AEW Notebook | Ratings take a tumble; eight-man tag main event as catalyst?

Wrestling podcaster Jim Cornette famously calls no-DQ matches “lazy booking”; I think the term needs to be used in reference to eight-person tags.

I had zero interest in the eight-man tag main event for this week’s AEW “Dynamite,” which pitted the makeshift teams of The Young Bucks, Josh Alexander and Kyle Fletcher on the heels side against the babyface team of “Hangman” Adam Page, Kenny Omega and JetSpeed, and apparently I wasn’t alone in not having any interest in that one.

The match covered the last two 15-minute segments of the show, plus a six-minute overrun, and averaged 437,000 viewers, per numbers from Wrestlenomics.

The main event dragged down the overall number for this week’s show, which averaged 472,000 for the night – the lowest audience for “Dynamite” airing in its normal 8-10 p.m. ET timeslot ever.

Not good for a show with an advertised “All-Star” eight-man tag main event that was painfully lacking in all-stars – yes, Page is the world champ, and Fletcher is gaining steam, but Omega is headed back to the shelf for another surgery, joining top AEW stars Swerve Strickland and Will Ospreay on the injured list, and Alexander, who should be a top star, has been booked as an afterthought.

Here’s an idea: instead of throwing a bunch of guys (or gals) into eight-person matches, why not split things up into, for example, out of this slop, you could have had Young Bucks vs. JetSpeed, Fletcher vs. Omega for the TNT title, Page vs. Alexander for the world title?

Holy crap, that would have been a good card, if that was your whole show!

Instead, we got a lazily-booked spotfest.

Quick hits

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• “Collision” card for Saturday night: Some good matches – Mark Briscoe vs. Konosuke Takeshita, FTR vs. Adam Priest and The Dynamite Kid, Jon Moxley vs. Daniel Garcia – problem with those three being, we know who’s going to win. And then, another eight-person match, this one featuring the women: Toni Storm, Mina Shirakawa, Harley Cameron, & Kris Statlander vs. Megan Bayne, Thekla, Skye Blue, & Julia Hart. 
• The “All Out” PPV on Saturday, Sept. 20, now has a 3 p.m. start time. The early start times weren’t problems in July or August, but Tony Khan must not be aware that he’ll be competing with college football in September. I’m almost certain I won’t be able to watch live, and I’ll have to weigh whether I end up buying the show given that I assume I’ll know what happens before the day is over.