted by the hype around the new company’s premiere and curiosity for casual viewers. It also didn’t help that cable was utterly dominated by the MLB playoffs on Wednesday night as the Cardinals/Braves and Nationals/Dodgers games combined for more than nine million viewers.
Still, a 29% victory is nothing to sneeze at. This week’s AEW featured Private Party beating The Young Bucks in the first round of the AEW World Tag Team Championship tournament, Chris Jericho officially debut The Inner Circle faction, Darby Allin earn a shot at Jericho’s championship, Jon Moxley win his Dynamite debut and The Elite (plus MJF, Allin and Dustin Rhodes) fight off The Inner Circle to close out the show. Meanwhile NXT opened with Lio Rush winning the NXT Cruiserweight Championship then followed up with an impressive wins from Rhea Ripley and Roderick Strong. The show closed out with Walter cleanly pinning Kushida.
Here’s what’s on the docket for next week:
- Dynamite — The Lucha Brothers vs. Jurassic Express and The Best Friends vs. SoCal Uncensored in tag tournament matches, Riho vs. Britt Baker for the AEW Women’s World Championship, Jericho vs. Allin for the AEW World Championship
- NXT — Keith Lee vs. Donovan Dijakovic, Pete Dunne vs. Damian Priest, Tommaso Ciampa’s return match against Angel Garza and Tegan Nox vs. TBD.
WWE released a statement prior to last week’s ratings report, congratulating AEW.
“Congratulations to AEW on a successful premiere,” the statement read. “The real winners of last night’s head-to-head telecasts of NXT on USA Network & AEW on TNT are the fans, who can expect Wednesday nights to be a competitive & wild ride as this is a marathon, not a one-night sprint.”
Moxley, who appeared at AEW’s panel at New York Comic Con last week, wasn’t impressed.
“So literally the entire industry all over the world is benefiting from the fact that now there’s a viable alternative,” Moxley said. “And once we hit 10 o’clock and we got two hours in the can the other night and we were like, we did it, high five, there and now we got the ratings out, there is a viable alternative. You know what I mean? This is real. This actually happened. I’m sure there are a lot of people that are going to keep wanting to wake up from the nightmare and like, this isn’t really real, but oh, this is happening and this is 100% real.”
“And it’s great for everybody and it’s great most…and I don’t say this to try to do some corporate-speak like that passive-aggressive ass WWE statement the other day,” he added. “But it is, ultimately the fans benefit because they get to see these guys who are, all across the board are more inspired, or from the indies getting hyped up. All across the board, everybody’s more passionate.”
