Everything about AEW’s “Grand Slam Australia” show is a mistake, from the initial decision to try a stadium show, to intimating at the outset that it would be a pay-per-view, and now, to the booking.
Saturday’s show is going to be broadcast after the NBA’s “All-Star Saturday Night” showcase, the idea from Warner Bros. Discovery, which is paying big bucks to AEW for the promotion’s TV and streaming rights, being, the audience there for the NBA might have an incentive to stick around to check out the ‘rasslin, which can only be good for the AEW product going forward.
Which would be all well and good, if Tony Khan, AEW’s president and head of creative, was planning to give the NBA audience something worth watching.
He’s got one shot, the first couple of minutes, to keep the audience, but the “Grand Slam” edition of his Saturday “Collision” show is running low on content that can work the magic.
The best match on the show is between the AEW women’s world champ Mariah May and former champ Toni Storm, but it’s highly unlikely that Khan is going to open with that one.
It’s fair to assume that Khan is going to open the show with the tag match pitting two former WWE stars, Jon Moxley, the current AEW world champ, and Adam Copeland, the former WWE champ, who is on course to be Moxley’s contender at the “Revolution” pay-per-view in Los Angeles in March.
As much as a tag match with the world champ and his top contender, both well-known WWE alums, should be a showcase of the best of what AEW has to offer, no.
The ratings for AEW TV have tanked dramatically in Moxley’s most recent reign as the world champ, and Copeland, who wrestled in WWE as Edge, is a shadow of his former self, if that.
And the expected product that we’re going to see is likely to emphasize the worst of all involved – Moxley is teaming with Claudio Castagnoli, the former Cesaro in WWE; Copeland is teaming with former IWGP world champ Jay White, a top-flight performer who has been booked as anything but since signing with AEW in 2023.
Moxley matches follow the same tired formula – brawling at ringside that ends up in the stands, in carefully carved out areas, before going backstage and into secure areas in concourses and concessions areas.
Khan seems to think fans want to see this kind of fake fighting – pulled punches, trash cans being emptied on foes, guys getting thrown through plywood – as opposed to the fake fighting in the ring that might demonstrate athleticism and build toward a dramatic finish.
The Nielsen numbers seem to indicate otherwise, and this going to be reinforced when we get a look at the numbers from “Grand Slam Australia” next week, which will almost certainly start with a relatively big number for the first quarter-hour, and a falling-off-the-cliff number in QH2, with flatlining thereafter.
And for this, Khan is flying his cast and crew to the other side of the world, presumably on WBD’s dime.
It’s the day and age of the sons of the filthy rich doing dumb things with other people’s money.
At least this one is nowhere near the top of this week’s list of those dumb things.
Video: AEW is hoping it gets a bump from the NBA, but it won’t
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Chris Graham
