Last Friday, AEW Rampage and SmackDown went head to head after WWE added a commercial-free 30 minutes to the show on FS1. While the WWE show ended up drawing a larger number of viewers, it was AEW that won in the key 18-49 demographic, and that left Vince McMahon with egg on his face.
In today's Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Dave Meltzer reports that Vince McMahon kept his feeling to himself in front of people backstage at RAW on Monday night. In the past, he's taken his frustrations over ratings out on those around him, but this time, the WWE Chairman was seemingly prepared for the worst to happen so there wasn't any sort of big blowout a couple of days later.
Interestingly, Shane Helms' comments that the ratings weren't a hot topic backstage are said to be correct; instead, WWE was focused on preparing for that trip to Saudi Arabia for Crown Jewel.
Despite that, there are those in the company who are in total denial about the numbers and they remain convinced that AEW is simply the flavour of the month. Not taking the competition seriously could come back to bite WWE in a big way, but there's no getting around the fact that Tony Khan's company is still a long way off from competing with their flagship shows each week.
If we had to hazard a guess, Vince was probably fuming, but it's also hard to escape the feeling that he doesn't view AEW as any more of a threat than IMPACT Wrestling or Ring of Honor!
Momentum is definitely heading in their favour, though, so we'll see how this plays out...