For people who feel like AEW has more wrestling than WWE, it does.  Twice as much.

Breakdown of wrestling per hour on WWE and AEW this week (stolen from reddit).

RAW- 19 minutes

NXT- 17 minutes

NXT UK- 29 minutes

Smackdown- 15 minutes

Dynamite- 37 minutes

Rampage- 36 minutes

Yeah but if we combine all WWE hours they have a few more minutes of wrestling.

Checkmate marks.

Sept 25, 2021 19:02:00 GMT @ness said:

Yeah but if we combine all WWE hours they have a few more minutes of wrestling.

Checkmate marks.

But what about if you add Dark and Elevation to the equation?

The funny thing about those numbers is on the average WWE show you get twice as commercials as you do wrestling.

Sept 25, 2021 19:40:37 GMT c said:

The funny thing about those numbers is on the average WWE show you get twice as commercials as you do wrestling.

Wrestling has been happening for 120 consecutive seconds? We need a solution.

Makes sense seeing as the networks and companies pay the bills, not the fans.

I got a feeling some of those numbers are off. Does wrestling going on though a commercial count if you can't see it? I assume since AEW uses PIP a lot that counts as time wrestling. The average hour of television has about 15 minutes of commercial time. AEW spent more time then 8-9 minutes on promos, entrances, and etc.

I assume it counted the PIP but not the other commercials. Even still, AEW has much faster entrances since they do some of them during commercials, instead of doing one entrance, then going to commercial and coming back for the second entrance that WWE loves these days.

WWE even says they aren't a wrestling show. Why do people still get all amused by these stats. THe wrestling show had more wrestling than the non wrestling show - the sky is also blue

That's probably why AEW has been embraced as it has. There's a certain appeal to not being ashamed of what you are and just going in with it. This whole "we're not wrestling" thing just doesn't work anymore. It's what made the mcu so beloved that other than just being really good, they embraced what they are and aren't trying to be something else. It's the "general store" mindset that people are just annoyed with.

ROH fans had to be the fanbase that popularized this start right?

WWE had always saved long matches for PPV. In any era, TV has been short matches and storyline development. I don’t understand the point here. We all know WWE doesn’t champion wrestling. They’ve banned the word ffs. What is this supposed to prove outside of AEW patting itself on the back?

Sept 26, 2021 19:56:43 GMT Todd said:

WWE had always saved long matches for PPV. In any era, TV has been short matches and storyline development. I don’t understand the point here. We all know WWE doesn’t champion wrestling. They’ve banned the word ffs. What is this supposed to prove outside of AEW patting itself on the back?

If WWE was all in for banning the word "wrestling," then they should drop, or replace the second letter in their acronym.

No matter how hard they say lalala "we make movies" the rest of the world just rolls their eyes as they assemble a WRESTLING RING in the middle of an arena.

Sept 26, 2021 15:41:06 GMT Ed said:

ROH fans had to be the fanbase that popularized this start right?

Not even close. Way back in the late 80s NWA promoted themselves as "the wrestling promotion." Barely a pay per view went by without Good Young JR saying some variation of "This is the NWA! We wrestle!" on commentary. Usually during another classic Flair match.

Nor is "lol Raw barely has wrestling!" some newfangled hot take. This talking point was huge during the Attitude Era among WCW fans, Puro enthusiasts, and just WWF haters in general. According to one source* Raw averaged 28 minutes (14 minutes per hour) of wrestling time in 1999. That honestly seems high. I thought it was closer to 20 with them not even reaching 20 minutes on many shows. 

*https://sites.google.com/site/chrisharrington/mookieghana-prowrestlingstatistics/raw_wrestling_minutes

Sept 26, 2021 20:40:51 GMT CM Punk'd said:

Sept 26, 2021 19:56:43 GMT Todd said:

WWE had always saved long matches for PPV. In any era, TV has been short matches and storyline development. I don’t understand the point here. We all know WWE doesn’t champion wrestling. They’ve banned the word ffs. What is this supposed to prove outside of AEW patting itself on the back?

If WWE was all in for banning the word "wrestling," then they should drop, or replace the second letter in their acronym.

They sorta have.

"Since 2011, the company has branded itself solely with the initials WWE" - Wikipedia

Wrestling is only in its registered business name, but it's d.b.a./trade name and all branding has been intentionally separated from "wrestling" for a decade.

Problem with NXT US is they are trying to incorporate new faces and new people to the mainstream audience so you can't just throw them in wrestling matches, you need vignettes or promo time to introduce them. I would exclude them here.

NXT US put out 16 women in 2 hours(Less with commercials), how many has AEW put out on Dynamite?

And 205 Live(yes it exists) has been all wrestling, might be among the highest on pure wrestling alone despite being 1 hour long. 

Sept 25, 2021 19:40:37 GMT c said:

The funny thing about those numbers is on the average WWE show you get twice as commercials as you do wrestling.

No you don’t. They aren’t averaging 30+ minutes of commercials per hour. I’d also love a source on how true any of this is because Reddit isn’t what anyone would consider reliable.

I think the Picture in Picture stuff certainly makes a big difference on this breakdown and that if Raw had that as an option they’d probably restructure their breakdown to have fewer times a guy is standing in the ring waiting out the commercial break.

I think that the monthly versus quarterly pay per views matter here, there would be fewer promos if you’re building fewer stories.

Their marketing targets matter on that, they’re after different demos and subsequently the WWE is doing a different kind of character work.

And from the wwe side of it, it’s fairly consistent. There are a few different people that have done this type of research over the years. If WWE is popular or isn’t popular they’re not doing either because of the amount of wrestling they show.

Someone on reddit went through and flagged how much action there was one on a single week's shows. Not timed the commercial duration but WWE is up from the old 5 break model often doing two to three breaks during a match these days.

WWE's model now is to do the wrestling during the breaks, because fans do not watch WWE TV for wrestling. This is why they do entrance, start the match then go to break.

AEW is increasing ring time by moving interviews to Dark and Elevation, so it is natural they will have more ring time during shows.  Combined with PIP advertising, it ups their amount of time to do wrestling on TV.

Also WWE runs a second set of commercials every show for their own products, which quickly adds up when one or two are tossed in every break and between segments.