AEW - DEC 2019

[Brian Fowler 14,524]

Cody has my favorite theme song in wrestling right now....

[LoneWolf&Subs 6,294]

Will “The Master of Disguise” strike again?

[Andy in Kansas 12,606]

Daniels pulls off his own face, Mission Impossible style, to reveal he's been Pentagon the whole time.

[AxB 9,359]

They're trying to make "Where in the World are Chris and Sammy" a thing. People are photoshopping the cut out of Jericho and Guevara onto other locations, but the Eiffel Tower one turned into a Where's Wally/ Waldo type of thing.

Also MJF just announced he will never wrestle Cody in his life.

[Andy in Kansas 12,606]

1 hour ago, AxB said:

Also MJF just announced he will never wrestle Cody in his life.

Which explains why they pivoted to the Blade and the Butcher.

Sucks for Cody. No MJF and no world title matches doesn't leave him with much. 

[LoneWolf&Subs 6,294]

2 hours ago, West Newbury Bad Boy said:

Daniels pulls off his own face, Mission Impossible style, to reveal he's been Pentagon the whole time.

I just thought of something. Remember months back when we assumed ROH, or Buh Buh fucked with New Japan’s show? What if that was that troll fucker Chris Cruise who did it?

[Brian Fowler 14,524]

3 hours ago, AxB said:

Also MJF just announced he will never wrestle Cody in his life.

 

1 hour ago, West Newbury Bad Boy said:

Which explains why they pivoted to the Blade and the Butcher.

Sucks for Cody. No MJF and no world title matches doesn't leave him with much. 

I'm assuming that's an angle where MJF is ducking Cody, not that they'll actually never have the blow off match. They have months until the next ppv.

[LoneWolf&Subs 6,294]

Hey remember this past weeks episode of Dark that had all those production flubs, and I said that somebody needs to be told to fix it to make a point? They fixed it, and re-uploaded it with the replays properly inserted. 
 

Haven’t watched the whole thing, so I don’t know if everything was corrected.

[D.Z 8,375]

[grilledcheese 1,094]

I get that it's for TV, but are those numbers actually bad? What were the houses on that "disastrous" WWE swing through Northern CA and the PNW a handful of months ago? I remember that being like 6 or 8 weeks of absolute dogshit paid attendance numbers, including a bunch of TV and a PPV. 

And in a situation that those numbers are bad, would a pivot to smaller venues be the right choice at this early stage in the game? Or should they continue to run these mid-sized arenas and keep on hoping that they catch fire and start filling them? I don't know fuck-all about what the right choice should be, but it seems like maybe they are in a pretty good spot. They move a metric ton of merch, or so it seems. The crowds they do pull are hot as shit, especially considering the ongoing problems we see every week with audio mixes being all kinds of wacky. Most everyone seems to agree that their TV is compelling and engaging in a way that WWE's isn't for the most part. Maybe this is just the state of pro wrestling in 2019. A boom period today likely doesn't look like it did in 1985 or 1996, simply for the fact of the entertainment world having evolved so much. 

 

Edited December 2, 2019 by grilledcheese

[D.Z 8,375]

It's fine for now. They just need a hot new angle to boost things eventually.

[Casey 6,680]

I’ll be totally honest and say I didn’t even expect them to draw 4K in Nashville two weeks ago. That surprised the hell out of me. Especially with how hot that crowd was.

[Jiji 10,029]

I was expecting them to do 2-4K for the first 3-4 months. I don't matter but still, this surprises me with how well they are doing. Corpus Christi looks better than it did a month ago but still, not good...

Whereas a week before they're running Garland and the majority of sections are sold out. Any ideas on that one? Is it just one being a Dallas suburb and the other not?

Tonnes of tickets for the Daily's Place show in Jacksonville too. So while the numbers are good and the atmosphere great, are they booking slightly too big of buildings on most weeks? I suppose it's better to book too big than too small unless it's on an ROH scale of ineptitude.

 

[Jiji 10,029]

In other news, Harold Meij (he's still leaving in the new year, right?) was very diplomatic when speaking on AEW recently.

edit: I should also mention that he says that they continue working with ROH. We shall see.

Edited December 2, 2019 by Oyaji

[Casey 6,680]

Can’t continue working with ROH if they destroy themselves by the end of 2020

[Craig H 12,341]

6,100 for Chicago/Hoffman Estates doesn't sound right at all. 6,000 for Boston also sounds low because I thought that thing was nearly a sellout.

[RIPPA 31,781]

4 minutes ago, Craig H said:

6,100 for Chicago/Hoffman Estates doesn't sound right at all. 6,000 for Boston also sounds low because I thought that thing was nearly a sellout.

For what it is worth - since the numbers are from the WON - it is the number Dave either got directly from the building or from AEW.

And then he wrote this about Chicago

Quote

They drew 6,100 fans to the Sears Center. Considering the night before Thanksgiving has been historically death for live pro wrestling, and it was the fifth show in six days in the market, that figure was good even if it was lower than Raw or Smackdown. The idea of going to Chicago, which was already booked for four WWE dates this week, didn’t make sense on the surface, but the idea is that Tony Khan wants to make Labor Day and the night before Thanksgiving traditional nights in Chicago and it’s not like WWE is likely to book four dates in a row every year in the days before. The crowd in Chicago wasn’t as hot as for NXT, but that’s because it was TV and not a Takeover. Even with the market burnout that may have hurt Survivor Series and clearly hurt Raw, they had the second hottest crowd of the week.

And for the Boston show

Quote

This was from Boston before a sellout of 6,000 fans at the Agannis Arena. It was shot to where it looked like an even larger crowd.

 

[Infinit 2,257]

16 hours ago, D.Z said:

I think this would be more helpful if it included the building capacities to provide context.

[Craig H 12,341]

It would have been. That type of info should be included. With Boston, I remember it being a sellout or something like it, but I'm thinking that's 9,000 or 10,000 people and not knowing that arena only holds 7,000 people with multiple sections closed off for the TV production.

[Craig H 12,341]

 

[Craig H 12,341]

Merch Freak continues to be some of the best shit they've ever done on BTE

[Niners Fan in CT 14,234]

Boston was definitely a sellout.  I was there,  the only seats that were open were on the hard camera side for TV production.  Everything else was full.  

Hard to say what this mean if anything..   NXT has definitely seen a bump with the inclusion of main roster talent.  Which is sad as fuck considering the shows were better without that shit. 

 

[Craig H 12,341]

I'm curious to what the quarter hours are. I definitely thought it was the weakest episode and if I was a channel changer, I probably would have flipped over to NXT at times.

NXT was about the same or sightly worse than it usually is, but they also had a bump from the PPV. 

[Niners Fan in CT 14,234]

I think they had a bump from the PPV for sure but I also have a theory..    that the older demographic that usually watches NXT stayed home on Thanksgiving Eve while the younger demo that watches AEW..  went out that night.    Just a theory. 

[Craig H 12,341]

Eh, that goes both ways and lots of people travel.

Plain and simple, it just wasn't that good of a night for AEW. 

Honestly, the thing to really look at is what the rating is this week for each show.