TV numbers review: Less leakage this week
There was good news in the otherwise tepid TV numbers for the AEW “Dynamite” from Wednesday.
The show averaged a meh 854,000 viewers, according to analysis from Wrestlenomics.
The good news in the numbers: the show started at 906,000 viewers for the 8-8:15 p.m. ET quarter-hour, and didn’t dip below the 804,000 that it got for the final quarter-hour, the Kenny Omega-Wheeler Yuta main event.
Now, yes, that’s a drop of 11.3 percent from beginning to end, but “Dynamite” can tend to lose 25 percent or more from its best-watched quarter-hour by the end.
So, moral victory.
We’re finally getting an end to Elite/BCC
It’s not a good sign that a main event with Kenny Omega, off the hottest match maybe in the company’s four-year history, his IWGP U.S. title loss to Will Ospreay at the “Forbidden Door” pay-per-view two weeks ago, drew the show’s lowest numbers.
That’s likely a continuation of a trend that Tony Khan still has yet to pick up on – that AEW fans have grown tired of the Elite-Blackpool Combat Club feud, if they were ever into it in the first place.
Whether we ever did, and certainly in spite of us not wanting to see any more, we’re getting a final blow-off on the July 19 “Dynamite,” with an unnecessary “Blood & Guts” match.
Khan seems to think that one will pop a rating, and the rumor is that former New Japan star Kota Ibushi will make his AEW debut, which Khan, no doubt, will add to the rating pop that he’s expecting.
I’m personally excited to see Ibushi making his American wrestling debut, but a “Blood & Guts” with The Elite and BCC and Ibushi as the “surprise” that we all know about going in is just more preaching to the choir, or as Jim Cornette likes to say, for the kind of people who like that kind of thing, that’s the kind of thing those people will like.
Basically, expect that show to get somewhere in the range of where “Dynamite” has been falling for the past few months, between 850,000 and 950,000.
‘Collision’ preview
We get the two semifinal matches in the Owen Hart Foundation Tournament – CM Punk vs. Samoa Joe, and Ricky Starks vs. Powerhouse Hobbs – on Saturday’s “Collision” (8 p.m. ET, TNT).
The fun here is that you can see the booking going either way in both matches, and because AEW doesn’t stick 100 percent to the face vs. heel dynamic for its matches, what happens in the first match doesn’t necessarily foretell what will happen in the second.
Thinking through how I expect this to go, it’s hard to imagine Khan not wanting to put Punk over Joe, just so that he can have Punk for the tournament final, though the finish has to be contested in some way to allow for a longer-term program to evolve.
The Starks-Hobbs match has been months in the making. Both have been on the verge of a bigger push.
Me personally, I’d go with Starks here, and then have him upset Punk in the main event, with help from Joe.
I’ll go more into that if we get that far.
Should be a fun show.
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Chris Graham
