NXT Posts Great Tuesday Ratings Amid Reports of Leaving Wednesday Nights

On Wednesday morning @WrestleVotes took to Twitter with a new report that WWE had been bouncing around the idea of moving NXT off its Wednesday night slot to a different night on the USA Network. The report added that the ratings for this week and next week's NXT (both of which have been bumped to Tuesday due to the NHL Playoffs) could help with that decision. That afternoon the ratings dropped for the first "Super Tuesday" edition of NXT, and they're pretty excellent.

ShowBuzzDaily reports that the Sept. 1 episode brought in 849,000 viewers and a 0.26 rating, the 10th highest of the night on cable. That's the highest rating for the Black and Gold Brand of 2020 and gives the show an average of 842,000 viewers across the past three weeks, all of which came without direct competition from AEW Dynamite. When the two shows were running head-to-head, NXT had not been able to break 800,000 viewers since early December 2019.

The show was headlined by the four-way 60-minute Iron Man Match between Finn Balor, Adam Cole, Tommaso Ciampa and Johnny Gargano for the vacated NXT Championship. Balor and Cole finished with the most eliminations and will face each other for the vacated championship next week.

Shortly after WrestleVotes' report, Sean Ross Sapp gave some more details on the situation via Fightful Select. Sapp wrote that the USA Network had suggested the brand be moved to another night "months ago," adding that "they aren't as committed" to the competition between NXT and Dynamite. AEW has consistently beat NXT in terms of viewership (36 weeks when going head-to-head) and in the 18-49 key ratings demographic (44 weeks).

"To me, there's a moment in time when you begin something and it's very exciting and it's fresh and there's some interest in it, certainly," Triple H said of AEW during WWE's Annual Shareholder's Meeting back in July. "But it's a big world. We continue to be focused on our product, continue to be focused on the development of our stars and our performers. And as Vince said earlier, we have a very long track record of doing this incredibly successfully for many, many, many years, and we will continue to do so."