Earlier this month, NXT managed to defeat All Elite Wrestling: Dynamite in terms of viewership a couple of times, but this past Wednesday, the newer company topped WWE's developmental brand with an impressive 731,000 viewers compared to NXT's 665,000. The WWE show only ever managed to top the competition by a few thousand viewers (it was 1000 one week), but what does Jim Ross make of the situation?
Well, he's not worried, and based on what happened last week, he has good reason not to be!
"No knee-jerk reaction. I’m not worried," he said during a recent interview with James Walsh of Wrestling Epicenter. "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 effects everybody," he continued. "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! The numbers thing...Look, I learned a long time ago. We got our ass (WWE) beat 83 weeks in a row by WCW and I was in the talent relations chair. We didn’t have time to worry about the ratings because in 6 days after you got the ratings, you had to do it again. That’s not a lot of time to moan about it or to celebrate. So, the ratings right now, for me, I’m not worried about it. It means nothing. It means something, obviously. But, we’re doing just fine and we know where we’re going."
Ross has the right attitude as AEW did manage to regain its lead over NXT with relative ease, and that will likely continue to be the case moving forward. By the time all is said and done, it will be interesting seeing what happens with ratings, especially when there does seem to be an apparent lack of interest in wrestling right now (if RAW and SmackDown's ratings are any indication anyway).