TNT goes "All In" and returns to wrestling with soon to launch All Elite Wrestling.
Back in January, All Elite Wrestling was announced by Cody (Rhodes), The Young Bucks (Nick and Matt Jackson), Adam "Hangman" Page on a episode of the popular wrestling YouTube show "Being The Elite" while they were in Japan wrapping up their tenure with New Japan Pro Wrestling at NJPW's version of WrestleMania, the January 4 "Wrestle Kingdom" event at the Tokyo Dome in Tokyo, Japan.
The newly announced AEW is slated to start up officially with their first ever event "Double or Nothing" in Las Vegas which is slated to happen a week from this coming Saturday. In the months since the January announcement, AEW had been slowly forming their roster with some high profile names like So Cal Uncensored (the team of Christopher Daniels, Frankie Kazarian and Scorpio Sky), Penta El Zero M (aka Lucha Underground's Pentagon Dark/Pentagon Jr), Rey Fenix, "Jungle Boy" Nate Coy (aka Jack Perry, the son of the late Luke Perry, who died from a stoke earlier this year), former IWGP Heavyweight Champion Kenny Omega, as well as wrestling veterans Chris Jericho and Dustin Rhodes (who is Cody's brother), and two talents who are in the LGBT community with openly gay wrestler Sunny Kiss (who also competed on Lucha Underground under the ring name of XO Lishus) and transgender female wrestler Nyla Rose.
And now, the newly establish promotion is about to form a tag team with a TV Network that retired from the pro wrestling game in 2001 and is now preparing to un-retire like they were Terry Funk after his 3rd retirement. As TNT and AEW announced today that AEW will be coming to the network this fall, making it the first time a pro wrestling promotion has aired on that network since AT&T's WarnerMedia's Turner Networks had World Championship Wrestling on TNT with Monday Nitro and TBS with Thunder when they owned WCW when they were Time Warner and had just completed that failed merger with AOL that was completed in the early 2000s.
WCW was one of the biggest causalities of the AOL/Time Warner merger as WCW was hemorrhaging money and had been in a rapid decline in ratings and moral and ticket sales, ECT. since 1999 when on the January 4 edition of WCW's Monday Nitro saw the Finger Poke of Doom happened.
The Fingerpoke of Doom happened on January 4, 1999, where Hollywood Hulk Hogan of nWo Hollywood poke the chest of Kevin Nash of nWo Wolfpac in the World title match as Nash sold it like he just got shot, as part of a scripted storyline plot that resulted in the reunion of the 2 nWo stables and give the belt back to Hogan to reinforce his leadership status of the stable all together (nWo formed in 1996 with Hogan, Nash and Scott Hall, split up into 2 smaller nWo spin off stables nWo Hollywood aka nWo black and white led by Hogan and nWo Wolfpac aka nWo red and black in 1998 when WCW bookers/writers felt the storyline was getting stale and extended the lifespan of the stable instead of breaking it up for good) and also, a part of the storyline was Bill Goldberg, who was slated to originally face Nash that night, was "falsely arrested" for "stalking Miss Elizabeth", a charge was actually a fake crime in both kayfabe and real life which if done in real life becomes a real crime in itself as filling a false police report is illegal.
To add insult to injury, this happen in Goldberg's (and WCW's) hometown of Atlanta, GA at the niw long since demolished Georgia Dome. On that same night, USA was airing a pre-taped WWE Raw (then known as WWF's Raw Is War) and during Nitro, the voice of WCW Tony Schiavone would announced the spoiled results of the pretaped Raw main event of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Mick Foley (as the Mankind persona that night, as Mankind was 1 of the "Three faces of" Foley, the other 2 is Cactus Jack and Dude Love) for the WWE Championship, Schiavone dismissed the fact that Foley was gonna win the rival promotion's main event title and referenced Foley's past in WCW by saying "Ha! That's gonna put some butts in the seats, heh". The disrespectful spoiler announcement was meant to help keep fans from changing to WWE Raw and it backfired big time, causing the fans changed the channel to see Raw and WCW's product was starting to get stale and frustrating at the time. The fans tuned back in after Raw ended to see that main event and well, they saw one of the biggest jokes in wrestling history in one of the worst world title bouts in wrestling history.
Fast Forward to 2001 and Time Warner was selling off WCW due to 2 years of ratings decline and being a money pit where they were losing money, and former WCW President Eric Bischoff (who was back in the promotion in 2000 as a on-screen character after being fired as president in 1999) working with Fusient Media Ventures were trying to acquire WCW from AOL Time Warner with the plan on rebooting the company in the Spring or Summer of 2001 with a PPV event called "The Big Bang", that was gonna be the planned had Jamie Kellner the head of Turner Network programming at the time didn't cancel the WCW shows at the time. since WCW had just lost it's TV deal, Bischoff & Fusient Media Ventures conceded in the attempt to buy out WCW and WWE would instead buy WCW out and started the now failed invasion angle at the last ever Nitro episode with Shane McMahon on-screen being the new kayfabe owner of WCW who stole WCW from his dad Vince (as this was during the build for Shane vs. Vince match at WrestleMania x-Seven (aka WM 17) which the angle also aired live on Raw in the first and only WCW/WWE simulcasted segment as that night's Raw was the second to last WWE show to air before WrestleMania that year as the angle went down 6 days before the Super Bowl of pro wrestling).
And ever since 3/27/01, no wrestling show has aired on TNT for the last 18 years since Nitro's cancellation. But that changes this fall as AEW will bring pro wrestling back to the network and will in the process try to reinvent the sport as at the same time, fans have been so bored and angry at the WWE to the point, they have decided to stop watching it (WWE is currently in a ratings slump, which is consider it's worse since before the Attitude Era when the Monday Night Wars was started to gain full steam and WCW was beating them for 82 straight weeks.
Also, on top of the yet to be named AEW weekly show, they will air content on Bleacher Report's B/R Live streaming services, inducing the internet streaming rights of their PPVs which begins with Double or Nothing on May 25. the yet to be named weekly series is rumored to premiere on either Tuesdays (which after this September, won't have a live pro wrestling show as WWE SmackDown Live moves to Fox from USA and moves to Friday nights from Tuesdays) or Wednesdays.
Broadcasting Cable's story about TNT's long awaited return to broadcasting a pro wrestling show on cable TV:
https://www.broadcastingcable.com/news/tnt-jumps-back-into-wrestling-ring-with-aew
In my opinion, this is the game changer that is pretty much been needed in pro wrestling in a long time, TNA Wrestling almost did it and they failed and now, have since almost gone out of business and had a name change to Impact Wrestling. Also could be the thing that motivates WWE to change their product to compete with AEW and maybe force Vince McMahon to retire as it's clear he is too out of touch with the modern wrestling audience as he clearly won't listen to them and forces you to cheer for his chosen ones, which the fans boo loudly (especially if that chosen one had to take a sabbatical when he was diagnosed with Leukemia last fall and has since put it into remission and returned to wrestling full time).
Back in January, All Elite Wrestling was announced by Cody (Rhodes), The Young Bucks (Nick and Matt Jackson), Adam "Hangman" Page on a episode of the popular wrestling YouTube show "Being The Elite" while they were in Japan wrapping up their tenure with New Japan Pro Wrestling at NJPW's version of WrestleMania, the January 4 "Wrestle Kingdom" event at the Tokyo Dome in Tokyo, Japan.
The newly announced AEW is slated to start up officially with their first ever event "Double or Nothing" in Las Vegas which is slated to happen a week from this coming Saturday. In the months since the January announcement, AEW had been slowly forming their roster with some high profile names like So Cal Uncensored (the team of Christopher Daniels, Frankie Kazarian and Scorpio Sky), Penta El Zero M (aka Lucha Underground's Pentagon Dark/Pentagon Jr), Rey Fenix, "Jungle Boy" Nate Coy (aka Jack Perry, the son of the late Luke Perry, who died from a stoke earlier this year), former IWGP Heavyweight Champion Kenny Omega, as well as wrestling veterans Chris Jericho and Dustin Rhodes (who is Cody's brother), and two talents who are in the LGBT community with openly gay wrestler Sunny Kiss (who also competed on Lucha Underground under the ring name of XO Lishus) and transgender female wrestler Nyla Rose.
And now, the newly establish promotion is about to form a tag team with a TV Network that retired from the pro wrestling game in 2001 and is now preparing to un-retire like they were Terry Funk after his 3rd retirement. As TNT and AEW announced today that AEW will be coming to the network this fall, making it the first time a pro wrestling promotion has aired on that network since AT&T's WarnerMedia's Turner Networks had World Championship Wrestling on TNT with Monday Nitro and TBS with Thunder when they owned WCW when they were Time Warner and had just completed that failed merger with AOL that was completed in the early 2000s.
WCW was one of the biggest causalities of the AOL/Time Warner merger as WCW was hemorrhaging money and had been in a rapid decline in ratings and moral and ticket sales, ECT. since 1999 when on the January 4 edition of WCW's Monday Nitro saw the Finger Poke of Doom happened.
The Fingerpoke of Doom happened on January 4, 1999, where Hollywood Hulk Hogan of nWo Hollywood poke the chest of Kevin Nash of nWo Wolfpac in the World title match as Nash sold it like he just got shot, as part of a scripted storyline plot that resulted in the reunion of the 2 nWo stables and give the belt back to Hogan to reinforce his leadership status of the stable all together (nWo formed in 1996 with Hogan, Nash and Scott Hall, split up into 2 smaller nWo spin off stables nWo Hollywood aka nWo black and white led by Hogan and nWo Wolfpac aka nWo red and black in 1998 when WCW bookers/writers felt the storyline was getting stale and extended the lifespan of the stable instead of breaking it up for good) and also, a part of the storyline was Bill Goldberg, who was slated to originally face Nash that night, was "falsely arrested" for "stalking Miss Elizabeth", a charge was actually a fake crime in both kayfabe and real life which if done in real life becomes a real crime in itself as filling a false police report is illegal.
To add insult to injury, this happen in Goldberg's (and WCW's) hometown of Atlanta, GA at the niw long since demolished Georgia Dome. On that same night, USA was airing a pre-taped WWE Raw (then known as WWF's Raw Is War) and during Nitro, the voice of WCW Tony Schiavone would announced the spoiled results of the pretaped Raw main event of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Mick Foley (as the Mankind persona that night, as Mankind was 1 of the "Three faces of" Foley, the other 2 is Cactus Jack and Dude Love) for the WWE Championship, Schiavone dismissed the fact that Foley was gonna win the rival promotion's main event title and referenced Foley's past in WCW by saying "Ha! That's gonna put some butts in the seats, heh". The disrespectful spoiler announcement was meant to help keep fans from changing to WWE Raw and it backfired big time, causing the fans changed the channel to see Raw and WCW's product was starting to get stale and frustrating at the time. The fans tuned back in after Raw ended to see that main event and well, they saw one of the biggest jokes in wrestling history in one of the worst world title bouts in wrestling history.
Fast Forward to 2001 and Time Warner was selling off WCW due to 2 years of ratings decline and being a money pit where they were losing money, and former WCW President Eric Bischoff (who was back in the promotion in 2000 as a on-screen character after being fired as president in 1999) working with Fusient Media Ventures were trying to acquire WCW from AOL Time Warner with the plan on rebooting the company in the Spring or Summer of 2001 with a PPV event called "The Big Bang", that was gonna be the planned had Jamie Kellner the head of Turner Network programming at the time didn't cancel the WCW shows at the time. since WCW had just lost it's TV deal, Bischoff & Fusient Media Ventures conceded in the attempt to buy out WCW and WWE would instead buy WCW out and started the now failed invasion angle at the last ever Nitro episode with Shane McMahon on-screen being the new kayfabe owner of WCW who stole WCW from his dad Vince (as this was during the build for Shane vs. Vince match at WrestleMania x-Seven (aka WM 17) which the angle also aired live on Raw in the first and only WCW/WWE simulcasted segment as that night's Raw was the second to last WWE show to air before WrestleMania that year as the angle went down 6 days before the Super Bowl of pro wrestling).
And ever since 3/27/01, no wrestling show has aired on TNT for the last 18 years since Nitro's cancellation. But that changes this fall as AEW will bring pro wrestling back to the network and will in the process try to reinvent the sport as at the same time, fans have been so bored and angry at the WWE to the point, they have decided to stop watching it (WWE is currently in a ratings slump, which is consider it's worse since before the Attitude Era when the Monday Night Wars was started to gain full steam and WCW was beating them for 82 straight weeks.
Also, on top of the yet to be named AEW weekly show, they will air content on Bleacher Report's B/R Live streaming services, inducing the internet streaming rights of their PPVs which begins with Double or Nothing on May 25. the yet to be named weekly series is rumored to premiere on either Tuesdays (which after this September, won't have a live pro wrestling show as WWE SmackDown Live moves to Fox from USA and moves to Friday nights from Tuesdays) or Wednesdays.
Broadcasting Cable's story about TNT's long awaited return to broadcasting a pro wrestling show on cable TV:
https://www.broadcastingcable.com/news/tnt-jumps-back-into-wrestling-ring-with-aew
In my opinion, this is the game changer that is pretty much been needed in pro wrestling in a long time, TNA Wrestling almost did it and they failed and now, have since almost gone out of business and had a name change to Impact Wrestling. Also could be the thing that motivates WWE to change their product to compete with AEW and maybe force Vince McMahon to retire as it's clear he is too out of touch with the modern wrestling audience as he clearly won't listen to them and forces you to cheer for his chosen ones, which the fans boo loudly (especially if that chosen one had to take a sabbatical when he was diagnosed with Leukemia last fall and has since put it into remission and returned to wrestling full time).
