AEW Rampage seemed to be pitched to be a lot of things before it debuted. One of the reports suggested that one of the pitches was that it was going to be just an extra hour for Dynamite. It’s now its own hour-long show that is scheduled every Friday night after Smackdown. However, Tony Khan had said that Rampage was going to be a show like WWE Backstage before he decided he didn’t like that idea.
What Tony Khan said about one of the pitches
In an interview with Gavin Bridge at Monaco Streaming Film Festival, Tony Khan said this:
“I didn’t agree with [WWE] Backstage at all. I didn’t think it was a good format. I had actually been pitched to do a format like that with AEW and I refused because I don’t think wrestling fans want to see that format. When they tune in to watch their wrestling show, Wrestling fans want to watch wrestlers wrestle, and Backstage, to me, should be like a lower-budget streaming type show. I don’t know if it had the legs to carry as a TV show, even though the people involved with it were awesome and a lot of them work for me now and are huge stars. I want to watch CM Punk wrestle. I want to watch Christian Cage wrestle.
To me, that is the bread and butter. I love watching those guys talk about wrestling, don’t get me wrong, I think it would be a kick-ass streaming show, I don’t know if I would build one of my TV franchises around guys talking about wrestling. At least not in the context of analyzing it and breaking it down. For Rampage, it was part of the format that I turned down and refused to do. They said, ‘Would you do this as part of the third hour?’ And I said, ‘No, it’s going to be wrestling.’ I have a different format for it and that’s where Mark Henry (does interviews). There is that talk show competent where they talk before they wrestle. That is a little bit of a twist on the format, but it’s not, ‘Let’s look back on the week in wrestling’ and have a cup of coffee together, which I think is not a good format for a TV show.”
Rampage is currently not doing so well in viewership as it has been on a constant downward spiral since the debut of CM Punk. If Rampage is going to increase viewership, it seems like a lot of change is needed.
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