Will NXT Air Head-To-Head With AEW On Wednesday Nights?

The second Wrestling World War of the modern era is upon us, with All Elite Wrestling set to launch its prime time cable television show on TNT in October.

The show is expected to begin on October 2 and based on trademark filings will be called Wednesday Night Dynamite.

Rivals WWE currently run live television on Monday and Tuesday nights on the USA Network with Raw and SmackDown.

The latter is moving to Friday nights on FOX the same week that AEW is expected to start, which in theory will give the blue brand a much larger audience to draw from.

However, internal chatter within WWE is suggesting that doing well on the nights AEW does not run will not be enough for Vince McMahon.

According to reports, there is talk of NXT being moved to FS1 on Wednesday nights to go head-to-head with AEW’s new show in an effort to hurt its viewership.

This would not be the first time McMahon has done something like this. In fact, tomorrow night’s WWE Network airing and heavy promotion of EVOLVE’s show is an attempt to pull people away from AEW Fight For The Fallen.

However, as Dave Meltzer noted on Wrestling Observer Radio, the NXT tactic – should McMahon go through with it – is not without its risks:

“I think that’s the logical move. I believe Vince will do that. I don’t know that he will do that.

I don’t know that NXT will siphon viewers away. The problem here is that there’s a good chance AEW will beat NXT because they are on the stronger station.

And if they do that its like a war – and there’s no guarantee that NXT will not beat AEW because WWE will promote the hell out of it – but doing that head-to-head it does put at risk the idea that they may lose a head-to-head battle every week and Vince won’t like that.

If they do that they’ll probably start sending Roman Reigns to NXT.”

While this is merely talk at this point, as Meltzer noted it seems like a logic Vince move to air something directly against AEW.

The only question that remains is whether it will be NXT or a planned WWE talk show, which is also in the works.

• tv
• AEW
• nxt
• wwe

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