>>6458977Fuck TV ratings, look at the actual crowds at TV. AEW sells out or manages to gimmick enough people through the door to appear to be a sellout but they also run smaller venues for most of their shows. WWF is still trying to run the same buildings they always have and are not selling out for shit. Even during what people thought was the worst of times with Super Cena, shitty old guy D-X and decrepit 'Taker they were still packing arenas. Now they can't even cheat people in - you have to remember that the half empty buildings are including giving away tickets to youth programs, radio promotions and letting people in free just for showing up.
At the level AEW is at there is still a decent audience for the stuff. But at the WWF level of "every Raw is a sellout with at least 10,000 paid tickets and we ran two house shows in nearby cities" it just is not there. Nor is there really any great chance that they are going to churn out a star that can get it back there with how different society as a whole is from wrestling's peak.
WWF latching on to celeb crossovers is about as good as they will ever have it. I don't see anyone debuting that is going to captivate people on the level of a Hogan, Austin, Rock or even Cena. If someone made any real headway like that they would be making it on external things like youtube, twitch, tiktok or podcast appearances and not having people say "I HAVE TO SEE THIS MATCH OR PROMO AND WILL PAY $50 TO GET IN"
