Wednesday Night Wars: AEW Dynamite Wins Another Week In The Ratings Over WWE NXT

AEW Dynamite continues to dominate the ratings war against WWE NXT with another win in Friday’s ratings report.

AEW Dynamite emerged from Wednesday’s night broadcast on TNT with 893,000 viewers, up from 817,000 viewers for the Feb. 12 episode. The bump in viewership was not as strongly reflected in the 18-49 demographic, which was up to a 0.31 from a 0.3.

The show opened with a tag team battle royal to determine the No. 1 contenders for the AEW World Tag Team Championship. Despite Nick Jackson being eliminated, Matt Jackson outlasted the rest of the teams in the match to earn the Young Bucks a tag title match at AEW Revolution on Feb. 29.

Their opponents were set later in the night when Kenny Omega and Hangman Page retained their titles against the Lucha Bros.

Jon Moxley continued his march to Revolution and his match against Chris Jericho for the AEW World Championship. He faced off against Jericho’s “bounty hunter,” Jeff Cobb, in Cobb’s AEW debut. Cobb laid into Moxley throughout the match, but Mox scored the win after a superplex and rollup combination for the pin. However, Jericho and the Inner Circle attacked Moxley after the match and beat him down until Dustin Rhodes and the returning Darby Allin rushed in to help.

The main event featured Cody taking on the debuting Wardlow in AEW’s first steel cage match. It was the second of three stipulations for Cody to get a match with MJF at Revolution. However, the match could only be won by pinfall or submission, as opposed to other steel cage matches that can also be won by escaping the cage. Despite Wardlow’s best efforts, Cody pulled out the win after a moonsault off the top of the cage and is over a week away from his match against MJF.

While NXT did not win the night, it saw a bump in viewership coming off of NXT TakeOver: Portland on Sunday. Wednesday’s drew 794,000 viewers, up from the 757,000 viewers for the Feb. 12 episode. The 18-49 demographic had a bump similar to AEW's, with a score of 0.25, up from 0.24.

The Undisputed Era opened the show as Adam Cole bragged about his win at TakeOver and retaining the NXT Championship over Tommaso Ciampa. It was interrupted by Velveteen Dream, who continued to goad Roderick Strong ahead of their main event match on Wednesday.

Fans were then treated to NXT UK’s Jordan Devlin defense of the NXT Cruiserweight Championship against former champion Lio Rush. The match was a fast paced exchange that ended with Devlin delivering a side suplex to retain the title. The “Irish Ace” then jumped on the microphone and made it clear he would be on the card at NXT UK TakeOver: Dublin in April.

The Broserweights took the chance to celebrate their win at TakeOver and becoming the new NXT Tag Team Champions. Their winning streak continued after their small celebration as they beat Oney Lorcan and Danny Burch in a nontitle match.

Keith Lee celebrated his own victory over Dominik Dijakovic at TakeOver, retaining the NXT North American Championship. However, Dijakovic made it clear to Lee he was not done and wanted one more match against Lee, to which Lee agreed.

The show ended with the Velveteen Dream’s first match on NXT since being injured in October. He went back and forth with Roderick Strong throughout the match until he revealed special tights under his gear with Strong’s wife, NXT star Marina Shafir, painted on them. Dream scored the win, but the rest of the Undisputed Era rushed the ring to lay out Dream.