AEW Commentator Jim Ross spoke on the latest episode of Grilling JR about the growth of AEW since it was first founded in January of 2019.
AEW Rampage debuted last Friday with Christian Cage winning the IMPACT Championship from Kenny Omega and Britt Baker main eventing the show in her hometown of Pittsburgh while having a broken wrist. Ross spoke about the company being able to grow since the launch of Dynamite in October of 2019, which now has led to a second show Rampage.
“The AEW brand has probably grown more and gained more notoriety in the last month than perhaps it has since the inception/launch,” Ross said. “The ticket sales in Chicago, New York, these major markets where people can make decisions on doing a lot of different things are there. We’re doing well, ticket sales are great. Chicago’s events are going to be big time, some major attractions and all that good stuff. I’m very excited about this. The potential for some dream matches, powerhouse cards exist for real. Our roster gets stronger, that’s kind of what we’re looking for.”
Ross continued to speak on the success of Dynamite giving AEW the ability to add a third hour of wrestling each week and the idea that the show will eventually be on TBS along with Dynamite. The first episode of Rampage ranked #3 on the night and drew 740,000 viewers for TNT.
“The Time Warner folks are flexing their muscles and support of our brand,” Ross said. “We’re always going to be in some role on TNT, these specials which I perceive to be like a Clash of Champions type thing before we move full time over to TBS for Dynamite and then eventually for Rampage as well. It’s the start of a new era. Will we have the same success and the same momentum building for our brand on Rampage as we have had on Dynamite and the Dynamite ratings have been phenomenal. Any time you’re the number one show on cable on any given night, I don’t give a s–t what your product is, it’s a big deal. This is not going to be a [WCW] Thunder, in all due respect.”
”Continuing our new adventure of this brand, this rollout, this startup operation and how we’re growing has been nothing short of extraordinary. We appreciate everybody at least giving us a chance to evaluate our product. It’s not a wrestling war, the war is us against our own selves getting better and our talents getting better.
The AEW Commentator also spoke about AEW not doing live events and how the company, compared to WWE, won’t be doing live events for a while.
“AEW is on every Wednesday night, we’re a TV show,” Ross said. “We’re not doing live events right now, I would assume at some point that would occur, I don’t know but I’d assume.”
