WWE may have learned an important lesson over the weekend.
The WWE held two shows one right after another in the Bert Ogden Arena in Texas. It was AAA Ola de Calor followed by NXT Heatwave. 5,440 tickets were distributed for the two shows.
Since then many reports indicate that a sizable portion of the audience left right after AAA Ola de Calor ended.
Dave Meltzer from the Wrestling Observer reported: “I heard from even people in the company about that Sunday show and it was an eye-opener, I would say, because they put NXT second and they put AAA first thinking that we’re in the United States and NXT is bigger than AAA and all the NXT people, it was pretty tough. A lot of the audience left after the AAA show. It was like a Collision where people are just leaving after the thing,” he said referring to AEW Dynamite, Collision events.
Meltzer claims that the Texas crowd was there for lucha libre.
“They said that maybe half the people were left for the main event. The Mexicans were all way, way, way more over than the NXT wrestlers, other than Zilla Fatu. They said Zilla Fatu was so over in that building but nobody else. Not Kendal Grey, not Tony D, or Myles Borne or anything like that. Even Nattie, who they figured would be super, super over, really was not,” said Meltzer. “It was a Mexican audience that came to see lucha libre and some of them stayed but the thing is, the learning thing is, if you do this, you should probably put NXT first, rather than put them in three hours into the show.”
In the TV ratings this year, NXT has been up and down. This is probably due to so many of its big name stars leaving for the main roster. NXT started the year with an average of approximately 600,000 viewers a week. The ratings took a hit in the spring dropping to the the mid-500,000s. Things have picked up this summer with the ratings rising to a high of 691,000 viewers. The key demos have been far lower than 2025 though. Heading into the fall, the ratings and demos have stabilized once again.
