WWE NXT and AEW Prove Wednesday Nights Are The Best Night For Wrestling

If there was one thing we learned this week, it's that WWE NXT and AEW have made Wednesdays the [...]

By Ryan Droste

If there was one thing we learned this week, it's that WWE NXT and AEW have made Wednesdays the best night of the week for pro wrestling fans.

While SmackDown on FOX proved to be a historic night for the business, the show as a whole didn't hold a candle to what went down on the USA Network and TNT two nights earlier.

So who had the best night this week, AEW or WWE NXT? I took on the unenviable task of trying to declare an overall winner of week one of the Wednesday Night Wars.

We know that AEW won the week in the television ratings department (by a significant margin), but what about from a technical standpoint? As in, who put on the best pure wrestling show on Wednesday night (and this week in general)? Well, there's several ways of looking at that question.

I enjoyed both shows and felt each was very, very good. In fact, as mentioned, both WWE NXT and All Elite Wrestling were better than Monday Night RAW and Friday Night SmackDown this week and it wasn't really close. And while Wednesday night proved to be the upper tier of the week in terms of wrestling programming, choosing one over the other was a bit like trying to choose a favorite child.

This is a very hard judgment call and I had to go about looking at it in two different ways. For example, I would say I enjoyed watching AEW the most since it was a brand new television show and the excitement of having a new wrestling promotion on a major national cable network was off the charts. However, from top to bottom in judging the shows themselves, I have to go with NXT this week by just a hair.

NXT had the best match of the night with Adam Cole vs. Matt Riddle. That was one of the major factors in my decision to award NXT "show of the week." If you didn't see it, go watch it. Immediately. I also really enjoyed Cody vs. Sammy Guevara (as written about here). In all, both promotions put together some great television action, with Io Shirai vs. Mia Yim, Nyla Rose vs. Riho, Adam Page vs. PAC, Shayna Baszler vs. Candice LeRae, and Undisputed Era vs. Street Profits all being standouts.

In the surprises department, I also felt that NXT clearly won the night. While Jack Swagger (Jake Hager) qualified as a good surprise, Swagger doesn't hold nearly the clout of a returning Finn Balor to NXT or the return from injury of Tomasso Ciampa. Again, nod to NXT.

The areas that I felt AEW was better overall included crowd atmosphere and announcing.

WWE NXT really needs to take their show on the road for aesthetic reasons, even though the Full Sail crowd was great this week. There's just no comparison when it comes to under 1,000 wild wrestling fans and 14,000 wild wrestling fans. The lighting, stage, and crowd size in Washington D.C. for AEW just blew away their NXT counterparts.

Tony Schiavone became the "glue guy" for AEW this week. It's no secret that AEW's announce team has seen some changes (and growing pains) over the last couple of months, and as they experimented with different combinations, something just seemed to be missing. It turns out the former voice of WCW is exactly what was needed, and it was a world of difference when adding him to the crew of Jim Ross and Excalibur.

Ross seemed to excel in a way he hadn't yet in AEW when placed next to Schiavone. He wasn't asked to carry the broadcast as much as in the past and played off of Schiavone perfectly. In essence, it seemed like the presence of his former Monday Night Wars rival forced him to up his ballgame, and he responded accordingly which was great to see. It's no secret to those of who have watched MLW in recent months, but Schiavone really hasn't skipped a beat since the 1990s. He's still very, very good and turned out to be exactly what was needed to put this announce crew over the top.

In all, a wrestling fan couldn't lose watching either of these programs and probably should watch both of them in their entirety. But when push comes to shove, NXT was just a little bit better than AEW on Wednesday night.

Moving forward, there's little doubt at this moment in time that Wednesdays are consistently going to be the best night of the week to be a wrestling fan.

Agree? Disagree? Give me a follow on Twitter @ryandroste and let me know your thoughts!

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