Why AEW Should Make Changes To Their PPVs, Issues With WrestleDream
A recent discussion made the point that AEW should run all of their PPVs in the afternoon because of how long they are.
The AEW WrestleDream PPV took place this past Saturday in St. Louis with a whopping 13 matches taking place over 5 hours and 30 minutes, counting the Tailgate Brawl pre-show.
By the time Darby Allin found a way to make Jon Moxley quit in the main event, it was 12:30 A.M. ET, which was 11:30 P.M. locally in St. Louis. For fans in the UK, that meant that WrestleDream ended at 5:30 A.M.
Instead of some fans talking about the show, many discussions among fans were about whether the event needed 10 matches on the main show. It was going to be nine matches, but FTR against Jetspeed started at the end of the pre-show and continued into the main show.
Prior to WrestleDream, the last three AEW PPVs had afternoon start times:
- AEW All In Texas in July had a 3 p.m. ET start time because it was a six-hour-long show, the biggest AEW PPV of the year.
- The AEW-NJPW Forbidden Door PPV started at 1 p.m. ET, as it took place in London, England, which made sense due to the time difference.
- AEW All Out in Toronto in September was initially scheduled to be an evening PPV, but AEW moved it to 3 p.m. due to WWE’s scheduling of Wrestlepalooza on the same day.
For his part, AEW Owner Tony Khan has said he is fine with afternoon shows, but he also likes evening shows.
“I think they’re both great. It’s interesting. Certainly it’s a very early call time for everybody involved (for afternoon shows), so it’s a different kind of a day, but the day ends earlier.
So it just depends. I like them both. I think either way is good.”
The AEW WrestleDream Crowd Got Tired Beacuse The Show Was Too Long
The Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez had an interesting discussion about WrestleDream’s show length and why the crowd was quiet for some matches.
Meltzer: “The crowd was really, really hot until they got tired because the show went too long. AEW just needs to do shows in the afternoon or they need to do shows that are shorter. The show was too long. You know, they’ve done longer shows in the afternoon and the difference is in the afternoon you don’t get tired. And in the evening, especially I can imagine in Eastern time and Central time, but in Eastern time in particular cuz this thing ended at 12:30 and it doesn’t need to do that. Just do it in the afternoon. I mean it’s already proven that it helps European busy. Doesn’t really hurt US buys.”
Alvarez: “The show was too long, but the difference is in this show was that they ran in St. Louis, and the St. Louis commission had a bunch of restrictions, and those included no bleeding, no brawling in the crowd.”
As he continued, Alvarez would go on to say that the only bleeding was when they did a blood capsule spot with Darby Allin early in his I Quit Match with Jon Moxley. Alvarez would go on to mention that a lot of the matches at WrestleDream were lacking in terms of variety.
Alvarez: “Because of that it’s like you didn’t have the bloodbath with the thumbtacks and everything like that. You didn’t have the crowd brawling…I actually expected a lot of crowd brawling in The Hurt Syndicate match. We had none. And so I think the thing was you really didn’t have the wide variety of matches that you normally see on an AEW show.
It was just wrestling match in a ring, wrestling match in a ring, wrestling match in a ring, and by the women’s match it was like we’ve seen a lot of matches with not a lot of variation. So I think that might have played a part in it.”
The final two AEW PPVs of 2025 are both evening shows with Full Gear set to take place on November 22nd in Newark, New Jersey and Worlds End on December 27th in Chicago.
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