Episode 440: The Promo That Started The WAR!

I wanted to, uh, start the show off and talk about something that I know you felt strongly about way back when in WCW.

When you finally got the big seat, as I would like to say, and you took a look at the books, it didn't take long for you to figure out, "Hey, every time we're doing these house shows, we're losing money." And you started to make it a mandate that you were gonna start cutting some house shows.

We needed to run a sharper P&L.

Well, in recent years, WWE, it feels like, has not prioritized house shows, and we've even heard at some public events and some public remarks from the leadership group that they just frankly didn't see the value of doing some of those programs.

But maybe they've done an about-face.

WWE has announced a new seven-live event date tour.

It's part of the Road to Survivor series.

So it's not a full-time return, but we are getting some more events, and not necessarily in A towns.

I say that not disrespectfully, because my own hometown of Huntsville, Alabama, rounds out the list on November 19th.

But we're gonna hit Canada, California, Ohio, a couple of shots in Maine, down in Fort Myers, Florida, and Huntsville, Alabama.

It's gonna happen over the course of about a month.

October 15th is a Thursday, and we're gonna run it through Thursday, November 19th.

I guess it is strategic, you know, if we're thinking about house shows, to think about running them on Thursdays.

If you know that you're gonna have a Friday television show anyway, maybe that would give you an opportunity to do some dress rehearsal for things, have some more time to plan some things, talk through some things, sharpen your skills, and then maybe you're going to the big show on SmackDown on Friday.

What do you think of this announcement? What's the rationale do you imagine?

I like to think it's very strategic for-- and it's, it's smart.

It- I'm glad to see it.

And for a lot of the reasons that we've talked about over the last year or even six months with regard to, you know, WWE cutting back on house shows, you know, a while ago, a year and a half, two years ago, whenever they made it more or less official.

Uh, AEW has never really had house shows.

They just produce TV shows and pay-per-views for the most part.

Um, and we've talked in general about what happens to the wrestling industry when you no longer have the live, non-televised, uh, portion of the business plan.

And obviously, the financial part of it is the first thing everybody thinks about.

But then there's the talent side of it, and to a lesser extent, the creative side of it.

Meaning on the talent side, we talked about this just recently, you know.

Unless you get an opportunity to get a-- develop your instinct and develop the ability to read your audience in a way that helps direct your moves, your actions, your mannerisms.