The “Wednesday Night Wars” between NXT and All Elite Wrestling are officially ending. After running head-to-head for roughly 18 months, NXT announced in March that it will be officially moving to Tuesday nights on the USA Network beginning with the April 13 episode. This week’s edition of NXT will be replaced by the first half of NXT TakeOver: Stand & Deliver, and AEW is combating it with a massive six-man tag match involving Kenny Omega, The Good Brothers, Jon Moxley and The Young Bucks as well as an appearance by Mike Tyson.
AEW president Tony Khan was asked to give his thoughts on the move in a new interview with PWInsider this week.
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“I have a stacked show planned for this week and I have another stacked show planned for next week when we’re unopposed by a wrestling competition,” Khan said. “We’ll have some stories this week that are going to be very interesting and are going to lead people, my hope is, wanting to come back and watch next week’s show. I believe there might be some wrestling fans who might have not watched the show before and are going to want to come check it out in the next couple of weeks. So I think having Mike Tyson on the show this week is a great way to bring some attention to the wrestlers and our big matches and big stories this week and we’re going to have a really, really strong card the next couple of weeks. We have a great roster and there’s no reason we shouldn’t have great cards every week. We’ve consistently been doing big matches every Wednesday and I think now’s a great time to pour some gasoline on the whole situation and create a blaze.”
Khan said the turning point in the competition came on the Jan. 1, 2020 episode, when Dynamite first ran unopposed against NXT (the show was off that week as the Year End Awards were handed out).
“We’re opposed one more week, tomorrow’s a big deal and I think we get through tomorrow and next time I’d love to answer this question because I’ve learned a lot from this competition,” Khan said. “I’ll be honest, the low point for us was definitely December 2019, and you talk about us being opposed/unopposed — we were unopposed January 1st, we were opposed by a clip show. And the show we did on January 1st , 2020 was the show that really changed things for us. The pandemic changed the world, but before we all knew what the pandemic was, January 1st, 2020 – we changed our own destiny. We went out and did the best show we could possibly do that night and took advantage of no new competition — no new matches, just a clip show. Cody and Darby tore down the house and they had a story that kept going throughout 2020.”
Now that AEW Dynamite and NXT will be on separate nights, will you tune in to both shows? Let us know in the comments below!
