Tony Khan Hyped After AEW Rampage Beats WWE SmackDown Head-To-Head In 18-49 Demo
Khan was excited
Oct 19, 2021
Tony Khan was very excited after it emerged that AEW Rampage had defeated WWE SmackDown head-to-head in the key 18-49 demographic.
Rampage and SmackDown went head-to-head for 30 minutes from 10 pm ET to 10:30 pm on October 15 after WWE announced a special supersized edition of the Friday night show on FS1.
The ratings were published on Monday and it emerged that Rampage beat SmackDown in the 18-49 demo, averaging 328,000 viewers over the 30 minutes compared to SmackDown's 285,000. SmackDown did draw more viewers overall, though, with 878,000 against 602,000 for Rampage.
With the 18-49 demo being the all-important number, AEW President Tony Khan was hyped following the news and he immediately tweeted: "LET'S GO @AEW FANS, WRESTLERS, STAFF! EVERYONE, LFG #AEW!!!!"
The 39-year-old then took aim at The Action Network's Darren Rovell, who initially reported that WWE earned a "big victory" after fast nationals became available, with Khan writing: "Here's a story nobody leaked to you over the weekend but I'll give you rn, dog: @AEW got a big victory over WWE after WWE aggressively extended their Friday show 30 minutes & loaded it up head-to-head 10-10:30pm vs #AEWRampage, with AEW Rampage winning 328k to 285k (+15% margin)."
Khan also referenced his tweet from October 9 while quote tweeting a PWTorch post about the ratings. The tweet from October 9 was: "I saw you're doing a half hour head-to-head with us. I can't wait to finally beat your main show head-to-head. It's been a long time coming. See you next Friday for #AEWRampage on @AEWonTNT!"
AEW Rampage and SmackDown won't be going head-to-head on October 22 but WWE will air Talking Smack on FS1 against the TNT show.
