WWE Chiefs Hint At Plans To Counter AEW's October TV Debut: Report

World Wrestling Entertainment’s (WWE) SmackDown Live brand will move to Fox Sports in October after they inked a mammoth deal with the broadcaster earlier this year. Monday Night RAW will remain with the USA Network for the moment but the company has big plans for their move with Fox with numerous shows planned, especially with newly launched rival promotion All Elite Wrestling making their television debut the same month.

WWE has been losing popularity in recent months that has seen their ratings drop while AEW the newly launched pro-wrestling promotion is also slowly but surely threatening their dominance in North America. WWE is by far the world’s most popular pro-wrestling promotion but they are taking the domestic threat seriously.

Vince McMahon has already put in place a number of measures to ensure they don’t lose their top talent to AEW, who are offering lucrative deals to wrestlers. They are also reinventing their programming in order to get their ratings back up with new events and bringing back WWE legends like Goldberg and Undertaker more regularly.

AEW has successfully hosted two live events which sold out within hours and now they are venturing into the television with their first live taping scheduled for October on TNT. It is the same time WWE begins their contract with the Fox Network and Triple H and WWE chairman McMahon are planning a counter programming move to counter AEW’s threat.

Triple H – real name Paul Levesque - oversees WWE’s sister brand NXT, which signs up and coming pro-wrestlers from across the globe and gives them a platform to perform and build a following before pushing them into the main WWE roster. NXT is currently being aired exclusively on the WWE Network but the executive vice-president of talent and live events recently indicated that there is a possibility NXT could move to television in October, which will certainly be a move to counter-programme AEW’s soon to be launched televised events on Wednesday nights on TNT.

"Is (going to FOX/FS1) an opportunity? Absolutely. You see that with today when I was on FS1 and we announced the (studio show). It'll be a recap show where they analyze different shows: Raw, SmackDown, and NXT. They'll discuss all those shows. A cross between UFC Tonight and Talking Dead. They really want NXT to be a big piece of that, which shows you the interest level,” Levesque said recently, as quoted on SE Scoops.

A previous report also indicated that McMahon, who is keen to ensure WWE’s superiority over AEW, could also look at using some of the big stars on the WWE roster in NXT in order to garner more interest and improve the ratings.