WWE And AEW Will Go Head-To-Head In October
There will be some direct competition between a WWE show and AEW Dynamite in October.
When AEW launched Dynamite in October 2019, the WWE NXT brand went from being on WWE Network to USA Network television a few weeks before Dynamite debuted. They had a head-to-head battle for a few years with Dynamite “winning” the “Wednesday Night War” as it was called.
That would lead to WWE and USA Network moving NXT to Tuesdays in October 2021. Since then, there have been some nights of WWE and AEW TV competition, but it’s certainly not a regular occurrence.
On October 10th, WWE NXT and AEW Dynamite will go head to head due to Major League Playoffs airing on TBS, which is the station that shows Dynamite. Here are more details from the Wrestling Observer Newsletter’s Dave Meltzer.
“The 10/11 Dynamite show will be moved to 10/10, a Tuesday head-to-head with NXT, and be from Independence, MO. I expect NXT to really load up the show because of history and competition and being in the familiar time slot NXT would have one advantage, although in previous moves to Tuesday AEW did better but NXT is now on a roll.”
“On 10/11 TBS will be airing Major League baseball playoffs. That is the only TBS playoff game on a Wednesday. Because TBS is airing the playoffs, Rampage and Collision have no baseball playoff preemptions but they will go head-to-head with baseball playoffs, as will Raw, NXT and Smackdown, from 10/3 until whenever the World Series ends which would be end of October or as late as 11/3.”
AEW is Having “Title Tuesday” Episode of Dynamite on October 10th
On that October 10th episode of Dynamite, AEW is promoting it as “Title Tuesday” meaning they are likely to have a card full of championship matches.
Considering AEW has many titles they can put on display along with championships from ROH and other promotions like AAA & NJPW, fans can expect some huge matches on Dynamite as they compete head-to-head with NXT.
This happened last year as well, which was the first year when Dynamite aired on TBS. AEW had a “Title Tuesday” episode that drew 752,000 viewers while NXT drew 676,000 viewers. As noted by Meltzer, NXT is a lot hotter right now with this week’s show drawing 30% more viewers compared to last year.