October 16, 2023 Observer Newsletter: NXT vs. AEW, UFC/USADA relationship breaks down

WWE and AEW did probably their biggest head-to-head battle in history on 10/10, with WWE sending Undertaker, Cody Rhodes, John Cena, Rhea Ripley, Paul Heyman, Dominik Mysterio, and LA Knight to NXT while AEW pushed it as the biggest Dynamite in history, Title Tuesday, featuring Adam Copeland’s debut match.

As the week went on, WWE announced the first 30 minutes would be commercial-free. AEW then announced the first 30 minutes would also be commercial-free (the first commercial wasn’t until 47 minutes in) and then added a social media pre-game show featuring Eddie Kingston defending the ROH title against Minoru Suzuki. Both companies also talked about doing extended overruns, although in the end, NXT went eight minutes past the hour, which it does frequently, while AEW went 14 minutes past the hour, which should have been a very small advantage, but that ended up not really being the case.

You could say the competition led to the fans being the winners, which was true. WWE featured a very entertaining star-laden show with lots of surprises, an impromptu battle of champions with Ilja Dragunov vs. Dominik, with lots of build for its Halloween Havoc shows on 10/24 and 10/31. The full non-NXT talent list that appeared on the show was Rhodes, Dominik Mysterio, Ripley, Asuka, Shotzi, Butch, Ridge Holland, Becky Lynch, Finn Balor, JD McDonagh, Cena, Knight, Jade Cargill, Heyman, Tegan Nox, Solo Sikoa and Undertaker.

AEW presented great matches and also used the show to build a lot of prospective new angles. There was also a very controversial angle involving MJF and Bullet Club Gold, most notably Juice Robinson, that got the company some negative publicity.

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