AEW founder Tony Khan has revealed TNT’s reaction to Rampage and WWE SmackDown going head-to-head.
Rampage takes the 10 p.m. ET slot every Friday night. This follows SmackDown, which is typically on from 8 p.m. ET through 10 p.m. ET. Things were a bit different on Oct. 15. That’s because SmackDown was forced to move to FOX Sports 1 due to a scheduling conflict with MLB. WWE decided to add an extra half-hour to SmackDown, competing with Rampage.
As expected, SmackDown had the clear edge in overall viewers. The talk of the town, however, has been the fact that AEW beat WWE in that half-hour in the key demo. It’s been a polarizing discussion as some feel it’s a massive win for AEW, while others believe people are trying to spin things since SmackDown was clearly ahead in overall viewership.
Tony Khan Says TNT Is Thrilled With Rampage’s Numbers
No matter how you feel about the situation, TNT appears to be quite happy with how the head-to-head battle played out. Appearing on Busted Open Radio, Tony Khan discussed TNT’s positive reaction to the numbers for Rampage.
“I thought it was even more impressive given that I was forced to take a couple breaks. It was really great of TNT to work with us, I thought, on short notice to push our breaks back, so we could have that match uninterrupted. To me, it’s not up to us when the show is on. In this case, somebody moved aggressively into our timeslot and it was really important for us to do a good number and win the night. And we did. I really wanted to rally the fans and put some attention on it. I also really believed we were going to win, and we did. We’ve done really well in the demo, which is the thing advertisers and the TV networks use to rate the shows. I know TNT was over the moon and very excited about what we did.”
The head-to-head madness didn’t stop there. FOX ran an encore presentation of SmackDown against a live episode of Dynamite on Oct. 23. On Oct. 29, WWE will run Talking Smack, which is going head-to-head with Rampage.
H/T to Wrestling Inc for the transcribed quotes
