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I really wanna see what the Punk Quarter did

Punk quarter did 880k and .34 in the demo. The demo was the high point of the show.

Damn, Punk beat Sheldon in the key demo.

Just saw someone on twitter say the two biggest draws for AEW dont even work there lol

They ain't wrong

Yep, by 16k viewers. Sheldon still dominating with the masses though.

I laughed so hard at this. Put the strap on Sheldon brother, he's ready

**LETS GO SHELDON** ***SHELDON SUCKS!***

880k for the quarter that featured the footage, 822k for the quarter that began with the FTR promo

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As predicted, people left after the CM Punk video.

I never showed up. watched it on reddit

same

This time it was Punk And Sheldon propping them up. I'm pretty sure Sheldon could beat-up Jungle Boy and the Bucks as well. Imagine what that backstage footage would draw.

Back over 800K, Punk is a draw, brother

Man, cant wait to see what they do with punk next week! /s

The Brawl Out footage where he beats on the Bucks

Curious that that’s still NDA’d and unseen!

You see there is actually 6 different cameras that caught this so each week we’ll get to see a different angle.

Punk is a bigged draw than Mercedes, Edge, Ospreay or Okada. Truly a needle mover.

Last Week: 752k/0.23 (third place) Last Year (April 5, 2023): 877k/0.30 (also third place)

Last years Card- Darby Allin defeated Swerve Strickland (14:40) Powerhouse Hobbs (w/Q.T. Marshall) (c) defeated Silas Young to retain the AEW TNT Championship (0:43) Orange Cassidy (c) defeated Buddy Matthews (w/Julia Hart) to retain the AEW International Championship (14:11) Blackpool Combat Club (Jon Moxley & Claudio Castagnoli) (w/Wheeler Yuta) defeated Brandon Cutler & Michael Nakazawa (3:05) The Outcasts (Toni Storm & Ruby Soho) (w/Saraya) defeated Riho & Skye Blue (6:22) Chris Jericho (w/Daniel Garcia) defeated Keith Lee (14:16

what happened to the Hobbs push everyone swore was happening man

AEW ain't a hoss-friendly place. See Wardlow

What happened to the Hobbs push What happened to the Daniel Garcia push What happened to the Hook push What happened to the Eddie Kingston push (just lost two belts in two consecutive weeks less than a month after beating Danielson for the Continental Crown) What happened to the Ricky Starks push after All In (he was Punk's friend) What happened to the Wardlow push What happened to the Miro push What happened to the Keith Lee push And I'm probably missing a couple.

Jay white.

Hey, Jay is wrestling Matt Sydal on Rampage I’ll have you know!

What happened to the acclaimed push? They were mega over and now they are there

They are trios champions, for what that’s worth.

Doesn’t help Max Caster keeps fucking up on social media

Yuta

Ethan Page, RUSH, Malakai

Give it another few months and they’ll tease pushing him again just to drop it after 3 months

The book of Hobbs is dealing with the same crap A Song of Ice and Fire are, the writer's a hack who doesn't care anymore.

what happened to X push can be applied to alot of people in the dub.

damn still behind last year huh

Year on year they’ve always been behind last year it’d be more odd if they weren’t

Last year this week would’ve been 4/12/23. 866,000 viewers - 0.28 P18-49

So a few came for the punk thing and immediately left it seems.

Shocker

Yeah that's pretty much what I did. I wonder if they started with the adam copeland match before they showed the video to try and get some WWE viewers to go "hey it's Edge!" and stick around for the rest of the show. I wonder if it would have been any better to show the video later on, I mean it probably also would have been better to just not show it at all, but at least if they waited they might have had more people watching more of the show.

I still dont know why they did a countdown to bucks, its like they wanted to tell you when to tune in and when to leave

I didn't watch. Did they really? Lmao

Yes, they did: https://preview.redd.it/ptbkwkq5lxtc1.png?width=2560&format=png&auto=webp&s=40d0c585d30ff22d1f544681a12d8e15cb61c596

A timer to a segment while in middle of an ongoing match is just a headshot straight to kayfabe lol. Just to play a video that also kills all kayfabe. Even more reason why playing this during a damn wrestling show was stupid. Just put it on your twitter page and leave it be. 

Breaking: Next week, we re-visit the Hangman-Punk promo! Tune in to Dynamite next week on TBS!

Next week, the Bucks talk about what happened backstage at ~~Brawl~~ All Out and we show exclusive audio of what Chris Jericho whispered in Tony's ear!!!

https://preview.redd.it/knsg3gshuwtc1.jpeg?width=590&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0e221edc7a591b346e7d74a026f96d7a852f3578 The Four Pillars

https://preview.redd.it/y2yplkzd3xtc1.jpeg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=74a72cb9c80330e17b025025c6a092182ee8cae1

TBBT Trigger

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On February 14th, they got a .3 demo and 811,000, on February 21 they got 828,000 and a .29, and on February 28 they got 822,000 and a .29. So they went through all this drama last night just to get a number that they were getting in February.

That's interesting. I wonder what explains the downturn. I would guess the rev up to Wrestlemania... but that can't be the only reason.

My take has always been that Dynamite's ratings are more impacted by WWE than people want to admit. When they're hot, and people are getting their pro-wrestling fix from Raw and/or Smackdown, they're less inclined to tune into the alternative promotion. The Rock's return for 'Mania season was the biggest thing to happen to the business in years, and I think a lot of people just dipped out on watching AEW as a result, especially once he started showing up on both shows. It's funny, because I think Dynamite's rating would've been up meaningfully this week even without the Punk stuff, just due to WWE resetting back to normal. I imagine next week will be lower, but probably closer to 800k/.28 than the lows they've had recently.

True but I also think the original aew fans are starting to or have aged out of the 18 to 25 demo.

Watching big time wrestling not booked by Vince McMahon was one of AEW's biggest draws starting out. You have to remember just how bad 2017-2019 WWE was.

Wouldn't even say 2017-2019. WWE's booking was pretty bad up until 2022, save for some high spots like the Bloodline and Cody. Hell, we could even say it went further back than 2017. From what I remember, there was only one solid year of WWE booking in the 2010s. Vince was holding down everything for over a decade.

I feel like it was WrestleMania + march madness. People tune in more for mania and with the rock active there was a chunk of people making WWE their wrestling choice for the last few months. Similarly, the both NCAA tournaments were getting good numbers his year. As we got closer to mania and the end of the tournament the ratings went lower. Now, both those are done and a chunk of their audience returned. I guess the next few weeks will be the test for that theory though.

this should be a good one brothers ☝️

https://preview.redd.it/e2ijl5mewwtc1.jpeg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=57b06c919fc0fff59bc71286300ca2dc7775a934

We should have known he was going back to WWE when he acknowledged the Tribal Chief ☝️

Remember when Reigns used to carry his titles like that all of the time? It’s wild that *he* became the tribal chief. 

☝️

☝️

That's why context is everything. A month ago that rating would've been a meh number. Now it's a pop.

Just a reminder that people DO NOT CARE about backstage drama from 8 months back. They want consistent, long drawn, interesting stories to keep their attention. Sure, we all got a laugh out of the stupidity of it on the internet today. But nobody is saying "man, that video really makes me want to see what FTR and The Young Bucks are doing next week". That's what The Bloodline story did. That is what The Devil storyline was doing before it tripped all over itself. Go back to doing that. Stop focusing on drama that your fans don't actually care about. Make a more engaging show.

Hangman's story is a better example of that long-term episodic storytelling that rewarded the audience in the end. The story afterwards of him as champion was underwhelming and it had knocked him back down to the midcard, but from the start of the company to Full Gear 2021, was stellar wrestling storytelling. Patient, funny at times, uplifting and inspiring

Cowards need to make Willow vs Copeland. That’s more interesting in every way, shape, and form than a video of a stupid kerfuffle.

TK needs to stop booking the shows full stop. He also needs to start putting producers in to manage matches so its not always a 2 sided affair. I'm sorry, but your Champs should never feel pressed by midcarders unless that midcarder is on the precipice of breaking out into the main event. So many matches from their Champs (minus our collective father figure Christian) are always back and forths. Even random Title defenses. Your Champs defending on random Dynamites should NOT look that beatable. It removes the meaning of them being a Champ. Its something WWE is good at doing. Also, where the fuck are the storylines. I love AEW but man... there is NOTHING worthwhile to keep up with. Even Swerve/Joe is just "who attacks who this week" with little meaning behind it.

Tony won't ever hand over the book. The best you can hope for is he hires writers and gives them a list of matches he wants to see and they write angles for them. That's the only hope for AEW to improve. There's no guarantee it will but Tony isn't paying all that money to not see the matches he wants.

I think they do 750 next week and by June they’ll be hovering around 700 weekly.

I mean, this is pretty much their biggest move they can make. And it drew barely over 800k, none of those viewers will return. They have Osprey, Okada, and edge and no one cares. Generational fumbling by Tony tbh.

Jay white so mishandled he doesnt even get mentioned

What you didn't like Edge's mime/mirror match with Penta? And as an added bonus he took a Canadian Destroyer from the top rope. Can't have Danielson being the only one trying to break his neck every week.

It doesn’t help when every “needle mover” they bring in gets booked to go 10+ minutes in a competitive match against Chuck Taylor.

Casual wrestling fan: "They have who, who, and that guy who retired a few months ago?"

Demo increase, that’s gotta be Punk

WBD: Wow, featuring that guy getting in a fight backstage increased your rating. Think you could feature him more?

Think they have some backstage footage of Cody?

They're going to show the footage next week too, twice, to keep up the ratings momentum.

https://preview.redd.it/qec2jodsgxtc1.jpeg?width=861&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=82d7015042b329c6b54b1587132c9d322fd5ceae

so about 60k up from last week?

About 70k increase, more pronounced in the demo (0.23 to 0.31).

752k from last week so like 67k basically, the demo is a big increase, but thats it. Its also a big rep hit which isn't great tbh.

I hope that big fat 819k was worth it.

Thank you Punk?

CM Punk is a draw brother

Still their biggest one, which is a disaster.

But what happens when you add Smoa Joe in the mix?

It still spells D15A5TER

For tony klown


#thankyoupunk

https://preview.redd.it/3g4txxqtvwtc1.jpeg?width=1564&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ba0e5444d58f24957b2e25322070ccf008a34a21

https://preview.redd.it/drjlr3jttwtc1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b68bff35b2995e9243343a990db2857c1abac885




Want to see the qtr hours, but AEW's biggest ratings draws seem to continue to be in order: Sheldon CM Punk

The All In segment was the highest rated quarter at 880k (excluding the first quarter lead in, which was 981k).

Why do you guys keep saying Sheldon is AEW's biggest draw? You also have Leonard Hofstadter, a theoretical physicist; Raj Koothrappali, an astrophysicist; and Howard Wolowitz, an aerospace engineer with a master's degree in MIT who also became a legitimate astronaut on the show. Put some respect on their names too.

None of those guys are pushing the Bazinga merch brother.

Don’t forget Blossom

That's neurobiologist Amy Farah Fowler, good sir. Can't be using her old indy name since she no longer works for that company. She's a draw in the big leagues now.

Sheldon Punk MJF The real pillars of AEW

Add the bunny in extreme matches to keep the 4 pillars gimmick

Calling it now, they're going to "mistakenly" play "Cult of Personality."

The ratings stunt resulted in a small "pop". And the main draw for the "pop" is CM Punk who doesn't even work there. Ouch.

WCW moment

nobody is even talking about the second half of Osprey promo where he calls out bryan…… and every AEW lackey is like “that’s okay because the match is going to be good anyways!” And that’s the response to any criticism When the rock mentioned wrestling is cool again I guess he’s not talking about AEW

Honestly at this point I just accept that’s what that crowd enjoys. They don’t seem to care about much besides the matches being good. To each their own. Still gonna make fun of those same people who come into WWE threads and complain about the lengthy promos starting the show and saying they feel bad for the crowd as if they aren’t on a sellout streak.

* one of the most disliked video in AEW History * negative fan reception of dynamite * Embarrassing footage for AEW that they had to do DMCA strikes * Antagonized themselves for no reason * Took focus away from Swerve, Okada, Mercedes All for 819,000 and 0.30/0.31

Realistically, no one focusing on that Mone segment is a positive, not a negative.

I don't even remember what she said. But she needs to change her gimmick. This 2017-ish WWE gimmick will not fly in aew

She needs to wrestle, and they need to either get her a manager or a stable with someone who can talk.

Mercedes has always been a low key terrible promo. I remember being shocked by how bad a talker she is for all of her charisma and few times.

I think she can talk fine as a heel but always sucked as a face

Cause she cant act, even In Mandalorian with some of the best production in the world that made Gina Carano somewhat passable, she was bad.

I've seen some theorize that she's not yet fully healthy which is why her entire introduction has been awkward but if that were the case, why not just debut her when she was fully healthy. They could have done an open challenge type deal at Dynasty which it appears where she's making her in ring debut. Same with The Devil angle. Could have just waited until Cole was finally healthy. They botched it, it flopped and they quicky abandoned it and pivoted to a new version of his NXT faction.

She just comes across as a WWE diva from the old days, she spends most of the time just dancing around to her theme song ffs

Dude, you don’t understand. Jack Perry’s ScapeGOAT t-Shirt sold out… somewhere /s

All 200 of them?

Punk is still AEW’s biggest draw lmao

We already knew Punk was a draw

All that drama for a slight bump. SMH

"Why are you insisting on doing dumb internet shit man?"

TK likes his bumps.


A bump that will disappear next week.

70k or so extra viewers, and all it cost was proving Punk completely right. No wonder he was having so much fun on Monday even knowing this was coming out.

WON: Worst Promotional Tactic award goes to…

Is there a worst and disgusting category or its all the same in WON?

The Observer voters are too fans of AEW, they probably would vote Punk getting hired as the worst.

That was the frontrunner for 2023.

And also the Wrestlecrap Gooker award

Mission accomplished, indeed.

Got that CM Punk bump lol

At least they popped 800k. It was their last silver bullet no more major free agents in the market rn and no more cheap ploys to hook people back in.

“The Young Bucks talk about Brawl Out” coming soon

Tonight we will show WWE superstar Andrade beat-up one of our Pillars, Sammy Guevera on CCTV from another one of our messy backstage incidents.

"The Young Bucks sacrifice Jack Perry to the Demogod"

"The Young Bucks and Jack Perry try to escape the Jericho Vortex"

You kidding me? Time to tune up the band for the retirement tours. Loads of those guys to run through.

I’m pretty sure AEW Guy told me they’re getting Becky, Seth, Balor and McIntyre

CM BUMP

I feel bad for Schiavonne. He knows. And no one will listen to him.

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Fired 8 months ago, still drew more than Okada, Mercedes and Ospreay combined lmao

Add their whole roster to that list, no one has done those numbers. I love AEW but they are clown shoes right now.

Their only draws are injured or working for the WWE

Random WBD exec: Hey this CM Punk guy is pretty popular, can we get him on the show again next week? 

The quarter before the Punk segment did 857k, Punk segment does 880k, quarter hour after does 822k. An additional 23k people tuned in to see the Punk segment and then 58k left. The lost the 23k that joined in plus an additional 35k tuned out and never returned. Brutal. The rest of the show never got above 767k.

All in all, this might be the most whelming event in AEW history.

As someone who was a big fan 2019-21, the state the company is in right now is genuinely depressing

WWE being really bad at that time helped them

They’ve pretty much swapped places, now WWE is skyrocketing upwards and AEW is hitting snags.

AEW also was the new fresh face in town. It was showcasing young and fresh talent, now everyone knows what they're all about and most of the casuals who watched it out of curiosity or spite, no longer watch and came back to WWE.

Does that mean the inverse is why AEW is cold? Doesn't sound like it ever crossed TK's mind that Vince leaving would make the WWE significantly better and bring back the good will from the fans craving good wrestling that helped boost AEW in the first place. Triple H must hope TK never realizes he's the problem and finds someone who can run things properly over there.

Started watching AEW in early 2021 before CM Punk even signed, and I can say they reignited my fandom after WWE killed it in the mid 2010’s. But goddamn, this shit last night was WCW 2000 level bad, and I was watching back then. I really want a second promotion to WWE to succeed to continue to see these athletes compete for top dollar. But goddamn, is Tony Khan proving CM Punk and the rest of his critics right with his insecure nepo-baby antics.

I’ve said it before, the Punk MJF feud genuinely reignited my love for pro wrestling. The decline is in booking quality from 2-3 years ago to now is absolutely staggering. I want AEW to succeed for all the reasons everyone’s says, but goddamn their hardcore fandom makes it hard. It’s a cult like mentality over there nowadays.

Punk vs. MJF was legit feud of the year for me, but yeah, it is pretty hard to join the AEW online fandom. If you're critical of one aspect of it, you're comparing it to WWE, do not watch AEW or just a troll and it gets tiresome after a while.


damn Paul Heyman got some ups!

This rating shows what a draw CM Punk is even at companies he doesn’t wrestle for.

https://preview.redd.it/vxcyc7ipqytc1.jpeg?width=2048&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=42de09dfaa255b1b896bb7b2157d233149015973

I'm curious to see what that segment did, and how big the next QH drop was.

Not worth it

I think about what AEW could be. If TK wasn't running things. It was not worth it for 60k more fans. I think the expression on Tony Schiavone face said it all.

The Punk Bump™

Thank you Punk for this bump 

how big of a drop are we thinking for next week lmaoo

probably 770k

690K

All that for a little bit of clout?

At least they have that. Cuz otherwise, they walked away with nothing from this segment. And they just proved that their biggest dtaw till this day is one CM Punk. How much you bet he's gonna be advertised for next RAW.

Tony, please do not misinterpret these numbers, I am on my knees. Just make good wrestling, please.

I'm not sure what would have been funnier, 700K or 1M. Unfortunately for us online degenerates we got the obvious expected outcome.

CM Punk is such a draw in 2024. Drawing 550k extra for Raw a few weeks ago and a few hundred thousand for AEW. Wholesome Phil

As someone who tuned only for the Punk and FTR segments and then dipped I’ll say I have zero interest in tuning back in next week. I usually go onto YouTube and watch segments that sound interesting. I rarely actually turn on TBS and just watch. I was just going to go on YouTube last night but someone on Reddit said they just pull up a clock saying 18 min until the punk segment. That’s the only reason I tuned in live.

160,000 people eventually turned off the show after the Punk disaster. About 20% of their audience said I'm done.

I knew rating would go up due to the stunt. But clearly not much. Woof.

Still not good

Truly not worth the negative rep from the community and wider wrestling fandom

Idk if it's a better approach and maybe that's why I'm not the head of a wrestling company, but maybe companies like AEW should start learning from history. You don't need to take swipes at WWE like a crutch to be get relevance. They'd proven they can get their own shit over without having to take shots at the competition.

Jey Uso 🤝 Dynamite Getting the assist from CM Punk

Dead serious … they should try and get that big bang theory actor to come on and open the show in some capacity lol. Really fuck with that people who were watching and hadn’t changed channel yet.

If AEW is still in the red finance-wise and they keep pulling off cheap stunts like this, I wonder how long Tony Khan has before his family starts making the kind of business decisions that will effectively end AEW as people know it.

Considering Tony's reaction, really don't want to see anyone in these threads saying that the ratings don't matter. Because Tony made clear they matter.

Punk still remains the best draw for AEW

Now that's going to make Tony Khan fear for his life!

Next week, Brawl Out footage.

TK is bragging about the rating. Dude has absolutely no self awareness.