EXCLUSIVE: AEW Star Addresses Criticism Of Women’s Booking

AEW

AEW star Jeff Jarrett has give his take on the recent criticism of the booking AEW’s women’s division, which has been a big story of late.

On last week’s AEW Dynamite, a sign was shown on-screen for several seconds that said “Book The Women’s Division Better”.

In an exclusive interview with WrestleTalk, Jeff Jarrett took a deep dive into online criticism of the women’s division, and in general.

Drawing on a range of topics, from politics to his multiple decades in the business, Jarrett expressed his pragmatic approach to a divisive topic, saying:

“The way social media, to me, has progressed and evolved, in my opinion you have to have an understanding on reading it. In that, it’s not just the professional wrestling industry – here in the United Kingdom, I hear there’s a hot button called politics, I’m saying that sarcastically, but in America, the political… the divisiveness.

“The ability to (say), ‘Hey, I’m gonna tell you something, and you better agree with me, and if you don’t agree with me, shame on you’, that permeates society now. So that’s obviously in social media.

“So I think you have to take whatever opinion is given on social media, you have to take that with a grain of salt, and really try to drill down and say – and I’m a data junkie, I’m an OCD guy, I’m dialed into that – but Twitter has an audience that has one mindset. SnapChat, Instagram, YouTube comments, they’re all diverse, they’re not universal opinion. You can break it all up. So the criticism you have to take as one metric.”

If you use this exclusive quote or any portion of it please credit WrestleTalk.com and link to this page.

With so many datasets at hand to form, Jarrett would go on to discuss the “best barometer” that he has, in his vast experience, encountered, stating:

“I still believe at the end of the day, the best barometer is going out into a live arena, with your paying audience – and I think there’s a huge disconnect when you have a paying audience vs a non-paying audience.

“A lot of times, you go to the Ric Flair (retirement) match, I’m just using that because it just popped into my brain, the criticism that was received. I think there’s a couple of different buckets – people that were there live, people that watched it on pay-per-view, and people that saw clips online, and then there’s some people that just read about it that hadn’t seen any of the three.

“They all have a different viewpoint, so I respect all of them, but also I have to take into account as a 37-year veteran, when you really, really drill down, listen to your audience, and then make the best decision.”

If you use this exclusive quote or any portion of it please credit WrestleTalk.com and link to this page.

Bringing the subject of criticism back to AEW, Jarrett concluded:

“So as it relates to the AEW criticism, they’re gonna criticize it this week, and next week they could be universally praising it.

“So you have to take the yin and the yang, you have to take the good and the bad, and just kind of move through it. You cannot discount it.

“If you just completely sweep it under the rug, that doesn’t do your business any good. But you also have to learn how to filter it as well.”

If you use this exclusive quote or any portion of it please credit WrestleTalk.com and link to this page.

Saraya recently seemingly agreed with criticism of the Outcasts storyline in AEW by liking a tweet calling it “a big waste of time.”

On this week’s Dynamite, the Outcasts’ Toni Storm will defend the AEW Women’s World Championship against Hikaru Shida.

Dynamite could well see some of the plans for AEW All In at Wembley Stadium on August 27 become clearer, as there are still no matches announced, despite tickets distributed now sitting at 77,470 as of WrestleTix’s latest update.

Our full interview with Jarrett will be posted on the WrestleTalk Podcast channel on Friday, and stay tuned to the website for more exclusive quotes.

Jarrett also spoke about how his entrance music was originally supposed to reference The Rock – read more on that at this link.

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