October 2 Is the Start Date for AEW on TNT

The TV debut is set in stone

All Elite Wrestling scored a coup just by getting a timeslot on TNT, the former home of World Championship Wrestling Monday Nitro. Although wrestling is moving away from needing television, cable or network, to survive, WWE's rights fee coup with USA and FOX show how lucrative being over the air or on cable can really be. Today, the newly minted AEW on TNT Twitter account dropped the hard date for its debut, Wednesday, October 2. Furthermore, the main AEW account confirmed the venue, Washington, DC's Capital One Arena, and according to a press release, the show would be live for two hours (8-10 PM ET). I'm not sure if it would be for one week or if the whole run will be live, but that's still a big detail to announce.

The show is already generating shockwaves throughout the rest of the industry. Contracted wrestlers are already saying their goodbyes to the independents. Whether or not AEW will make exceptions is unknown, as Joey Janela has already announced Spring Break 4 for Mania 2020 weekend. WWE is already rumored to be acting by seeing if they can put NXT on FOX's main subsidiary sports network, FS1. No matter how many people want to pretend WWE isn't shook by AEW to its core, well, you can only look at its business decisions, executed and rumored, since the upstart promotion was announced.

The show doesn't have a name yet, although "AEW on TNT" wouldn't be the worst title. It wouldn't be the best title either, but better to go with something simple than to give it a corny name that people will make fun of. Either way, the action should be hot and heavy when it goes to air at 8 PM ET on TNT on October 2. It'll be the first AEW show after August 31st's All Out, so you'll get all the fallout and then some. The biggest test will be to see if they learned their lesson from what WWE is doing with its television and doing something fresher and different. I fear they may fail it, but the roster at least will be fresh enough that it can carry any creative lag until the folks in charge either find footing or turn the work over to someone who knows what they're doing.