It's largely unprecedented that an upstart sports (or quasi-sports) franchise can come too close to a dominant market leader in such a short period of time. Raw has been a tradition since ’93, and the company started on USA Network in ’83.ĭynamite started on television two years ago. McMahon) in the 1950s and went national in ’84 behind Hogan, has a huge head start. It paired two of the best wrestlers in the world over the past decade who nobody, except a few hundred fans at a small show in Los Angeles in 2009, before they were close to the stars they are today, had ever seen wrestle each other in a singles match.īreaking down the competition as it stands right now: WWE, which started as a Northeast regional promotion run by McMahon’s father (Vincent J. To hardcore fans in particular, this was a dream match. In a six-man tag to open the show, then a unique match where Reigns, new WWE champion Big E and Lashley, the company's three biggest stars at the moment, faced off in a second match the same night.ĪEW had advertised Kenny Omega, its champion, in a non-title match against Danielson, in the latter’s first match in AEW. This past week, WWE not only moved its biggest star, SmackDown's universal champion, Roman Reigns, who is generally exclusive to SmackDown on Fox, to Raw, but also had him wrestle twice. AEW two nights later in its debut in the New York metropolitan area at the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J., on a show headlined by Jon Moxley & Eddie Kingston against the tag team of 2.0, who had also just been fired by WWE, a far cry from what Raw offered on paper, won the week by a.

Wwe raw rating