While I’ll continue to be among those who argue the real winners were wrestling fans, we do know that early returns on the Friday night wrestling battle between WWE and AEW point toward SmackDown winning the overall numbers game. We won’t see final numbers until later this afternoon. The more granular detail about the ratings for Oct. 15’s SmackDown & Rampage that will really give the wrestle web WWE vs. AEW data to discuss and debate will come after that.
Looks like we can already start to gear up for round two, though.
In a little less than two weeks, FOX’s coverage of the baseball World Series will again bump SmackDown to FS1. Oct. 29’s show won’t be “Supersized” like last Friday’s. But according to local advertising that aired on FOX affiliates over the weekend, WWE will air an hour-long edition of Talking Smack at 10pm ET - which of course will put it against the regularly scheduled Rampage on TNT.
The move isn’t without precedent, as WWE and FOX Sports did the same thing last year when the World Series moved the blue show to cable. What will be interesting to see is if Vince McMahon & company load up Talking Smack. The normal, Saturday-releasing Peacock post-show has become a pretty insignificant offering of late, but I wouldn’t be surprised if bigger names make appearances on the FS1 version... or if the Oct. 29 SmackDown featured a cliffhanger ending that encouraged viewers to stay tuned to TS. Maybe something like a pre-Survivor Series brand “invasion”?
Rampage that night is scheduled to pre-taped following Oct. 27’s Dynamite from Boston.
Ready for round two of the Friday Night fight?