Jon Moxley Censored After WWE Complaint

Toronto Star last weekend reported that WWE took a huge shot at AEW and people at WarnerMedia expressed their displeasure, as per The Wrestling Observer Newsletter. The WWE statement reads:

 


 

“If you look at the gory self-mutilation that bloodied several women in the December 31 event on TNT, it quickly becomes clear that these are very different businesses. We had an edgier product in the `Attitude’ era and in a 2022 world, we don’t believe that type of dangerous and brutal display is appealing to network partners, sponsors, venues, children, or the general public as a whole.”

The statement is quite similar to what they had remarked about their competition, most notably in 1996 about Ted Turner’s WCW. Dave Meltzer noted in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter that it is a tactic from WWE and people at WarnerMedia saw it as an attempt at a personal attack against the company in an attempt to hurt their ad sales. AEW’s ad sales are important to TBS/TNT and will be a factor in the TV contract renewal talks.

WWE’s comments heavily criticized

Many noted that WWE’s criticism of AEW about self-mutilation (blading) should also apply to themselves because there have been multiple instances of blading or hardway blood on WWE TV in recent years. Vince McMahon was busted open from a Kevin Owens headbutt on an episode of SmackDown a couple of years ago and there was also hardway blood when Brock Lesnar was booked to open Randy Orton’s head up with elbow strikes at a SummerSlam pay-per-view in 2016.

Interestingly enough, Jon Moxley’s F-bomb from AEW Dynamite was censored in replays just after WWE’s complaint about AEW’s content.

TBS seems to be happy with AEW because they issued this press release:

AEW: Dynamite” is Wednesday’s #1 cable program among P18-49 bringing in more than one million viewers on TBS. 

“AEW: Dynamite” on TBS – Wednesday, January 19 – 8p-10p

570K P18-49 / 624K P25-54 / 1032K P2+

  • Ranked #1 on cable for Wednesday among P18-49

  • +13% among P18-49 and +7% among P2+ vs. prior week’s episode

 

Barry Russell
Barry Russell
A dedicated pro wrestling follower for more than a decade

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