Good news for the company: after a massive down week for the June 10 episode due to competition from the NBA Finals, the number for June 17 was back to where it’s been lately.
The June 17 show averaged 665,000 viewers, up 22.7 percent from June 10, which went up against Game 4 of the NBA Finals – the one in which the New York Knicks staged the largest comeback in Finals history.
It was a nice rebound for the show going into “Forbidden Door,” which is this Sunday (8 p.m. ET, pay-per-view).
I wish we still had access to quarter-hour viewer numbers, because my assumption would be, the final QH and the overrun would have been the nadir for the June 17 show – with that preposterous 12-man tag main event.
I get it, that they’re trying to provide cover for AEW champ Maxwell Jacob Friedman, who suffered a knee injury at the June 3 show in Richmond, but you can just put him in a six-man tag – and maybe, don’t book your world champ in a program with a group of mid-carders.
‘Forbidden Door’ preview
I’m on the fence about whether I’ll tune in or not.
The only match that has any interest to me is the Swerve Strickland-Will Ospreay bout in the Owen Hart Cup final, for a spot in the main event at “All In” in London in August, and it’s not as if we don’t know that Ospreay is going to win.
These guys should have a banger of a match to get there, but even so.
The rest of the show:
- Thekla vs. Starlight Kid for the AEW women’s title might be good, but I know nothing about Starlight Kid, and I’m not willing to invest the time to see what she’s about – and I doubt I’m alone among the fanbase there.
- The other Owen Hart Cup final, Mercedes Mone vs. Maya World, could be a pick’em kind of match. I can see Tony Khan pulling the underdog card and going with Maya World, and then using the next two months to get her over. I don’t expect much from the match itself, unfortunately.
- The TNT champ, Kevin Knight, is caught up in the 12-man clusterf–k, so, no title defense there.
- Adam Copeland and Christian Cage are defending the AEW tag belts against The Dogs – David Finlay and Clark Connors. I admire the work TK has done to try to get The Dogs over, but, I just don’t care.
- The women’s tag title match, Divine Dominion – Megan Bayne and Lena Kross – facing Thunder Rosa and Olympia, is probably relegated to the “Zero Hour.”
- The only other match of possible interest to me is Kenny Omega vs. Zach Sabre Jr. I’m a big ZSJ fan, but I expect what happens here is, it’s a ZSJ match, because it has to be, and then Omega wins, because that’s how TK books ZSJ on these shows, as an attraction.
If I watch, and the 12-man is actually the main event, the only thing that would keep the show on for me for the last hour would be the prospect of somebody (like The New Day) making a surprise debut.
Otherwise, it’s high spots, likely leading to an upcoming match between MJF and Mark Briscoe, who, god love him, has been booked horribly for going on forever, and just doesn’t come across as a legit challenger for a world title.
News and Notes
Dax Harwood and Cash Wheeler – FTR – announced in an Instagram post from Harwood over the weekend that they are going on hiatus, “to step away and take some time for ourselves & for our families.”
“I’m not sure when we’ll be back, what we’re going to do, how much longer we have, or if we even need to prove anything at all anymore,” Harwood wrote in the post.
“Since the summer of 2014, The Revival, FTR, Dawson & Dash, Dax & Cash, whatever you want to call us, we’ve had the pedal to the floor. Aside from my bicep tear in 2017, we’ve taken no time away from the job we’ve dreamed of having. Physically & mentally, we both became exhausted,” Harwood wrote.
“We were two of the very few talents that traveled and worked on both ‘Collision’ & ‘Dynamite.’ I’ve fought through three hematomas on my lower back, another bicep tear I decided not to have surgery on, labrum tear from my groin to my hip, a shoulder that needs replacement, and probably a laundry list of other things I’m too afraid to get checked out.”
You could read into this, they’re done, but I don’t see that.
I read it as, we need a few months away from TV and from the road, and we don’t want people speculating.
At some point in the next few months, FTR, rested, healed up, etc., makes a surprise run-in, either as heels or faces, and life goes on.
In the meantime, they get a break.
We all deserve a break every once in a while.
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Chris Graham
