USA Trades Money For Win In Wednesday Night Wars

It’s a choice they made. The Wednesday Night Wars have changed a lot about the way wrestling works from week to week. AEW and NXT have been going head to head for about nine months now with AEW winning most of the battles in both viewership and ratings. That is a big deal, even though NXT has been turning the tide in recent weeks. One such win came this week and the USA Network had a lot of influence on it.

This week’s editions of NXT and Dynamite featured the second weeks of the Great American Bash and Fyter Fest respectively, meaning it was a huge night. Both shows featured major main events, but the NXT main event had a little twist to it. The match featured no commercials, with limited commercial interruption throughout the last hour. That was a major decision and USA made it happen.

According to Wrestling Observer Radio, USA decided to push for the win in viewership rather than bringing in the extra revenue from airing extra commercials. Rather than running the normal amount of commercials, the second hour of NXT featured the main event in full and a ninety second break between matches. According to Showbuzz Daily, NXT did win in overall viewers, 759,000 to 715,000, but did lose in the 18-49 demographic ratings with a .28 to .20.

Both shows were rather awesome. Check out some highlights from the two of them:

Opinion: I’m a little surprised that USA would want to have a win this badly but whatever they did certainly worked. Above all else, NXT certainly seems to be taking it to another level with overall viewership, but they are still a good bit behind in the ratings. Those ratings are what matter more in the grand scheme of things, but NXT has made some big strides in recent weeks.

What did you think of the shows? Which show has been better in recent weeks? Let us know in the comments below.

Thomas Hall has been a wrestling fan for over thirty years and has seen over 50,000 wrestling matches. He has also been a wrestling reviewer since 2009 with over 5,000 full shows covered. You can find his work at kbwrestlingreviews.com, or check out his- Amazon author page with 30 wrestling books. Get the latest and greatest in professional wrestling news by signing up for our daily email newsletter. Just look below for “GET EXCLUSIVE UPDATES” to sign up. Thank you for reading!