AEW Collision Ratings For July 15th Considered “Significant”
When it comes to television ratings, how AEW Collision performs on July 15 is considered “significant” to the Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer.
Tonight’s episode of AEW Collision takes place in Calgary, Alberta, Canada – the home of the celebrated Hart family of professional wrestling. It’s also why AEW decided to have the finals of the Men’s & Women’s Owen Hart Foundation Tournament Finals tonight in the city where Owen grew up and lived.
The Men’s Owen Hart Foundation Tournament Finals will see two popular wrestlers face off as CM Punk battles Ricky Starks. For the women, it’s Ruby Soho against Willow Nightingale.
In addition to that, there’s a 2 out of 3 Falls Match for the AEW Tag Team Titles with FTR (Dax Harwood & Cash Wheeler) defending the gold against Bullet Club Gold’s Jay White & Juice Robinson. It’s a title match because White & Robinson won a non-title match over FTR last week on Collision in what was a fantastic match.
It will be the fifth episode of AEW Collision. Here’s a look at the much talked about ratings of AEW’s new show over the first four episodes:
June 17 – 816,000 total viewers with a 0.33 key demo (18-49) rating.
June 24 – 595,000 total viewers with a 0.21 key demo (18-49) rating.
July 1 – 452,000 total viewers with a 0.13 key demo (18-49) rating.
July 8 – 580,000 total viewers with a 0.21 key demo (18-49) rating.
The first week was obviously the highest due to the curiosity surrounding a new show and CM Punk’s return after nine months off. The June 24 and July 8 numbers are likely what a regular edition of Collision will do. Meanwhile, the excuse cited for the July 1st drop is that it was a holiday weekend due to the July 4th US Independence Day holiday.
As for tonight’s edition of Collision, it is considered more of a “loaded” episode that is also followed by one hour of Battle of the Belts as well. Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Radio spoke about how he believes it’s a significant episode just based on how well it does in the television ratings.
“For, that third hour (Battle of the Belts) is like, do they have high expectations for that third hour? Not that I’m aware of. No. I haven’t discussed that with anybody. I know that if they do a number (Collision’s ratings) similar to last week every Saturday, they will be very happy. If it’s way down from Saturday, they will not be happy, especially because it’s a loaded show with a tag team title match, and with the Punk match with Starks, I think that if it’s close to last week, it’s great. If it’s close to the July 4th weekend show, with this loaded lineup, it’s not good, you know?”
“I don’t think that we still have a read on what Saturday’s gonna do on a normal week because I didn’t think last week was a normal show. Last week was much better than normal. As far as the normal show, I’m thinking, I don’t think this week is either, I’m thinking maybe Newark is when we’re gonna, like, kind of go, unless he (AEW Owner Tony Khan) totally loads up Newark too. And I think he has to. I think on Saturday night, he has to kind of load it more than Wednesday because it’s just a harder night because people have more options on what they wanna do Wednesday.”
“I think he’s got… he can’t take his audience for granted because when he does put on a weak show, the audience will go down. Yeah. That’s the reality. But I think that on Wednesday, you kind of have a base, and on Friday and Saturday, I don’t think that the base is much, much smaller.”
“Friday’s (Rampage) kind of whatever, you know, nobody’s really worrying about what Friday does anymore. It’s like if it’s good if it’s bad, it doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t, you know. I mean, it matters, but it’s not of grave concern. But the Saturday number is something significant that everyone’s looking at right now. Yeah.”
In addition to the matches on AEW Collision tonight, there will also be an appearance by Jushin Thunder Liger, who wrestled Owen Hart early in their careers about 30 years ago.