We recently passed one year of AEW having a presence on Friday nights with AEW Rampage. The show has had its ups and downs, with fans recently falling out of love with the show. A lack of star power & meaningful matches, the taped format meaning instant spoilers, and a bad time slot will do that to a show. However, Tony Khan recognized this – and hopes to bring star power back to Friday nights in professional wrestling.
Tony Khan Hopes That Having Less Injured Wrestlers Will Mean Better Distribution Of Stars
During a recent media call with Tony Khan, he’d address the glaring issues with AEW Rampage. When asked about the show, Khan would say that one of the issues that will be solved is the lack of big name stars on Rampage. The AEW roster has dealt with a lot of injuries in a short time, and Dynamite would generally take precedent when it came to the bigger names in the company.
With the likes of CM Punk, Kenny Omega, Adam Cole & Kyle O’Reilly all either back, or expected back soon – there’s more to go around in terms of stars. This could make AEW Rampage a more must-watch show, as putting a trios match starring Kenny Omega & The Young Bucks would make people tune in, or even a singles match from CM Punk. He stressed ‘stars returning to Rampage’ and ‘bigger matches to come.’
AEW Rampage Has Always Had Issues, Namely With It’s Timeslot
From the start, AEW Rampage really took the original format of AEW Dark – and expanded on it. While nowadays, AEW Dark is taped at Universal Studios and aired over the course of a few months, it was originally to show the Dark matches before and after AEW Dynamite aired. Now, a usual Wednesday for AEW is taping Dark: Elevation before Dynamite, and Rampage after Dynamite.
This means that by the time a crowd sees AEW Rampage, they’ve already been around for nearly four hours of action – and it’s led to muted crowds for otherwise fine matches. While Tony Khan promises to bring bigger names to AEW Rampage again, it might not be enough.
One solution could be taping Rampage before Dynamite, but that could mean not having the full crowd in the arena for the tapings – leading to glaringly empty seats. Shooting the show live would help spoilers, but it’s late night format makes that an issue – and AEW only tapes live during big stretches like this current week with the final build to AEW All Out.
How would you fix the issues with AEW Rampage? Does the show need to be moved to a better timeslot to function? Let us know what you think in the comment section down below.
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