Jeff Jarrett Addresses Criticism Of AEW Women’s Booking
Jeff Jarrett has waded into the debate over the booking of AEW’s female stars.
The women’s division in AEW was again the hot topic online recently after a sign reading “Book the women’s division better” was shown in the crowd on Dynamite for several seconds. Only one women’s match was booked on that show with Taya Valkyrie losing to Dr. Britt Baker DMD.
Speaking to WrestleTalk, AEW’s Director of Business Development Jeff Jarrett was asked about the rumblings online that continue to stem from the belief of some that AEW’s women’s division deserves better booking:
“The way social media, to me, has progressed and evolved, in my opinion, you have to have an understanding on reading it. In that, it’s not just the professional wrestling industry – here in the United Kingdom, I hear there’s a hot button called politics, I’m saying that sarcastically, but in America, the political… the divisiveness.
“The ability to (say), ‘Hey, I’m gonna tell you something, and you better agree with me, and if you don’t agree with me, shame on you’, that permeates society now. So that’s obviously in social media.
“So I think you have to take whatever opinion is given on social media, you have to take that with a grain of salt, and really try to drill down and say – and I’m a data junkie, I’m an OCD guy, I’m dialed into that – but Twitter has an audience that has one mindset. Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube comments, they’re all diverse, they’re not universal opinion. You can break it all up. So the criticism you have to take as one metric.”
With decades in the wrestling business and having done almost every job one can do, Jeff Jarrett says for him the best way to know what works is to listen to the crowd that has paid to be at the show:
“I still believe at the end of the day, the best barometer is going out into a live arena, with your paying audience – and I think there’s a huge disconnect when you have a paying audience vs a non-paying audience.
“A lot of times, you go to the Ric Flair (retirement) match, I’m just using that because it just popped into my brain, the criticism that was received. I think there’s a couple of different buckets – people that were there live, people that watched it on pay-per-view, and people that saw clips online, and then there’s some people that just read about it that hadn’t seen any of the three.
“They all have a different viewpoint, so I respect all of them, but also I have to take into account as a 37-year veteran, when you really, really drill down, listen to your audience, and then make the best decision.”
“You cannot discount it” – Jeff Jarrett on criticism of AEW
Bringing the conversation back to criticism of AEW, Jeff Jarrett noted that you have to learn to filter what feedback you listen to without ignoring it completely:
“So as it relates to the AEW criticism, they’re gonna criticize it this week, and next week they could be universally praising it. So you have to take the yin and the yang, you have to take the good and the bad, and just kind of move through it. You cannot discount it.
“If you just completely sweep it under the rug, that doesn’t do your business any good. But you also have to learn how to filter it as well.”
Only one women’s match is so far scheduled for the upcoming 200th episode of Dynamite on the 2nd of August as AEW original Hikaru Shida will challenge Toni Storm for the AEW Women’s Championship.
Jeff Jarrett will also be in action on that landmark show as he teams with Satnam Singh and Jay Lethal to face The Elite’s Kenny Omega and The Young Bucks.