A_K
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Posts
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Joined
Posts posted by A_K
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20 minutes ago, John E. Dynamite said:
I was nice last time and really hoped you'd be nice too. It's a compulsion, I get it. This is a space online where people talk about the thing they like, and all you do is come in and tell us why we're "statistically incorrect" for liking it while reveling in the discord you create. It's all you post about. It clearly makes you happy to be miserable. It's so very, very against the spirit of this place but I guess that's why it's so fun for you. Because it stands out more, has more of an effect than if you were just being toxic on Twitter or something.
You're a shitbrained cunt. And I'm sorry you can't help but be that.
DMed you.
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Absolutely molten crowd. Running a lead-off segment large parts of which are not in English is a bold narrative decision. Makes the whole angle feel even larger than life. The product is as culturally/ethnically diverse up and down the card as I think it has ever been in its entire history at the moment.
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3 hours ago, TheVileOne said:
The UK doesn't get many shows like this and isn't wrestling and AEW popular in the UK?
We've even seen this in WWE in down years or periods. They go to an international show and they suddenly have a stadium full of 50,000 people, especially if it's an area they haven't run in a long time. WWE Global Warming in 2002 filled up Marvel Stadium, not sure if it's the legit number, but they drew 56,000 people, and that's after the Attitude Era had cooled significantly.
I feel like you can make a similar comparison to when WWE went to SummerSlam the first time. It was not WWE's hottest period. Hulk Hogan was away at the time. WWE had cooled off significantly and they drew a huge crowd.
This is correct. Also to swing back around to a post on a previous page that "the strength of that brand is the fan mindset" - this is also correct. There exists a fervent anti-Fed mindset amongst swathes of the niche hardcore, to the point where we have terms like "Vincels" being tossed around, and language like "cunt" & "shitbrain" (which isn't remotely acceptable in any polite or civilised society, really, not least making the user sound quite low-IQ) & comparisons to far-right analysts like Tucker Carson is given legitimacy and egged on so long as it is used to amplify objections to statistical fact. "The strength of the brand" becomes a double-edged sword for some of supporting your favourite Indy darling, and at the same time getting one over on Evil-Fed lorded over by Toxic-Vince (sometimes by channelling a similar toxicity). This is, I think, still a hardcore-minority, and then you have the very casual PW fans sprinkled over the top.
Again, does not diminish from the achievement of selling strongly in the UK. I'm still really curious how they marketed over there as, initial announcement on Dynamite aside, they hadn't put that much emphasis onto it during television / promo time. More an interesting observation on how the divide has become almost a quasi-political or ideological one, which transcends the gap in PW companies in a way that **actually** does not really have any historical precedent. Interesting reflection on general social divides.
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2 minutes ago, Elsalvajeloco said:
There were networks having month long bidding wars on these fights. Yes, all these are mega fights you dummy. What the fuck are you talking about?
You're a very angry man. As I say, I have some magic beans to sell you. They'll make you more cheerful while you watch your 40 year old Russian titleless journeymen in "mega fights", I promise. Now, enough non-AEW talk.
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12 minutes ago, Elsalvajeloco said:
Are you insane? ALL OF THOSE are megafights. Dude, the UK went several decades without a HW champ. Then, they went another several years without heavyweight champion.
Dude, are you ill?
Absolutely none of those were mega fights. If you think Carlos Takam who had 3 losses on his record at 37, a 39 year old Kubrat Pulev & a 38 year old Povetkin in their first big title fights merit "mega fight" as journeymen opponents, then I have some magic beans to sell you. Heaven knows what you'd call Bud / Spence, Benavidez / Canelo, Fury / Usyk etc. But I digress - this is an AEW thread. The statistical facts related to the point are as stated in the initial post.
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19 minutes ago, Elsalvajeloco said:
Well, to have you tell it, shit you would think AEW is 1990/91 World Class with Killer Tim Brooks regularly outselling them at a titty bar while they're struggling to get 300 at the Sportatorium.
EVERYONE should be surprised. There is NO precedent for this. Bob Arum is almost 100 years old with 50+ plus years of high level promoting experience. He ain't ever ran card ANYWHERE where he sold 6,000 (let alone 60,000) tickets with no card announced.
AEW is at present a declining domestic creative property as measured over an 18 month period, with heavily receding domestic viewership and receding attendance figures. That is simply statistical fact. Once one accepts that fact, they can try to divine the reasons for this decline. My interpretation is because it is terribly scripted (from the Four Pillars to simply the comedic optics of having Adam Cole "restrained" by average Joe looking security guards all of whom tower over him, to simply take two instances from the recent episode) and inauthentically a 'meritocracy'. Others can draw their own conclusions, of course.
Joshua / Povetkin sold 90k tickets. Fury / Whyte sold 90k tickets. Joshua / Takam sold 80k tickets. None of these were "mega fights". Clash at the Castle did c. 65k sales at higher prices in a city that has 5% the population of London and is far harder to travel to. So, yes, there are precedents. AEW doing very well to market and sell in a foreign market is not incompatible with a demonstrable creative + domestic malaise. This does not at all diminish AEW's achievement in the UK, as Impact for example never approached this level of ambition / execution, but it is not wholly unexpected (imo).
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1 hour ago, Niners Fan in CT said:
Someone take me through how this happened. I'm 5-years old. So WCW did 41,000 for Goldberg vs. Hogan and they were red hot. They were selling out arenas, the TV ratings were bonkers, the merchandise was flying off the shelves. Everyone had an nWo t-shirt.
Obviously AEW in the U.S. isn't as hot as WCW once was. I know ratings don't mean everything, a lot has changed but everyone knew people who were watching WCW during that period. They were household names.
Did WCW top out at 41,000 just because of the market? Atlanta? Was it because of short notice? It feels like all metrics would suggest that WCW should have been able to have sold out stadium shows. WWF had done it. Some Japanese promotions had done it.
WCW sold 25k tickets touring Australia during the absolute trough of 'fall 2000. Australia has around a third the population of the UK. As far as I recall there was no PPV associated (Nitro / house).
To be honest I'm not too surprised how well this has sold: I'm sure there is some Khan-papering to an extent (actual attendance will be interesting vs supposed sales), but that said the UK is a population of almost 70 million people, all of whom are only 6 hours max. away from London. They extremely rarely get PW events, and there are enough legacy-Fed names involved that casual Fed fans will be in as well as the Dubya hardcores. PW fans can be a rabid bunch. I'm more curious how they marketed this thing. They've always had very strong production values (that was the huge standout vs. the respective TNA upstart period), interested if this extends to foreign marketing. Clearly they've done extremely well.
Looking back to WCW, that 41k was in the context of a company who had been touring throughout the country week-to-week. That Atlanta show was not a novelty-entry into a new territory as it were. AEW domestic attendances have largely been in a declining trend (some notable PPV/Special Events aside) -- Kia Forum + Arthur Ashe for example both down 30% YOY on previous appearances. A 1 off in a territory that is smaller than Michigan but w/ 7x the population cannot be comparable w/ touring domestic market state-to-state week after week.
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8 minutes ago, hammerva said:
If we are going to spend all this time telling us that Cody Rhodes hasn't faced any adversity and needs to struggle more (which is a BS argument) then Brock should win and just destroy him. Then you got a month or two of him trying to deal with Brock
It’s not a bullshit argument. Prior to facing Roman he had no pinfall wins at any champions from the past 4 years or so. His “Road to Wrestlemania” featured bouts against a bunch of low carders like La Knight or green rookies like Solo. He was number 30 at the Rumble. He had - quite literally - the easiest lay up to get to WM, and had no prior world title main event experience. Quite literally the epitome of needing more experience & adversity at that level against a talent who is narratively pitched as being as good as any to ever glove up.
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RIP. He had mentioned variously that he was in and out of hospital of late: reading through the Gofundme, and the extent of the adversity, its nothing short of inspiring that he maintained such an uplifting manner throughout. That is true courage. Another who must have first visited the old version of this forum as a small kid some 20 years ago (c. 2005); its stands as testament to one who was instrumental in creating it.
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Survey says .. one more win for the Vincels.
In all seriousness, how the fuck did this guy wrack up nigh on $20 million in hush money payments. Absolutely and utterly absurd.
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Irrespective of being known by virtue of sharing PW hobby with online fandom, this is one extremely brave guy. Reading that list of ailments, I'm sure I'd have given up long ago. Complete & utter respect for the courage. Hope the little sent helps: great to see they are overall tracking above expectations. Thoughts and respect to the whole family experiencing and supporting through this.
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775k in the week SD posts 2.5 mil. Who is asleep at the wheel of WBD, and how long until someone at the network figures out the house is burning and gives TK a polite knock on the door to punt Guevara and Perry straight out of Wembley arena and hire someone who can actually script a television show? Called the 700s as incoming in February but to get there in 10 weeks is overkill .. they've burnt 25% of the audience in a matter of months while the competition and their army of Vincels / dyed-in-the-wool Fox-viewers go from strength to absolute strength ..
Bringing in another of the internet marks of the breed who thought Reigns retaining at WM would sink the Fed (reminder - SD just put up the strongest numbers this year without Roman even on the show) ain't going to fix the ship, uce.
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9 hours ago, Elsalvajeloco said:
I don't expect better from you cause you're AK. Not exactly a brand known for quality.
Given all their resources and genius, why cannot they beat out 10-12 other shows on Fox and their related networks? They got money out the wazoo now. No excuses. Meanwhile, based on what they got, AEW is going to be the top scripted show on TBS/TNT for the next 70 years. On their next TV deal, they're going to get good money for a organization that's only been around not even five years.
While you acerbically chase the alter-ego of me a few posts above, I'll do a quick log-out/log-in switch to relent here.
After sleeping on it and considering the train of logic, I agree. It is a reasonable supposition that Smackdown are trending 25% higher w/ a monster demo than when they were on Fox YOY because they are now on Fox while AEW are trending 30% lower than when they were on TBS YOY because they are now on TBS.
Further, I retract all prior analysis on the trajectory of AEW product & quality of their scriptwriting -- I will assign it variously to whining/cuntishness/being a brand or mind "not known for quality" as were my whims of the day. The avant-garde & high art nature of the television show simply, it seems, has been going over my head, compared with what's been cooked up by the dullards at The Fed which even a moron like me can understand.
Now, on with the wrestling!
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25 minutes ago, Elsalvajeloco said:
Yes because Smackdown ain't even the fifth best performing show on Fox. If you add in Fox News, it don't break top 10. Why can't WWE and their fan fiction writers beat those shows out?
Platforms absolutely matter. WWF had a very good thing going USA. Why did they still jump to TNN? Cause USA was on the way down and it looked like TNN was the future. Turned out to be wrong in hindsight, but that was their decision.
Geez. SD recording 2.5 million viewers on Fox as opposed to 1.9 million viewers on Fox is because Smackdown is on Fox while AEW recording 800k viewers on TBS as opposed to 1.2 million viewers on TBS is because AEW is on TBS. Did I get that right?
Hell, SD recording 2.5 million viewers in direct competition w/ NBA, Stanley Cup Playoffs & NFL Draft ain't nothing to shout home about because it didn't beat out The Masked Singer on Wednesday Nights. Come on bro, I expected better than that. Its almost more believable to run the line as some others are that WWE is only doing so well right now because it is lowest-common-denominator narrative for low IQ idiots as opposed to the high-art, avant garde offering that only 200k ppl watching Matt Hardy & The Firm on Rampage can wrap their minds around or the 750k odd people that stick around to see Brian Danielson running around with a screwdriver or Jack Perry being sent out there week after week like some weirdly coiffured sacrificial lamb.
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13 minutes ago, Elsalvajeloco said:
Find me something on Fox airing regularly in prime time that does less than 1-2 million.
9-1-1: 4.5 million for the last show
9-1-1 Lone Star: 3.35 million for the last show
The Masked Singer: 3.4 million for the last show
Next Level Chef: 1.76 million for the last show
Fox is such a strong platform that if WWE did below 1.5-2 million average, they would have to make some creative changes at the top. That has very little to do with AEW and Tony Khan. Why cannot WWE's bad fiction writers who are living out of their fantasy by virtue of Vince's checkbook beat out a shitty reality show and two shows at basically the same show over two nights?
SD is up 25% YOY in viewership. AEW is down, whatever it is now .. 30% YOY on viewership. Do you really want to float the idea that the contrasting trajectories of the two over a prolonged period is even partially because of the platform? One is thriving and one is wilting while existing in the very same context they existed in before.
I know that was a quick-draw post reply for you .. but as previous post hopefully inferred, WWE creative team have added objective, quantifiable value to the underlying. I mean, that cannot even be argued - it is all there in the numbers, all in black and white. They're thriving top to bottom. They're making new stars top to bottom and refreshing talent who've been with them for years (Sami; KO etc.) in entirely new contexts.
To be honest, I'm not even really evaluating AEW in the context of WWE (although the contrasting fortunes over a long period of time now paint -- as above -- a very rotten picture that makes it so easy, and does away with the argument that the industry as a whole is just in an inescapable mire). AEW's work is just bad. How the same online community that would pore over the WON accounts of disaster-days WCW w/ hilarity somehow manage to convince themselves that Sammy Guevara + Jack Perry doing a mic job on national television that would make Evan Karagis & Shannon Moore blush while Daniel Bryan runs around like a slapstick character with a screwdriver and Jay White comes in on his debut to a parity-esque match with a 5 "5 guy who lines up all his moves like a Cirque Soleil acrobat for others to fall down like card soldiers in Alice in Wonderland is remotely acceptable for a national offering is just .. utterly beyond me. This stuff embarrasses the industry. Its just so, so bad.
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Looks like there was some good analytical conversation generated on previous pages: will circle back and read through tomorrow.
Meanwhile: SD -- absent of Roman -- continues to absolutely smoke it, w/ 2.5 million viewers or +25% YOY. For all the whataboutery re: narrative decisions taken prior to & during WM, it continues to prove as was clearly the case at the time -- the outcome of the ongoing Bloodline saga is to have made a product w/ 6 or 7 bonafide main eventers at the top of the card, each with their own distinctive character and traits who can be rotated in and out of the grander story arc. Not 'hypothetical' main eventers or draws .. guys that 2.5 million people will tune in to watch absent of the number one guy being on the TV set. The creative team at WWE are making guys up and down that card superstars right now at a pace and consistency they haven't for going on 20 years prior.
This is building a narrative-laden, story-driven roster with foundations. Venues are selling out for every show; talent are getting intended reactions up and down the card; vets & young guns can be cycled in and out while maintaining narrative flow. So when the contrite question emerges from the echo chamber of "you whine too much: what ever makes you happy?" .. actual quality output like this (& hot shows like WM) make me happy. The industry being reduced to carnival drivel on the other channel while guys with talent like Hobbs & Acclaimed are being blown to smithereens by a talentless fan fiction writer w/ zero governance or quality control living out his fantasy by virtue of his father's check book conversely does nothing for me.
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4 hours ago, Matt D said:
BUT, in the face of the whiny bit of bad faith tone in the post above mine, let me be entirely clear that there's still a lot to enjoy on any given Wednesday or Friday (or Thursday, or Tuesday, or Sunday morning). I'm writing up both Sammy vs Darby and Orange vs Bandido tonight for SC and toss a bunch of words at both.
It does make me wonder if they wouldn't be better served by 6 PPVs a year and again, if a soft brand split and more Punk influence isn't going to help things just a little.
Plus there's been a lot of talk about bringing in a new continuity writer (with a loose rumor that it's Will Washington but that's more of a matter of timing than anything else).
Who is whining, or writing in bad faith? Your ilk love to throw out the barbs in face of divergent opinions: I’ll file this alongside the fellow who called me a “cunt” in the main thread, proceeded to wander into the ratings thread and accuse of “cherry picking data”, then offer no counter point of view or statistics.
I don’t mind though. I’ll simply repeat the question, given this is a wrestling discussion forum after all, and not one where we should all be precious about our hobbies being examined (after all, people were happy to throw and continue to throw vitriol at WWE management and creative personnel for years on years).
Which nationally televised pro wrestling promotion in history has thrown up a weaker foursome in Jack Perry, Sammy Guevara, Darby Allin & MJF to head their product? If any, who were the talent concerned?
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6 hours ago, Dolfan in NYC said:
The Draft continues tomorrow! Better pick up Rhea quick or there's gonna be some awkwardness!
Also, look, I don't follow AEW all *that* closely, but are they seriously running heel vs. heel at their PPV? Don't tell me Max or Sammy are faces, they are both disgusting pigs (character-wise).
Even the previously-rabid AEW fans don't follow it closely anymore -- you're not missing much. The fan-fiction writer has gotten so bad that the booking is 100% up there now with latter-stages Russo WCW (start of New Blood / Millionaire's Club was unquestionably better than whatever segment one turns to in AEW at the moment) & Hogan-TNA. He earns some reprieve in some quarters still because instead of continuing stories week-to-week and compounding on their lameness, he seems to either just forget the workers ever existed and vanish them from television sets or debut a new toy-of-the-month to distract for a little while so people can't keep track.
I'd challenge anyone to give me 4 names forming the top-of-the-card, World Title angle in the history of televised network-television more green (/outright terrible) than Perry, Guevara .. then the far-better but still not ready Darby and finally MJF who has to supervise it all.
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FTR Bald looks like he's eaten FTR Hair: he & Jarrett looked every bit the pair of 50 year olds falling out of the pub, grasping at air as they breathlessly roll around on the ground out there. Give him 9 more months to grow that gut even further and a white wig and he'll be ready for a second job at the mall. He was never the most athletic, but his conditioning now compared to a year ago against the Bucks, say, is an absolute embarrassment. Bad look.
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I like Punk. He's got more innate talent irrespective of his age than 80% of that roster put together. That said, he won't move numbers this time around. He may elevate them to 900k, perhaps even 1 mil on the first viewing to see how they play the Elite drama, but it won't last more than a week or two. This is scripted television drama, not live sport. The issue is and always has been with the script, not the actors: Punk had already pretty much cooled down last time around unless he had an interesting heel angle in the works of his own creation. They can trot The Rock out there and they'd still be dragged to the doldrums in short order by virtue of the actions & words the dramatists are being asked to recite on copy from the guy with a degree in finance from an OK-ish college, who if judged on meritoicarcy / body of creative work and not for having a billionaire dad to finance the thing probably wouldn't have even got a job interview at the Big Company in a similar creative role.
Always good to see Punk back in the ring though. The charisma will never leave him.
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4 minutes ago, AxB said:
Listening to Wrestlenomics would make them well informed though.
The people who argue in this thread don't want to be well informed, they want to cherry pick data that supports their argument and ignore data that contradicts it.
This thread is good for one thing, keeping all of this bullshit out of the discussion threads. And it's not actually that good at it.
What data is being cherry picked, and what data is being ignored? Curious to see what is being over-looked / under-stated.
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1 hour ago, Matt D said:
To the finances thread with you, grumpy dude who gets your internet kicks on the hopes of misery. You can talk about AEW getting 30-50 million for the new show over there while you’re at it. And how this show was live on the west coast and people thought the rating held up surprisingly well.
We’ll be over here talking about how amusing All Access season two will be when Tay complains about them giving this big angle to the Outcasts instead of her even though she’s in the JAS and Sammy is wrestling for the title.
I'm glad you're enjoying it buddy - more power to you (& anyone else who thinks they're putting on high quality television)! But if someone wants to post that they've demonstrated "a decent long-term booking plan" then yeah, I'm gonna have to let the facts get in the way. Now, back to the pro-wrestling!
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7 hours ago, Elsalvajeloco said:
We must have different meanings for absolutely catastrophic because I don't think M*A*S*H and Cheers were on as long as the doomsaying around the AEW ratings has been going on.
Second, it's tough to compare WCW in anyway to AEW in that:
A. That shit happened twenty two years ago. If you were born the day after WCW went down, you either could have your bachelor's degree or about to graduate with a bachelor's degree very soon. You're also old enough to drink legally. I imagine the TV landscape has changed in 22 years, especially given that no one thought wrestling would net anything as far as major rights fees.
B. If you were halfway able to compare it to WCW, it doesn't jive with what you're saying. If something is going bad on TV, they don't give you ANOTHER show. If a showrunner is screwing up, usually they cancel that show with a quickness or replace him/her with the quickness. Also, you act like it's just one rogue motherfucker at the network with AEW tatted on his forehead giving AEW more exposure. First of all, I doubt you could name that person. Also, what gives you the sense that it's just one person? It could be multiple people because last time I checked, TBS/TNT ain't a mom and pop independent channel. We've already seen the havoc that has been reeked by WBD. If that person or persons hasn't been canned by now, they would have to work very hard to get fired.
Unless you heard something through the grapevine or heard rumblings about the numbers, I wouldn't be as invested in the correlation between the rating trends and the booking. You know when we will know something? It's when that TV contract comes due, and they have to negotiate. That's when you will have your hard evidence.
50% of this weeks show was in the 700ks for audience figures. The overall viewing figure is being held up by the lead-in number, of whom 100k+ tune out within 15 minutes. RAW, televising an equivalent product, is running 1.9 million through their second hour. If that's not catastrophic given the divergence on proximities 18 months ago, how far down this rabbit hole do they need to go before internally they make changes?
Even some of the ultra-niche watchers on this board have posted recently that they're checking out. They are in quick-sand. Network employees make bad decisions all the time that then need to be rectified down the track: that's nothing new. While ratings held up in the short term when Thunder debuted, it was the harbinger to quality decline & WCW falling out of track within a few months. New programming does not inherently signal an upturn in mid-to-long term fortunes.
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8 hours ago, chriskbrown50 said:
AEW to date has shown a decent long-term booking plan.
They've booked away 40% of their overall audience peak-to-trough & approaching 50% of their demo. It is absolutely catastrophic booking. TBS can give them all the television time they want: the numbers don't lie, and if they continue on this trajectory (which they will, without fundamental changes in management personnel), then it'll be whoever is building the network around this product & allowing these decisions to continue whose head goes on to the pike next (a la Kellner pulling WCW when he came in).
AEW - MAY 2023
in ALL ELITE WRESTLING
Posted · Edited by A_K
Pity you had to do this - but exactly. This is why I explicitly took my comment to DM this week of all weeks (also because that poster had already brought up something completely outside of online-comment-realm that I considered to be very inappropriate & disingenuous to be discussing on public threads) .. its a pity, it got dragged back into the public thread again right away rather than keeping to private DM, but c'est la vie, different levels of etiquette. As you mention, the block function is there for a reason. I'd suggest if someone does not like a normally-expressed supposition, they simply pass over it as they would in real life rather than injecting themselves into the conversation (as between my post and the different poster to whom I was replying - who I note is not one of those screaming profanities above ..) or being aggressive. My DMs are always open to a Mod if I'm writing something that's completely incorrect or vitriolic (outside of it simply being an opinion not agreed with).
My comments in this thread were in response to a query on WCW Live Gate sales, in which I was effusive of AEW ability to sell in the UK (and that I was not surprised by it). My comment that I was not surprised they have sold well was leapt upon by a usual suspect. Damned if you do, damned if you don't ..
Its great Wembley sold so well: they've clearly marketed very well. The comments are all there in black and white. As for the note above that I am 'defensive' .. I'm anything but .. if the uncouth mob-rule crowd want to throw out cunt, shitbrain, shitbrain cunt etc. rather than debate a point through calmly or simply avoid it, more power to them, I won't engage with it. Final comment (As I already said to the continued boxing digression .. this as it is not what the thread is about) .. DVDR has forever been a place of differing opinions & freedom of speech that people can check in and out of, there's no reason to reduce to herd-speak .. peace.