The Perspective Of AEW

By
Jim LaMotta
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Professional wrestling, just like anything else, is a matter of perspective.

The nature of the industry that emerged from the carnival circuit was always to skew the perspective of the audience, as that was part of the entertainment value. Fans jumped from their seats in joy when Bruno Sammartino toppled Ivan Koloff because their heroic strongman defeated the villain. It represented a victory for America over the Soviet Union during the tensions of the cold war. If fans in the 1960s knew that Oreal Perras was a nice man from Canada instead of a menacing Russian, the performance wouldn’t have been quite as thrilling at the final bell.

It’s all a matter of perspective.

Of course, in the modern age, sometimes unfortunately, everyone’s perspective gets amplified through social media. Granted, everyone has a right to their opinion, but that doesn’t automatically translate to an educated or well thought out opinion. As a result, many people waste their time screaming into the ether of social media, which is a combination of disappointing and amusing.

Dave Meltzer, the leading journalist of professional wrestling news in the past 40 years, took himself from a rather niche audience during the bulk of his career to more main stream recognition than any other time previously. In its heyday, Meltzer’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter had its printed pages sent out weekly from his PO box to a diehard group of fans that wanted a peek behind the curtain of a business that was built on secrecy. Now, Meltzer’s work is primarily published online through his website and its series of audio shows. True to form, the newsletter is still published as it was originally intended, with Meltzer’s reports and analysis of the current events of the industry. One of the major differences is that instead of relying on just the “reader pages” of his newsletter as he has in the past, Dave can get almost instant interaction with the wrestling public on Twitter. He has interaction with naysayers, subscribers, and even a few former wrestlers. Despite some of the social media arguments, I’d guess that Meltzer doesn’t take his critics too seriously, considering that he has made a living in the wrestling business nearly his entire life without working for a major promotion.

So, it was no surprise that following AEW’s episode of Dynamite this past week, an episode that saw the company return to the road for more live crowds, that Meltzer seemed to praise the promotion’s efforts. One specific tweet I noticed was that he claimed that wrestling was at it’s peak in 1999, but non-WWE wrestling is the most popular it has been since 1999. That statement might be true depending on how you look at it.


We know the story of WCW, the company peaked in 1998 and began to lose steam in 1999 before it fell off a cliff in 2000. The details of that decline quite literally were the subject of many books so there’s no reason to repeat them here, but a quick snap shot of 1999 can give at least some indication of the narrative of the industry outside of the WWE. In May 1999, WCW’s pay-per-view offering of Slamboree garnered an estimated 195,000 buys. The AEW Double or Nothing pay-per-view generated a reported 115,000 buys. However, it’s important to remember that it’s much more difficult to sell traditional pay-per-view in the modern era of the WWE Network that is either free or has a $4.99 price tag for a subscription. The TV ratings aren’t even close, but again, the context matters because you could argue that one of the reasons pro wrestling garnered an average of 10 million viewers at the time was that basic cable packages had far less channels than they are now, as well as the fact that streaming takes a decent amount of potential viewers at any given point. Basically, it was much easier for sports entertainment to get viewers in 1999 because there simply weren’t as many options that competed for viewers as compared to today. Still, AEW does near a million viewers for TNT weekly, but WCW had over two million as it collapsed so it’s about the context.


That being said, Meltzer, specifically when the topic is the history of the business is one of, if not the best resource for accurate information. I always found it puzzling that some fans make it such a mission to try to dispute anything Meltzer says because they clearly don’t take an objective look at the situation. Much of Meltzer’s audience, and the demographic that he makes a living from, are the anti-WWE crowd. By nature, these fans consider themselves “more knowledge” than causal fans because they can see beyond the WWE promotional push and follow the “good wrestling” outside of the WWE bubble. Obviously, Meltzer is going to serve his base and there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s how he makes a living. That’s not to say that he’s intentionally trying to be inaccurate, but because he knows his base, it’s very possible that he has a slate toward products outside of the WWE because that’s what he enjoys to watch. Listen, when the owner of All Elite Wrestling will publicly acknowledge that he is in contact with Meltzer and has appeared on Melzter’s shows, it’s not a stretch to understand why the journalist will praise the promotion. Keep in mind, Meltzer quite literally has a vested interest in the success of AEW because when the Starrcast conventions were held in conjunction with All Elite events, Meltzer sold tickets to Q&A sessions. Does that mean that he’s on the AEW payroll? No, and considering that he has made a living reporting the inside information of the industry for the past few decades, it’s very doubtful he would risk being on the payroll since he knows the information would eventually be leaked online.

The reality of the situation probably falls somewhere in the middle from where Meltzer puts the company and where the critics try to complain about every aspect of the organization. No, All Elite Wrestling wouldn’t automatically sell out a stadium event because that assumes that everyone in an online queue would purchase any ticket that was remaining when they had the chance online. No, AEW isn’t bigger or more successful than WCW was, which isn’t to downgrade the success that All Elite has at this point. No, AEW isn’t going to generate a bigger audience than Raw or Smackdown, at least not anytime soon. That said, what All Elite does have is much more potential to be something much bigger than TNA was at its peak, and despite drawing lower numbers than WCW during its decline, All Elite is trending upward since the launch of the promotion. TNA’s biggest live attendance was 6,000 fans when it had Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair, Kurt Angle, Sting, AJ Styles, Samoa Joe, and others. All Elite has been able to draw better numbers than that for the majority of its pay-per-views, and has translated the TV product into pay-per-view revenue.

Is All Elite Wrestling going to surpass WWE? No, and that shouldn’t be the goal anyway. As I’ve said several times since the start of the company, the goal of AEW should be to be profitable, not competitive with Vince McMahon, particularly because profitability is the true measure of success in any business venture. Outside of the investment made into the video game series, AEW is already profitable from the TNT extension so from a business prospective, it’s already a successful company. Although, it’s very puzzling that there are a group of wrestling “fans” that somehow hope for the demise of All Elite Wrestling when competition in the industry is beneficial to everyone involved. As we’ve seen since the formation of AEW, the wrestling landscape has more of a spark than it had in the previous 15 years so without a doubt, the success of AEW will improve the status of the industry.

What do you think? Comment below with your thoughts, opinions, feedback and anything else that was raised.

Until next week
-Jim LaMotta
E mail [email protected] | You can follow me on Twitter @jimlamotta

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