Wednesday Night War: AEW Dynamite Scores 10th Straight Ratings Win Over WWE NXT

AEW Dynamite won its 10th straight week in Friday’s ratings report over WWE NXT, gaining a spike in viewers following its pay-per-view, AEW Revolution.

Showbuzz Daily said in its report for Wednesday that AEW Dynamite walked away with 906,000 viewers, up from 865,000 viewers on Feb. 26. Dynamite’s dominance remained the same in the 18-49 demographic as the show scored 0.35 for Wednesday night.

Coming off of AEW Revolution on Saturday, the show’s spotlight was on fallout of Jon Moxley winning the AEW World Championship from Chris Jericho. The pair opened the show trading barbs ahead of their main event tag team match, including a threat from Jericho to take a “leave of absence” for two months if Moxley won.

Ultimately, Jericho and the Inner Circle stood tall at the end of the night as they took Moxley out and beat Darby Allin in an impromptu handicap match.

Cody got a chance to address the crowd during the show and talk about his loss to MJF at Revolution after MJF cheated to pin Cody. However, he was greeted by WWE Hall of Famer Jake “The Snake” Roberts, who warned Cody he and his new “client” were coming for him.

The show also featured a short match between Big Swole and Leva Bates, Jake Hager beating QT Marshall, and PAC uniting with the Lucha Bros to form a group named Death Triangle.

WWE NXT ended Wednesday night with 718,000 viewers, on par with NXT’s ratings since the New Year. While it didn’t win any of the demographics, the show rebounded from the sweep for Feb. 26 to tie with AEW in the over 50 demographic.

NXT opened and closed Wednesday’s show with a pair of cage matches.

The opener saw Tegan Nox taking on Dakota Kai in a rematch from NXT TakeOver: Portland. Raquel Gonzalez flanked Kai and remained ringside as the former friends battled to escape the cage. Despite Nox’s efforts, she was pinned to the cage by Gonzalez while trying to escape and allowed Kai to win the match.

Velveteen Dream and Roderick Strong main evented in the second cage match of the night. While Strong began the match alone, the rest of the Undisputed Era rushed to the ring as it went on to prevent Dream from winning. Dream would eventually toss Strong out of the cage to give him the win, but locked the cage door with handcuffs to isolate NXT Champion Adam Cole from the rest of the group. Dream then attacked Cole, making his NXT Championship aspirations clear in the form of several kendo stick shots.

Mauro Ranallo got the chance to sit down with Johnny Gargano to talk about the latter’s recent attacks on Tommaso Ciampa. While it began civilly, Gargano became irritated as it went on and began verbally attacking Ranallo for his statements on commentary, such as calling him “Johnny Turncoat.” Ranallo walked out feeling uncomfortable with the interview while Gargano spoke to the camera and let Ciampa know he was “playing by his rules now.”

Also featured on the show was Finn Balor, who has his sights set on NXT UK Champion WALTER and Imperium after their previous attack.

Austin Theory rebounded from his loss on Feb. 26 and beat Isaiah “Swerve” Scott, Chelsea Green beat Shotzi Blackheart to advance to the no. 1 contender’s ladder match at NXT TakeOver: Tampa Bay, Cameron Grimes challenged Keith Lee for the NXT North American Championship, and the Undisputed Era’s Kyle O’Reilly and Bobby Fish beat the team of Oney Lorcan and Danny Burch.