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Jim Ross Details Why AEW Is Losing The Ratings War, If AEW Is In Trouble

Posted: Apr 29th 2020 By: Jim Parsons - TheSportster.com

Jim Ross spoke during a recent interview about AEW's recent ratings struggles and how they're losing to NXT. How worried is AEW?

Jim Ross spoke during a recent interview about AEW's recent ratings struggles and how they're losing to NXT. Does he have an answer for why? And, how worried is AEW considering they're such a new company?

Former WWE employee, current Hall of Famer and now AEW announcer Jim Ross sat down for an interview with James Walsh of Wrestling Epicenter and spoke about his new job in wrestling and the current AEW product. While he thinks their brand of wrestling is exactly what the fans have been looking for, he does admit that the ratings have taken a dip of late.

Since Dynamite debuted on TNT each Wednesday night, the show has typically outperformed NXT. NXT is WWE's brand of wrestling that goes head-to-head with AEW each week. But, over the last three weeks, NXT has won the ratings battle.

When asked what he and AEW think about that, Ross responded, “No knee-jerk reaction.” In fact, Ross seemed to think the poor ratings wasn't actually a reflection on the AEW product. He explained:

“I’m not worried. You said the numbers are going down – True statement. In certain demographics… This is far from a disaster. With our show sandwiched between all the WWE shows on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, our audience is still finding us. The empty arena stuff affects everybody. It isn’t the usual ambiance that we’re all used to. Sometimes, as you said, the fans are as big of a part of the show as anybody. Our audience are very young, defiant, and make a lot of noise. All of us really miss that!"

Is AEW In Trouble?

If Ross believes that empty arenas isn't helping the AEW product because the fans are such an integral part of the show, what does that mean for such a new product, especially if including fans in the show might be a long ways down the line? Hopefully nothing long-term.

Vince McMahon said during the investor's call that their focus is on content creation. Perhaps AEW feels the same way. The good news is, AEW has a new agreement with TNT and WWE's ratings have suffered too. The bad news is, should they not increase their fan base, they could struggle in the ratings for some time as WWE tries to pump out more and more content.