AEW Dynamite viewership falls despite Jon Moxley's first title defense

AEW Dynamite's ratings have been released, with the Wednesday night flagship unable to retain its one-million-plus viewership from the week prior.

The show opened and closed with titles on the line. Wardlow defeated Scorpio Sky in the first action of the night, capturing the TNT title after a Powerbomb Symphony. The night concluded with Jon Moxley defending his Interim World title against Brody King, the winner of last week's Royal Rampage match.

After a hard-hitting affair, Moxley choked out the House of Black member to close the show and mark his first title defense with a win.

Brandon Thurston of Wrestlenomics revealed that this week's Dynamite recorded 979,000 viewers on average with a 0.36 rating in the key 18-49 demographic.

Dynamite last week featured the annual Blood & Guts match and drew a whopping 1,023,000 viewers. The key demo rating remained the same between last week and this week.

This week's show also featured Billy Gunn's shocking betrayal of the Acclaimed, Christian Cage and Luchasaurus decimating Matt Hardy, and Rush's AEW in-ring debut against Penta Oscuro.

How did people react to this week's AEW Dynamite ratings?

Due to AEW's contentious relationship with industry top dog WWE, there are plenty of people from all corners of wrestling who chime in when the ratings release.

As slight as the fall may have been, there were a significant number who framed the matter as anything but a success for the three-year old promotion. Check out the below tweet for a running average of Dynamite's average viewership throughout 2022:

As mentioned earlier, there were those who felt the ratings were a poor reflection of the show when compared to WWE RAW. The user below dismissed last week's one million plus total as a spike due to Blood & Guts:

Some took a more pragmatic approach to the rating:

Despite the beliefs of fans, Tony Khan affirmed that he was happy with the ratings, thanking fans for keeping AEW the number one show on Wednesday night for three weeks in a row.