AEW World Champion Kenny Omega's Appearance Shattered Impact Wrestling's Twitch Viewership Records

While the television ratings won't be in until later today, the first crossover between Impact [...]

By Connor Casey

While the television ratings won't be in until later today, the first crossover between Impact Wrestling and All Elite Wrestling on Tuesday can already be considered a rousing success. The show featured an interview with newly-crowned AEW World Champion Kenny Omega and Don Callis, in which the two explained their actions from the Winter Is Coming special and teased Omega "collecting" the Impact World Championship. AEW president Tony Khan and color commentator Tony Schiavone also popped up on the show via a paid advertisement.

Impact broadcasts from both AXS TV and Twitch each week, and heading into Tuesday night their largest audience on the live streaming service had been 17,000 viewers. That final segment crushed that record, as Wrestlenomics' Brandon Thurston reports the viewership peaked at 52,000.

"As a child, I considered myself a bit of a hobbyist. I was a collector," Omega said during his promo. "Well, I had to quit. You know why? Because no matter how much money I spent, no matter how many rare comic books I collected, I could never get the most rarest, the most valuable prizes in the comic book industry. Now I found a new hobby and I found the most valuable prize of them all. The Action Comics No. 1. And hell, I don't mind if I add X-Men No. 1 to my collection, the AAA title. I don't mind if I add a Spider-Man No. 1 to my collection. Who knows, maybe that's the Impact Championship? You guys have got a great champion right?"

Omega closed out the show by promising another massive announcement for this week's Dynamite, and Khan has personally requested Callis be on the show as well.

Impact repeatedly took to Twitter to celebrate the successful evening.

It's unclear just how far this crossover between the two promotions will go, though The Young Bucks recently admitted it was something they've wanted to do for years.

"Two years ago, this is something Nick and I actually brought up and we wanted to get this going," Matt Jackson told the Living The Gimmick Podcast. "And for whatever reason, it just didn't work out. I don't know if that was more on our side or what, but we just couldn't get everyone to agree on what the creative would be. But when Nick and I were stopping at all the indy shows and popping up at shows, going to AAA and Mexico, that was one of the suggestions we had was what if we show up in Impact? This is something we've been whispering in Tony Khan's ear for two years. So we're all about collaboration and partnering with everyone and working together. This is what we've always done. Even back when we were with Ring of Honor and we got the Hardys to come in when they were apart of Impact, that was also apart of our plan. So this is something that we truly wanted to do for a very, very long time. And I guess the timing was right and we got done."

"It's still so early, I don't think we, all of us, collectively know what this means," he continued. I think we're just dipping our toes in right now and we're going to see what we can get out of it. But there are immediate plans that I can't exactly just give away right now. But my dream, if I had it my way, I just think about the possible dream matches. People are already hitting me up like, 'Oh my god, can you imagine if it was the Young Bucks and the Motor City Machine Guns 10 years later?' How can you not jump ahead and fantasize and fantasy book?"

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