"I don't think anybody won" - Wrestling veteran on AEW boss Tony Khan claiming ratings win against SmackDown (Exclusive)
Wrestling veteran Dutch Mantell recently shared his take on last week's clash between WWE SmackDown and AEW Rampage.
Last Friday, SmackDown had a 30-minute overrun, clashing with Rampage, which starts at 10 PM. When the ratings emerged, it became clear that though the Blue brand defeated the AEW show in overall ratings, Rampage drew more viewers in the key demos.
AEW chief Tony Khan was particularly invested in this rating game as he tweeted about Rampage's win in the 18-49 age group.
@darrenrovell Here’s a story nobody leaked to you over the weekend but I’ll give you rn, dog: @AEW got a big victory over WWE after WWE aggressively extended their Friday show 30 minutes & loaded it up head-to-head 10-10:30pm vs #AEWRampage, with AEW Rampage winning 328k to 285k (+15% margin).
Speaking on the latest edition of Sportskeeda's Smack Talk, Dutch Mantel stated that, according to him, neither company won. He explained that since SmackDown was on FS1 and not on the usual Fox Network, it's not right to compare the ratings of the two shows. Here's what Mantell said:
"The only thing I'll say about all this, I don't think anybody won, because this is gonna have an asterisk (*) beside it because WWE was on FS1. It's a push, it's a wash. One could say he won, others could they won," said Dutch Mantell
Check out the full review of this week's WWE SmackDown and AEW Rampage in the video below:
Dutch Mantell was not happy with AEW putting Minoru Suzuki against SmackDown
At last week's Smack Talk, the wrestling veteran pointed out that AEW booking Minoru Suzuki on Rampage Buy-In to compete against SmackDown made little sense. Mantell believes Suzuki is a revered legend, but the casual viewers don't care about him.
Minoru Suzuki destroys & collects Bryan Danielson’s Soul #aew #AEWRampage @cozysuperkick @FlyinBrianJr @JustinWhang https://t.co/oz1KKccFcd
He added that fans wouldn't have gone out of their way to learn about the NJPW legend and then catch him wrestling Bryan Danielson. They stuck to SmackDown rather than switch channels to watch Rampage.
"Whoever was watching SmackDown stayed with it. Because Suzuki, you guys are hardcore fans, you know Suzuki, so you wanna watch him. But if you take some truck driver down in Georgia, he doesn't give a cr**, and he doesn't know who he is. Again, we are talking about casual fans, they don't know Suzuki. They have to learn about him," said Dutch Mantell.
It now remains to be seen how SmackDown and AEW Rampage fare this week. Both shows will be hoping to witness an improvement in their ratings from what they drew last week.
Do you agree with Dutch Mantell's assessment? Do you think AEW Rampage would ever score a better number than SmackDown? Sound off in the comments section below?