Thought Of The Day: Longevity Matters
On the eve of Dynamite’s Debut, keep something in mind.April 6, 1995: Monday Nitro has not debuted.
April 6, 1996: Monday Nitro isn’t much of a show and WCW is kind of a mess.
April 6, 1997: Monday Nitro hasn’t lost a night in the Monday Night Wars in about eight months and the WWF looks more confused than anything else.
April 6, 1998: Monday Nitro has beaten Monday Night Raw 82/83/84 weeks in a row (the number is harder to nail down than Goldberg’s winning streak).
April 6, 1999: Monday Nitro is turning into a disaster and things aren’t getting better.
April 6, 2000: Monday Nitro is a dumpster fire and the second worst show of the week, only after Thunder.
April 6, 2001: Monday Nitro is canceled and WCW is out of business.
The show, which beat Monday Night Raw for over a year and a half straight, came and went in less than six years. I have no idea what Dynamite is going to do tomorrow, but it doesn’t matter what they do in their first week. What matters is their 50th week, their 100th week and their 572nd week, and all points in between. Don’t get excited or discouraged after one show and see where this goes in the long term, because tomorrow night is a page in a story, not the whole book.
It’s wise, which means a ton of fans will ignore it. If AEW pulls off a good show, Hell even if they don’t, you’re going to have idiots running around saying that they’re about to put WWE out of business or some other such nonsense. Why? Because I believe that there are some fans who genuinely, legitimately, 100% despise WWE and want to see it go. Why? I have no earthly idea. Just as I have no idea why any real fan would want to see AEW fail because…well…as a fan, just look at wrestling as a whole over the course of 2019 and say that it hasn’t been one of the most energetic, exciting and interesting years the business has seen in a good, good long while.
AEW offers fans something else to watch besides or even along with WWE and it gives wrestlers a chance to work for a high profile company in which they can potentially make some big money. Forget about being a wrestling fan or picking a brand for a second because these are people, human beings just like the rest of us. Just like the rest of us they’ve got hopes, dreams, bills to pay and families to take care of so I just don’t get what this sick, downright perverse thrill is that some get over the notion of AEW going tits up and putting all these people out of work and hurting the business as a whole.