Welcome to the “Week 6 of the Wednesday Night Wars” edition of The Wrestling List.
Some definite factors to look at going into this past Wednesday night. What would the carryover be for the NXT crossover on the main roster shows over the last week? How would the ratings bounce back after going up against Game 7 of the World Series last week and losing a bunch of viewership. Would main roster talent show up on NXT this week? My prediction going into this past Wednesday night was a ratings win by NXT. Did it happen? Well, let’s recap the shows first.
NXT opened up form Full Sail with a backstage attack by The OC on Undisputed Era. They walk out through the crowd and into the ring. AJ, Gallows, and Anderson say they are there to take over since they have taken out all of the NXT champions. No one will survive. Enter Ciampa who walks out on the ramp. Ciampa talks about how he is always asked about when he is moving up to the main roster. He says to let him be the first to welcome the OC to the main roster. I loved that line referring to NXT being the main roster! Crowd popped for it too. AJ says that he knew Ciampa had the guts to be the one to step up to them but pointing out that he is alone. Enter Matt Riddle and Keith Lee. Ciampa says that they were getting ready for War Games but that they were ready for war tonight if the OC was as well. AJ says you’re on and we have a main event match ready for later. Pete Dunne takes on Damian Priest in the first match of the night. Dunne gets the tap out victory. After the win, Dunne is attacked by Killian Dain. Taynara takes on Santana Garrett in the next match. Tayanar gets the win via pinball. Next is the women’s non title match with Shayna taking on Dakota Kai. Looking forward to this one. They had a nice rivalry going before Dakota got injured. Shayna continues her offense on working on body parts looking for submissions. Shayna ends up getting the win via submission. After the match, Duke and Shafir attack Dakota. The whole NXT women’s division basically gets involved after that. Mia Yim is out there with a kendo stick going after the heels. Number one contender’s match for the cruiserweight title is next with Tony Nese against Angel Garza. Win goes to Angel Garza. Lio Rush walks out after but gets slapped by Garza. We go backstage where Cathy Kelley is interviewing Rhea Ripley about who her last team member for War Games will be. It is already herself, Tegan, and Candice. Ripley says that she loved what brutality that she saw out of Mia and that Mia is the fourth member of her team. She tells Dakota that she didn’t make the cut and Dakota walks off disappointed. Ripley says that this is her team. Dominik takes on Swerve Scott in the next match. Fun one here. Dominik wins by pinfall. Main event time with The OC taking on Ciampa, Anderson, and Gallows. Good stuff here. I enjoyed this match a lot. Fun seeing AJ going against these guys. Cool spot when Styles and Lee are battling. Lee nails a pounce that knocks Styles into the ref taking them both out. Awesome timing on it. Everyone brawls on the floor except for Ciampa and Styles who are in the ring. Ciampa is about to hit his finish when Finn Balor’s music hits. Ciampa gets distracted looking at him on the stage which allows Styles to get back on offense. Balor takes out Riddle on the floor. Styles and Balor face off from the ring to the floor. They both put up Club signs showing they are on the same page. As Styles is about to hit the Styles clash on Ciampa, Adam Cole runs in and super kicks Styles. He also takes the moment to nail Ciampa with the last shot. As the show ends, Cole and Balor are facing off as Cole stands on the ring and Balor is on the floor. Fun show from NXT. We had main roster stuff on the show as expected but it didn’t overshadow anything. The OC was a good group to send in there as the main roster invaders.
AEW opened up from Charleston, SC. Opening match with Trent of the Best Friends taking on Pac. Cool production moment with the whip into the corner and the switch to the turnbuckle camera. Orange Cassidy jumped in doing his gimmick. That whole thing is just not over with me. Pac took him out as he got going with it. Pac got Trent to tap to the brutalizer for the win. After commercial, we get the arrival of Cody for his announcement that had been delayed from a couple of weeks ago. He hypes up AEW as a product and Cody is such a good promo talker. Always has been. He announces that if he does not defeat Chris Jericho, he will never challenge for the AEW title ever again. Cody talks about Jericho saying that you need this generation more than it needs you. Strong promo cut on Jericho and the crowd was right with him. AEW tag team champions, SCU were out for the next segment as they join the commentary team. The Dark Order takes on Private Party. That rana off the top rope into the diamond cutter was nasty by Private Party to win the match. I even hit the rewind button so I could watch it again. Loved that finish. SCU goes to the ring to face off with their opponents for this weekend at Full Gear. Next is a video that they said they got from Chris Jericho to play. Immediately, I saw the open of it and said, oh, this is a spoof of the Cody video. LOL. I popped for the appearance of Virgil. Nice line from Guevara saying that Jericho is 48 and the youngest AEW champion of all time. He is also the only AEW champion of all time. LOL. We have the stoic look from Hager in his interview where he says nothing. LOL. Loved this spoof video. That was very well done! Time for women’s action as Jamie Hayter makes her way to the ring as she teams with Emi Sakura against Shanna and the AEW women’s champion, Riho. Solid match here. Sakura gets the pinfall on Riho with an awesome rollup. Another video promo on the evolution of Brandi Rhodes. Images of Awesome Kong mixed into it. Brandon Cutler is in the next match taking on The Chairman Shawn Spears. Spears is accompanied by Tully Blanchard. Spears picks up the win with the Death Valley driver. Tully then slides the chair into the ring. As Spears goes to put Cutler on to it, Joey Janela runs in to break it up. Spears and Tully bail. We hit the 90 minute mark of the show and it is already main event time. Hangman Page teaming with Kenny Omega against Sammy Guevara and Chris Jericho. Guevara is live streaming himself as he walks to the ring. Yeahhhhh, cooler when Tyler Breeze did it first. Hager accompanying Jericho to the ring. AEW announcement that Jericho will be on Inside The NBA on TNT the following night. Nice TNT crossover. I watched it last night and the TNT crew had a lot of fun with Jericho and wrestling each other too. Omega was set to do a dive over the ropes but Hager nailed him as he came off of the ropes while the ref was distracted. Pac gets involved and kicks low on Page while the ref is turned. Jericho finishes off Page after that. Jericho, Hager, and Guevara pound on Page. Cody runs in. Jericho runs. Cody takes out Guevara but the story at that point is that Jericho ran from Cody. As Jericho and Hager back up the ramp, MJF runs up with a chair. He throws Jericho to Cody. Cody lays out Jericho and holds up the AEW title. As that is happening, Moxley walks in through the crowd with a barbed wire bat. Moxley faces off with Omega. Jericho gets back up and attacks Cody from behind as Cody was watching the face-off. Everyone brawls up the ramp except for Moxley and Omega. Santana and Ortiz get involved. Young Bucks run in and take out Santana and Ortiz. Brawl goes to the stage. Moxley and Omega finally start brawling. Nick Jackson swantons off the set on to the group. Camera man even goes down. The brawl continues as the show goes off the air. I really like the Cody and Jericho stuff. It is definitely the strongest point of AEW. Jericho is doing great heel work. Cody is doing great promo work. Jericho is doing great promo work. Good stuff with those two every week.
Line of the Night: “Everyone keeps asking me when are you moving up to the main roster? Let me be the first to welcome you to the main roster”. Ciampa to The OC.
Match of the Night: Ciampa, Riddle, and Lee vs. The OC from NXT
Show of the Night: NXT
So, what were the ratings? I predicted a NXT win after the main roster attention this week. Almost but didn’t happen. AEW moves to 6-0 but the margin was 9,000 viewers. NXT is knocking on their door. AEW did 822,000 viewers. NXT did 813,000 viewers. Let’s dig at some numbers here. Let’s look at the last three weeks of NXT. 698,000 on October 23rd. Down to 580,000 last week against Game 7. This week, back up to 813,000. This week is their highest number since October 2nd. Not only did NXT bounce back from the Game 7 opposition, they went way back up to numbers they haven’t seen in a month. The 18-49 demo for NXT this week was up significantly as well. Let’s look at AEW. They did 963,000 viewers on October 2nd. Last week against Game 7, they did 759,000 viewers. This week, they were back up to 822,000 viewers which means they did not bounce fully back up to their week before Game 7. AEW’s 18-49 is still up over NXT this week and they have been leading the charge on that demo. However, it was close this week. NXT had a 0.30 for the 18-49 up against AEW’s 0.35. So, NXT was definitely up this week overall and this was a very positive ratings week for them. AEW bounced back but still didn’t charge back to that October 23rd number. I feel like NXT is going to get them in the ratings and maybe next week. With this Survivor Series crossover, NXT is primed to get some of that main roster audience. So, this was a very smart move by WWE to get eyes on that product.
That’s it for this week. I am wrapping this thing up as the Smackdown open rolls. Tape delayed from the UK tonight. Have a great weekend!
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