– In regards to WWE Backstage no longer being a weekly show, Dave Meltzer is reporting that the decision was more about the show’s budget and viewership rather than Covid-19. Meltzer noted that CM Punk in particular had a “big” contract due to the network believing “they had pulled a great coup in getting him back on wrestling programming.”
– As PWMania.com previously reported, WWE NXT won this week’s viewership battle with 786,000 (0.19 18-49 demo) viewers and finished 26th for the night on cable. AEW Dynamite drew 633,000 (0.22 18-49 demo) viewers and finished 17th for the night on cable.
NXT drew its biggest viewership since February 19th while AEW drew its all-time lowest viewership. It was also the biggest margin of victory for NXT to date.
Dave Meltzer of F4WOnline.com noted “there is a theory that the news in wrestling of the week left a bad taste more with AEW fans, because they are more inside wrestling social media based, but NXT’s numbers of older fans went so far up while AEW’s declined greatly, so most of the difference was over 50 fans switching to NXT, as well as teenagers.”
AEW only won one quarter hour (the second) and NXT beat AEW in the 18-49 demo for the last 30 minutes. NXT drew 852,000 viewers for the main event of Keith Lee vs. Johnny Gargano vs. Finn Balor while AEW drew 552,000 viewers for the Chris Jericho face-off with Orange Cassidy.
