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Cody Rhodes Responds to Rumor WWE NXT Will Move to Tuesday Nights

Published Thu, 04 Mar 2021 10:05:06 -0600

The Wednesday Night Wars could soon be over. Following a longstanding rumor that WWE and the USA Network would move NXT to Tuesday Nights, a report this week from the Mat Men Pro Wrestling Podcast, later corroborated by Dave Meltzer and then double-corroborated by Bryan Alvarez of F4WOnline, claims that NXT will air on Tuesday nights following WrestleMania. NXT has lost nearly every week to AEW in the weekly ratings wars and performed much better when it was temporarily moved to Tuesdays during a two-week period last year as a result of preemptions. With the shuttering of NBC Sports Network this year, USA Network will be the new home of sports programming including NHL hockey, which would be a more lucrative show for USA to air on Wednesday. And so all of the cards appear to be falling into place for a move to Tuesdays to happen. Sorry about your damn luck, Impact.

Cody Rhodes may not want to admit he feels some type of way about NXT and its leader, Triple H, but nobody buys it.

During a conference call Wednesday ahead of the AEW Revolution PPV, Cody Rhodes responded to the news.

"If that's the case, if we're no longer going to be opposed on Wednesday nights, I'm sure we'll come up with some sort of, you know, wonderful statement," Rhodes said, mocking the statement WWE sent AEW after they won their debut night in the ratings. "I mean, what could I say? 'Congratulations to NXT on a successful move to Tuesday night. The real winners are the fans who can watch NXT and Dynamite live every week as this is a marathon, not a one-night sprint.'"

"I could say that, but I don't want to be sassy or a jerk because, I think them moving, perhaps something else will end up on Wednesdays, and not only that, AEW dark is on Tuesdays, so AEW Dark would potentially be opposed," said Rhodes, trying to take the high road after he already took the low road. "That's why we can't get into a matter of being reactionary. We just have to put out the best show. We really do. And if they want to beat us, they have to put out a better show. It's honest competition. Yeah, there's digs, and they're fun, and they're lighthearted. Believe me, all the locker rooms tend to love each other. It's more the management that is pointed at one another. And even that, there's a friendly relationship. Tony is a different type of management person, a different type of executive. I would love us to be alone on Wednesday nights, but I'm prepared for there to be something else in that slot, so we'll see."

If the rumors prove true and NXT does move to Tuesday nights, it will be a rare admission of failure by WWE, which rushed NXT to television to compete with Dynamite and surely never expected to lose so badly and so often. Many believed NXT's sole purpose was to prevent AEW from getting numbers similar to Raw and Smackdown, and while that may have been a secondary concern, there's no way Vince McMahon didn't expect NXT to win, at least after the initial hype of Dynamite died down. When that didn't happen, it must have been quite a blow to the ego, and to the confidence the Chairman has in his no-good son-in-law, Triple H.

Keeping checking back, as Bleeding Cool is attempting to break the Guinness World Record for most clickbait articles churned out of the transcript of a pro wrestling media call, so we'll have lots more on the way from Cody Rhodes and AEW in the coming days.

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