All Elite Wrestling on TNT and NXT on the USA Network went head-to-head on January 8th in the fourth month of their series. AEW’s show closed with Jon Moxley denying Chris Jericho’s offer to join The Inner Circle and NXT closed with Keith Lee becoming the new number one contender to Roderick Strong’s NXT North American Championship. AEW’s show drew in the larger viewership number according to Showbuzz Daily, as 947,000 viewers were tuned in to Dynamite throughout the two hour show. NXT brought in 721,000 viewers.
Last week’s episode of Dynamite drew 967,000 viewers and last week’s episode of NXT was the brand’s ‘Year End Awards’ special that was not live and it averaged 548,000 viewers. For the 1/8 shows, AEW did a 0.36 in the 18-49 demographic and NXT did a 0.19 in the same demographic.
Coming out of Dynamite, it was announced that WWE Hall Of Famer Diamond Dallas Page will be in action next week on AEW Dynamite: ‘Bash At The Beach’ as he’ll be teaming with QT Marshall and Dustin Rhodes. PAC is taking on Darby Allin on that same show and also scheduled for next week is Kris Statlander teaming with Hikaru Shida to face Nightmare Collective members Mel and Awesome Kong. A match was also announced for the Chris Jericho cruise in two weeks and that will feature Jungle Boy, Luchasaurus and Marko Stunt clashing with Santana, Ortiz and Chris Jericho.
On the NXT front, Imperium (Fabian Aichner & Marcel Barthel) and Undisputed ERA (Kyle O’Reilly & Bobby Fish) advanced in the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic. KUSHIDA and Alex Shelley are reuniting on next week’s NXT as well. Finn Balor issued the challenge to Johnny Gargano for a match at TakeOver: Portland and there will be a Battle Royal on next week’s show to determine a challenger to Rhea Ripley’s NXT Women’s Title at TakeOver: Portland.
