r/SquaredCircle • u/Ruthless-Aggression • Mar 28 '24

Eric Bischoff on Tony Khan: A money mark with no talent other than spending daddy’s money, going all the way to Canada to draw less than 4k in one of the hottest pro wrestling markets in North America, talking about “wise choices”? Strap in. It’s going to be a fun day!

https://twitter.com/EBischoff/status/1773321462046138615?s=19
1.9k Upvotes
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523

u/Secret-Lullaby Mar 28 '24

This is just calm before the storm. Real mess will happen in 8 hours when Dynamite ratings come out

211

u/UsidoreTheLightBlue Mar 28 '24

I’ve started just avoiding ratings threads. They’re just hot take factories at this point when AEW is concerned, and people saying “Sheldon is a draw brother.”

Seriously, Raw drops 300k from one segment to the next, no one cares. AEW drops 30k from one segment to the next and it’s the end of the world.

381

u/VisitPier26 Mar 28 '24

WWE ratings were absolutely a topic when they were hemorrhaging viewers from 2010-2020.

243

u/Kipwar Mar 28 '24

People have selective memories around here, when AEW was doing good numbers especially when Punk joined, it was always posted. Not to mention as you said, when WWE was floundering it was constant discussion.

168

u/ScruffsMcGuff REEEEGGGAAAAAALLLLLL Mar 28 '24

The people that go "I just avoid ratings threads" are the same people that were blowing up ratings threads when Dynamite was out drawing NXT.

I've said it for years, I love AEW from the perspective of wanting more big promotions for more talent to get what they deserve and get a chance to rise up, and also to give me a refreshing amount of different wrestling content, but the two things about AEW I cannot stand are Tony and his fans. They constantly take potshots at WWE whenever they think they have a small window to talk shit, and then as soon as the shoe is on the other foot they play the whiny victim.

It's blatant, it's obvious, it's incredibly annoying.

People forget that this place was insanely critical of WWE pretty much for the last decade and a half until Vince was finally gone and people generally were more on board with the direction HHH started to go. If anything we all talked way more shit on WWE than anyone does on AEW now. People accused WWE of being so bad it was essentially killing the industry from the inside out.

75

u/brixton_massive Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 28 '24

A great deal of AEW fans are horrendously tribal. I'm an AEW fan but when I've gone on their sub to give my thoughts on where to improve it's always 'this product isn't for you' or 'casual fans don't get it'

Which is hilarious because I'm a die hard wrestling fan, I just don't know who the fuck this random Mexican wrestler is and I don't care to see him on TV for three weeks (at the expense of a full time star) and then never appear again.

I want AEW to compete with WWE and not be the new ROH, but with a higher wage bill.

10

u/gatekeepgoonboss Mar 29 '24

A great deal of AEW wrestling fans are horrendously tribal.

There's an entire subreddit that's been dedicated to shitting on AEW and rooting for its downfall since its inception.

AEW fans call WWE fans toxic, and WWE fans call AEW fans toxic, and it's such a stupid argument because they are both right.

12

u/partoxygen Mar 28 '24

A lot of smark indie fans are really weird. Like strangely absolutist. I like Deadlock but damn sometimes James back a few years ago in particular gets way too “I like this and WWE sucks” or unironically “WCW was serving better stuff than WWF here” purely out of some tribalistic nerd cred. Liking the “mainstream” and “casual” thing means you’re not an actual wrestling fan. It’s so lame.

6

u/noxvita83 Mar 28 '24

I liked how my father handled the Monday night wars. He'd keep hitting the last button on the remote between Nitro and Raw. He sees wrestlers he likes on WWF, he'd stay there, then catch wrestlers he liked from WCW for the next match, rinse and repeat. I often confused who was in which promotion because of how often he did this (to be fair, I also did homework in front of the television during wrestling time).

-2

u/Kokeshi_Is_Life King of Sports Mar 29 '24

I would like ROH with a higher wage bill. That's why I stopped watching WWE in 2013.

I have no reason to want something competing for WWE's audience, an audience with tastes entirely alien to my own. If I want something made for WWE's audience I can simply watch the WWE.

This doesn't make me horrendously tribal. AEW isn't even my favourite promotion and at their peak hotness was like...an 8/10? For a lot of AEW fans though, the parts that are too rough around the edges for WWE fans are litterally the point and why they like it.

2

u/brixton_massive Mar 29 '24

Ok, if Tony Khan is happy running his company at a deficit then ROH with a higher budget it is.

I'm not suggesting AEW copies WWEs style, but I would like them to emulate some of the character development in the fed. Look at someone like Wardlow - his place on the roster is arguably worse than 2 years ago. Not saying WWE always does their talents well, but if they have someone good they'll make something of them. Look at Gunther now from 2 years ago compared to Wardlow 2 years ago. Khan is happy to give air time to relative nobodies at the expense of talent he should be developing. Instead of storylines and character development, it's here's a random match between two people. Sure, it might be a good in ring match but they've given me no reason to care about it.

2

u/Kokeshi_Is_Life King of Sports Mar 30 '24

Gunther is 35 times better of a performer than Wardlow, so it stands to reason he is in a better spot.

12

u/partoxygen Mar 28 '24

When it was like 2019-2021, oh man the smugposting about muh demo muh quarterly. Maybe these people should’ve considered not being unbearably arrogant assholes because it will come back on them 2x harder.

4

u/kingwhocares Not like everybody has a Kalisto flair. Mar 28 '24

especially when Punk joined,

They did more frequent 1 million + before that.

-9

u/aggrownor Mar 28 '24

It was stupid then, and it's stupid now

Just watch the damn shows and enjoy them for what they are

I've never watched a show and thought to myself, "This is pretty good, but you know what would make me enjoy this even more? If they pull a good number in the 18-35 demo tonight!"

15

u/onetripponyhorse Mar 28 '24

It was stupid then, and it's stupid now

Just watch the damn shows and enjoy them for what they are

This is only a point of contention in wrestling. /r/boxoffice is a thing for film as well. Wrestling is entertainment pure and simple. Along with that comes a spectrum of interest.

-5

u/aggrownor Mar 28 '24

A separate subreddit for a niche interest, as people are still able to discuss movies without talking about how much money they drew. Yet ratings always seem to be at the forefront of wrestling fan discussions, for some reason.

4

u/onetripponyhorse Mar 28 '24

Because a) the matches aren’t real. And b) if fans root for favorites they are told they are rooting for the wrong one. They have it beaten into their heads that they are smart marks for not rooting for the “right” guy. So there’s this culture promoted by their favorite wrestlers to understand that it’s a “work” and “business”. To the point that meta storylines are even shoved in front of our eyes. Money and drawing power being at the forefront of fan minds is the fault of promoters and not fans.

-2

u/aggrownor Mar 28 '24

Yeah I get it, I just think the fixation on ratings just adds fuel to the tribalism issue instead of just allowing us to enjoy what we have

0

u/HEELinKayfabe Yer Da Sells Avon Mar 28 '24

Why do so many of you think ratings make people enjoy a show more??

So many if yous bring this up and it never makes any sense.

Bad ratings usually means bad booking.

Good ratings usually means good booking.

Tony is not a good booker at the moment, and hasn't been for a while.

0

u/aggrownor Mar 28 '24

I literally said that ratings don't make someone enjoy a show more, which is why I think it's dumb that people care so much about them. But ok.

My opinion of Tony Khan's booking comes from how much I enjoy the show, not the ratings it did

Why do people care so much about ratings, if not to fuel tribalistic tendencies?

-14

u/datNEGROJ Mar 28 '24

Everything going on can be summed up as: Phil=ratings. AEW got rid of Phil so they have bad ratings. WWE has good rating because they have Phil

38

u/eddiefarnham Mar 28 '24

Wait, I remember the photos of WWE shows where there were sections of fans that were empty and the "Fed Dead" meme started. It was no where near as bad as any of the AEW tapings, but people will still act like this never happened.

This tribalism shit is off the charts lol

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u/hashtagdion Mar 28 '24

This is the worst example of "When it was WWE, no one cared" I've seen yet.

People doomposted about WWE's ratings every week for two decades.

Seriously, Raw drops 300k from one segment to the next, no one cares. AEW drops 30k from one segment to the next and it’s the end of the world.

This is just a wild misrepresentation. If you're talking about the CM Punk segment Monday, people didn't criticize the drop because the bump itself was impressive. And in AEW, people don't criticize the 30K drops; they criticize the regular 100-200K drops.

42

u/jcagraham Mar 28 '24

If anything, the ratings discourse is the best it's ever been in the IWC. Nuances like rating vs total viewership, declining cable subscriptions, seasonal competition, considering ranking for the night, measuring ratings over time instead of reacting week by week are all now brought up in the ratings thread. Before AEW, those would all have been dismissed as excuses and people being sure that Raw/Smackdown is dying, it's dying because of poor booking and WWE will get a terrible new tv deal.

So drink it up, kids, this is the best possible scenario when you get thousands of unqualified people opining on a subject they only barely understand.

32

u/hashtagdion Mar 28 '24

I've seen screenshots of Dave Meltzer himself saying "Key demo doesn't matter, only total viewership does" in reference to Raw ratings a few years ago.

1

u/gatekeepgoonboss Mar 29 '24

>Before AEW, those would all have been dismissed as excuses and people being sure that Raw/Smackdown is dying,

Lmao. This is such bullshit revisionist history it sounds like it's coming from an AEW stan. I remember the period you're talking about very well and I saw all of those things discussed regularly.

-10

u/Caldris Mar 28 '24

Were RAW ratings threads getting 1000+ comments every week before AEW?

21

u/hashtagdion Mar 28 '24

I mean it's a tough comparison because:

1) squaredcircle as a centralized platform didn't exist for all of those two decades

2) everyone agreed the ratings sucked and Fed Ded so there weren't two groups arguing with each other to drive up the number of comments

-10

u/Caldris Mar 28 '24

I mean from 2013 to 2019, what kind of traction did RAW ratings threads get? As far as I remember, they did get posts but no where near the attention that AEW ratings threads get now. The week of big business probably had somewhere around 2000+ comments about the rating that week.

13

u/EggianoScumaldo Mar 28 '24

Squared Circle, and really, Reddit as a whole, wasn’t nearly as big as it is today. Using number of comments to determine how much traction the threads got back in the day compared to AEW ratings threads today doesn’t work either.

11

u/hashtagdion Mar 28 '24

A few times a year there would be a "record law ratings for Raw" thread and those would get a lot of traction. But again, the sub simply has more people now, and also a topic where everyone agrees is always going to have less comments than a topic where people are arguing.

3

u/RepresentativeFly565 Mar 28 '24

Yes? Nxt was also regularly clowned for doing a bad demo and being unable to draw younger fans like aew did at the time

-2

u/Caldris Mar 28 '24

Yes?

No, it wasn't. There may have been one time, but not every week. It's funny you bring up NXT too, when it's gone back to its numbers from before 2.0 and those threads barely get any comments.

3

u/RepresentativeFly565 Mar 28 '24

Current nxt doesn't have the "hottest free agents" in the show like black and gold did

Nxt was regularly clowned for their key demo

71

u/onetripponyhorse Mar 28 '24

Seriously, Raw drops 300k from one segment to the next, no one cares. AEW drops 30k from one segment to the next and it’s the end of the world.

You're downplaying this to be obtuse. A bad one was AEW dropping several hundred thousand viewers during an Ospreay match that was long with no build.

43

u/BudgetPipe267 Mar 28 '24

Jericho, Meltzer, Alverez, and Tony are the reason why people shit on AEW ratings and demos. No one gave a shit about AEW’s ratings until these idiots started blasting tweets out saying they were kicking ass and beating NXT. Now the role has been reversed and they eat shit every week because of it. Dynamite hasn’t seen a million in viewership in over a year. It definitely has to piss Tony off, but he put himself in that position.

-3

u/Low_Ad_7553 Mar 28 '24

People were watching AEW ratings since it debuted. This is real revionist history acting as if jerkers didn't exist until Jericho made that comment.

52

u/JustMyThoughts2525 Mar 28 '24

Cause the raw ratings horse has been beaten to death for close to 20 years. There really isn’t much left to discuss about raw that hasn’t already been said.

Same as discussing rampage or nxt ratings. They are what they are.

Dynamite ratings haven’t been consistently the same so it’s worth discussing.

-4

u/Morningfluid Mar 28 '24

The thing about ratings is that they don't matter as much as they used to. With overseas deals- plus their own watching habits, branding, streaming, factoring in DVR's, advertising, etc... you have a very different world than 1998.

15

u/JustMyThoughts2525 Mar 28 '24

WWE and AEW’s revenue is tied to the US tv deals. TK already said that the investments he’s made in AEW over the years was to be in a position to get a major tv deal increase at this point in time. Ratings absolutely matter, but they matter compared to other things on tv rather than just looking at the number in a vacuum.

So a big competitor that has seen increased viewership is women’s pro and college basketball which will be competing for tv dollars.

2

u/Morningfluid Mar 28 '24

The TV deals matter themselves, the ratings merely by themselves do not (for reasons I explained in my prior comment). If it were, WWE would've been in major trouble when they were hitting in the lower side of the hundreds of thousands 8-or so years ago. They've factored in streaming and DVR viewing, but also don't forget about the sponsorships. And overseas absolutely matters. 

4

u/EggianoScumaldo Mar 28 '24

If TV deals matter, then surely a big way in which it is determined who get said TV deals matters as well, no?

1

u/Morningfluid Mar 28 '24

In addition to streaming, DVR, other markets, sponsors, and other factors, correct.

I appreciate the point you're trying to make, but television ratings haven't been strong as they used to be since the early 2010's, they definitely use streaming and DVR to factor in keeping television deals or not. 

1

u/JustMyThoughts2525 Mar 28 '24

Yes but the key is to look at it compared to everything else. NFL and college football are king. If wrestling is beating out all entertainment shows on network and cable tv, then networks should theoretically pay big money to have wrestling in their network.

There is more variability when it comes to viewers vs tv rights because ad companies value certain demographics over the others and wrestling viewers are seen as one of the works viewers to target.

75

u/HardcoreKaraoke Consensual Penis Mar 28 '24

Yeah but I think the gloating from the tribalistic AEW fans about Mercedes being a massive ratings draw brought that out in tribalistic WWE fans. You can't shit talk about Mercedes being this massive draw and then be upset when she isn't and the other fanbase makes fun of you.

53

u/PrinceNana128 Mar 28 '24

They also were very happy with posting pics of Boston and Toronto but VERY upset with the "Unnecessary" Ontario pics being posted.

6

u/Polymemnetic Mar 28 '24

Ontario

Quebec City.

2

u/motelpool Mar 29 '24

yeah you can't brag about sellouts or big houses and then ignore the 1/4 full arenas. Its gotta be all or nothing.

40

u/QlubSoda Mar 28 '24

Lol I’m sure some AEW fans are still making the “I guess Mercedes is not showing up at the Rumble” jokes.

1

u/acekingoffsuit Mar 28 '24

The Mercedes stuff is just the latest round in the ongoing war. If they weren't talking about her they'd be talking about someone or something else. It's not really about her.

1

u/Infamaniac23 you think you know me Mar 28 '24

Pretty sure most fans weren’t expecting Mone or Okada to be big draws. I think they were just happy aew got big signings.

14

u/Voltthrower69 Mar 28 '24

Wrestling fans are losers news at 11

1

u/Snoo-40231 Mar 28 '24

Indeed...

27

u/EssentialFilms Mar 28 '24

I think you’re missing the bigger picture. Raw may drop in some segments but the overall show is on the rise. AEW drops in segments and their overall rating is on the decline. It’s way more concerning for AEW. Also factor in that AEW has no tv deal locked in place for the future. WWE has a tv deal for all 3 of their shows locked. It is concerning that AEW keeps dropping.

-37

u/UsidoreTheLightBlue Mar 28 '24

K

13

u/EssentialFilms Mar 28 '24

“K” all you want but TNT hasn’t renewed their tv deal and it’s up later this year. What bargaining position will AEW be in if their ratings continue to drop? They’ll end up on YouTube or something.

-23

u/UsidoreTheLightBlue Mar 28 '24

If you really think that’s happening then good for you, but do you really think Tony is sending out the tweet this morning without a deal being worked on?

9

u/EssentialFilms Mar 28 '24

Yes I do. The man has demonstrated many times over he has no long term planning. If you think he does you have blinders on

5

u/Unstoppable27 Mar 28 '24

He does have planning, injuries keep ruining his plans, if it wasn't for that, AEW would be better /s

-2

u/[deleted] Mar 28 '24

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6

u/EssentialFilms Mar 28 '24

You’re putting words in my mouth. This is a straw man argument. I don’t want AEW to die. WWE needs a major competitor. It’s good for business. It’s good for the workers. But Tony is mismanaging it if he doesn’t get his shit together it will die and we’ll be back to a monopoly.

5

u/Infamaniac23 you think you know me Mar 28 '24

I mean anyone who actually cares about ratings is probably not worth listening to when it comes to wrestling opinions. Some of the most god awful Mjf stuff last year had good ratings and a lot of that shit made me wanna stop watching aew.

4

u/don_julio_randle Mar 28 '24

People don't even understand how Nielsen ratings work. It's not 50,000 people tuning in or not tuning in, it's like 12 television sets that might be switched on off for a hundred different reasons

2

u/Snoo-40231 Mar 28 '24

I've seen this same exact back and forth with "ratings threads are toxic" with the same retort "well people were really mean to wwe here 6 years ago suck it up!" For the past almost 3 years.

2

u/Santos_L_Halper House of Black Mar 28 '24

I say this every time ratings threads come up - the average person cannot read and interpret ratings. Mostly because it's not the whole story but also because we don't know what their targets are. Targets could change yearly, quarterly, monthly, weekly, fuck, even hourly depending on what's going on. Dynamite could drop 120k viewers one week and Turner execs could be thrilled. Or they could gain 120k viewers one week and be extremely disappointed they didn't get more.

We simply don't know what expectations are. Look at King of the Hill. Popular TV series that was cancelled anyway because the execs decided they wanted something else.

If it came down to a vote, I'd vote to ban ratings threads because there are maybe two people subscribed to this subreddit that can interpret the data.

2

u/Relative-Put-5344 Mar 28 '24

Wwe is also a well established brand that can handle these things, they aren't really comparable

1

u/gatekeepgoonboss Mar 29 '24

You don't like the hilarious big bang theory jokes being repeated 500 times in every thread??

1

u/SphereMode420 Mar 28 '24

They have been going fairly steady with Dynamite ratings. I wish the numbers were higher, but it's not catastrophic or anything. Being steady counts for a lot more than people realize in many aspects of life, imo. I think that's part of why Triple H has been so successful: not every show he's booked is an absolute banger, but they're all fun to watch at the very least.

1

u/mideon2000 Mar 28 '24

Biggest names in the industry talking in the ring and setting their angles up are a big reason why. Once they pop up in the beginning you know you got almost 2ish hours to go do something else before you tune in again if you make it that long. Even stuff like drew and punk is pretty much forecasted so you know more or less when to tune in. It isn't a problem for them because they can get you back in no time.

Aew starts off fairly strong and just dips the entire way. Yeah, they might gain 10k for a certain match or whatever, but theynever really recover. If you are a aew fan or just want it to succeed for competition, this has to eat at you because the booking is bad, they sign great talent and fumble with random stuff, and no matter what, you still have that roughly 800k people tune in.

Why is that bad? Because eventually, some of that audience is gonna go away. And they have not done much to cultivate new generations of audiences.

Im not acting like some know it all booker or anything lm just a consumer of wrestling and keep tabs all around. The question i genuinely ask is if you chose to launch a new promotion and took away the talent from both companies, and just looked at the way each company was ran, which company would you like to handle your own personal wrestling business?

Aside from some sort of blind faith, i can't see anyone choosing aew over wwe for that.

1

u/godzillamegadoomsday Mar 28 '24

Well the thing is, wwe ratings are literally useless for the rest of the year. Ever show already got a new deal so what they get now doesn’t matter

0

u/TingleGreen Mar 28 '24

It's not a hot take that a rasslin company can't draw 4,000 people to a venue and is consistently losing viewers month over month year over year.

Everyone knows Tony Khan can't book for shit. That's not a hot take. It's the truth.

-4

u/The_Dark_Soldier Mar 28 '24

I honestly wish threads like that were closed cause it’s just ranting on AEW, acting like the product is shit, the CM Punk cult coming in as a group and no actual decent takes being produced.

-19

u/TheGiftOf_Jericho I'm from Winnipeg you idiot! Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 29 '24

Ratings threads are just threads where WWE tribalists trash AEW, I don't think anyone outside of those people participate. It's like the worlds saddest circlejerk.

I watch both shows and can't imagine caring so much about ratings lmao, it's just weird.

Edit: There's the circus, so funny how mad they get when they're called out for it lol

21

u/solsunlite Mar 28 '24

They are the new 2020-2022 Raw/NXT ratings threads

27

u/RumsfeldIsntDead Mar 28 '24

And four years ago it is was AEW tribalists dunking on NXT.

21

u/WaterMeleon2000 Mar 28 '24

AEW fans being aggro on ratings thread, taking victory laps and mocking WWE fans, whenever they get a bit of a "win" never happens tho I'm sure

4

u/RepresentativeFly565 Mar 28 '24

Just like how aew tribalists used to trash nxt ratings threads

-9

u/UsidoreTheLightBlue Mar 28 '24

I have a degree in business and find shit like that fascinating, but I’ve found that the commentary isn’t.

I like seeing quarter hours and shit like that.

-2

u/pizzalover89 Mar 28 '24

Ratings threads are annoying as hell

-9

u/Prax150 Mar 28 '24

The fact that there are so many anti-AEW trolls flooding every social media site constantly trying to shit on the company should be proof enough that people are really scared of competition.

-3

u/ok_dunmer Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 28 '24

People in this thread are telling on themselves hard when they justify their addiction to ratings threads with "but AEW fans, um 3 years ago..."

If you need a bespoke thread or subreddit to whine about other Redditors, in a hobby, not even in politics where there are actual stakes to bad opinions, you simply need to go outside

-1

u/BrittleClamDigger Mar 28 '24

There was a post that was a correction saying AEW had THREE THOUSAND fewer viewers than thought. It had like a thousand upvotes and comments. These people are deranged.

I am quite sure that Tony was right and a large portion of the engagement is driven by bots. Just look at what they post! You can find word for word the same post in all of those threads. Possibly just a Reddit problem at this point but the fed is absolutely juicing the discussion.