In this WrestleTalk News, AEW controversy, Charlotte Flair heat, Crown Jewel unhappiness,
our review of NXT and more.
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Friday, my music video punishment of Chris Jericho’s entrance song Judas.
October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, a cause WWE has promoted alongside the Susan
G. Komen foundation since 2012, raising over $2 million.
But in one of the most shocking defections of the wrestling war so far…
Susan G. Komen to AEW confirmed.
Not even Breast Cancer Awareness month is safe.
What’s next?
Latino Heritage Month to AEW confirmed?!
AEW’s official shop account announced their new partnership by tweeting:
“October is Breast Cancer Awareness month!
A portion of the proceeds from your purchase of these special items will be donated to
@SusanGKomen!
Together, we can make a difference!” - with an AEW t-shirt and sweatshirt in the cause’s
pink colour.
Charity is usually a good thing, right?
Not according to CM Punk, as many fans immediately pointed towards a tweet he’d made in 2015,
effectively shooting on WWE’s partnership with the Susan G Komen foundation:
“If you're going to give money to a company that claims to raise money for finding a cure
for cancer, please do some research.Komen is a scam”
Looking at Komen’s Wikipedia page, because I’m a great journalist, you can see the
‘controversy and criticism’ section takes up half its contents - which mostly allege
how the foundation makes more money for itself than its designated cause.
This led CM Punk himself to do AEW’s PR job for them, tweeting:
“Hey everybody” with a gif saying ‘we’re working on it’” - smartly letting those
who know know, while not outing the controversy to those who didn’t.
Very quickly, the original AEWShop announcement tweet was deleted and the shirts were pulled
from the store.
The items were then reuploaded with no mention of the Susan G. Komen foundation, just that
“A portion of the proceeds from your purchase of these items from ShopAEW.com will go to
the continued fight against cancer.”
While the planned partnership with Susan G. Komen was poorly chosen, opening up arguably
the company’s biggest star to accusations of hypocrisy, AEW appear to have recognised
this and made amends incredibly quickly.
Embarrassing, certainly, but wouldn’t you rather that than a wrestling company continue
with a morally dubious business relationship regardless of how its talent and fans feel?
So Crown Jewel in MANSOOR’S HOMETOWN is tomorrow.
In how to do charity right, Mustafa Ali has tweeted:
“Earnings from the 10/21 event will be donated to charity.”
You’re meant to be the heel in this feud?
Sean Ross Sapp has added that several of Ali’s coworkers reached out to say “how good of
a person he is in general.”
We do charity too segway!
All the money raised in our Crown Jewel live reactions with me and Adam Blampied tomorrow
will be donated to the Metastatic Breast Cancer Research charity Metavivor.
We’ve got a $5,000 goal, where the Modmother, our head moderator, will shave her very long
hair off for the cause.
Go subscribe to the WrestleTalk Podcast channel now for that, where we’ve got our NXT podcast
review and Crown Jewel predictions today.
Following AEW Rampage beating WWE SmackDown in the Friday night war last week in a very
specific metric, WrestleVotes reported that ratings were a hot topic of conversation backstage
at Monday’s episode of Raw.
It’s a report WWE producer Shane Helms, who was there backstage, has denied on Twitter:
“As someone who was there, I didn’t hear one word spoken about it.
Not a single word.
🤷🏻‍♂️” Ringside News have corroborated this, saying
that the AEW vs WWE ratings weren’t actually being talked about, because everyone was too
upset about the pay-per-view they’d have to leave for in a few days, Crown Jewel in
MANSOOR’S HOME TOWN.
In addition to the moral complications of doing a paid-for PR show to boost the reputation
of an allegedly murderous regime, and the fear of being held hostage on the plane home
because of ‘mechanical issues’, there’s now the added frustration of making that long
a flight during a pandemic.
“We were told that talent were talking a lot about how they must ‘get off the plane
in London with their carry on bags and go through security during a 2 plus hour layover
only to get on the same plane.’”
Apparently talent were also discussing the match order for the card, “as well as the
trip back.”
So WWE talent and officials weren’t talking so intently about the ratings war with AEW.
Maybe we really are blowing all these specific numbers and fast nationals figures out of
proportion, getting so deep into this quarter hour vs that that we’ve disconnected with
reality.
Well I don’t care if I can still make it fit my AEW is beating WWE narrative.
Monday’s episode of Raw just about beat the previous week’s viewership at 1.59 million
- making it the show’s seventh lowest figure in history, not the sixth.
Progress.
But far more disastrous was the number the TV advertisers look at most: the crucial 18-49
demographic, which pulled in a .39.
Which was the show’s lowest since records began.
AEW, meanwhile, also took a hit being bumped from its regular Wednesday slot to Saturday
night, losing 31% of their audience to 727,000, with a .28 18-49 number.
But while that is bad in isolation, when you zoom out this is actually healthy growth.
The last time Dynamite was bumped to Saturday back in June, it drew only 649,000 viewers
with a .21 demo.
This means they’ve increased 12 and 33%, respectively.
According to Wrestling Observer Radio, WWE management apparently feel like they just
need to ride this ratings war out, as AEW will collapse in on themselves like WCW did.
Do you think that’s a wise strategy?
Or if that’s actually even how they feel, given the SmackDown 30 minute extension last
week?
Let me know in the comments down below.
A good person to ask might be one of the guys who ran WCW into the ground, Eric Bischoff.
Despite appearing several times as a guest on Dynamite, Bischoff shot on AEW president
Tony Khan on his 83 Weeks podcast: “If Tony were to call me and ask for any
advice, here’s what it would be — shut up and wrestle dude.
Just put out the best product you can and you’ve proven you can, focus on that…
I’m a little disappointed in the rhetoric I’m hearing out of Tony as well as some
of the talent man.
Shut the f**k up until you’re actually competing and you’re actually competing favourably.
And by the way Tony, in 1996, I was kicking WWE’s ass every week in a real head-to-head
competition, not a cosplay competition.”
Bischoff is likely just saying something controversial to get people to listen to his podcast, but
I’m pretty sure Booker T believes every word he says…
In Booker’s latest Hall of Fame podcast episode, he said about Khan:
“All of this talk about what you’re doing, this and that, back and forth, I swear man,
it sounds like a little school girl saying how pretty she is over the other girls on
the schoolyard.”
Booker did eventually admit Tony is a smart guy, but by then his name was already trending
on Twitter with a fan backlash against him - which Booker laughed off with the tweet:
LOL.
Controversially, I can see both sides.
Overall, WWE has a significantly higher viewership, and I didn’t like Tony’s shoot promos
last week either.
But at the same time, AEW achieving the demographic numbers they are is a big deal.
And it’s also fun when wrestlers call each other out.
Speaking on Rasslin’ with Brandon Walker, MJF said he knows Roman Reigns watches AEW:
“Roman Reigns lost in the key demographic to Ruby Soho, and Ruby Soho sucks so I don't
know what to tell you.
Don't get me wrong, that's not me s****** on Roman Reigns.
I think Roman Reigns is a hell of a performer…
I'm also sure if he sees this, he'll pretend he doesn't know who I am because that's what
they do over there.
When in reality I know that they're all watching our stuff.
Again, I cannot stress this enough, a huge fan of Roman Reigns.
I think he's great.
Would love to work with him one day.”
Roman, of course, is kind of feuding with CM Punk too - saying he could beat him up
in a real fight.
But now Punk is calling out Sasha Banks, after she tweeted Punk’s own catchphrase (that
he took from Fantastic Four) “It’s clobbering time” before her match against Becky Lynch
last Friday, which went against Punk’s match on Rampage.
Now, in response to Rampage beating SmackDown in certain viewing figures, Punk has replied:
“Indeed it was.”
WITH A GIF OF HIS OWN FACE!
But why feud with people in the other company when you’ve got perfectly good backstage
heat right there?
One of the biggest moves of the Draft was current Raw women’s champion Charlotte Flair
to SmackDown, and current SmackDown women’s champion Becky Lynch to Raw.
But that didn’t go over well in the writers room, according to Ringside News:
“A tenured member of the creative team told us that the Flair and Lynch trade was a popular
point of discussion this week.
Specifically, ‘how Raw gets Becky (who everyone likes) and SmackDown gets Charlotte (who is
not popular behind the scenes).’”
Apparently Flair moving to SmackDown had been requested by Fox since their deal with WWE
began.
This isn’t the first time there’s been reports of Charlotte’s heat backstage.
Flair herself has referenced it in promos, she had a legit fight with Nia Jax in the
ring in August, and her real life fiance Andrade said back in March there is a lot of jealousy
directed at Flair for her push, and complaints that she works too stiff.
Now it’s time for Tempest’s review of NXT 2.0…
in about 5 minutes.