WWE Reportedly Shocked by Crowd Response to Back-to-back AAA Ola de Calor and NXT Heatwave Shows

WWE held back-to-back events at the Bert Ogden Arena in Edinburg, Texas last Sunday, with AAA Ola de Calor and NXT Heatwave. However, WWE reportedly was very surprised by the crowd response to the events, with a significant portion of the crowd leaving the arena after the AAA show, per a report from Dave Meltzer on today’s Wrestling Observer Radio (via F4WOnline.com).

According to Meltzer, fans leaving the event en masse before the NXT main event was an “eye-opener” for people in WWE. He said he’d been informed that half the crowd had left the venue by the time the main event rolled around at NXT Heatwave, which featured Tony D’Angelo defending the NXT Title in a Fatal 4-Way bout against Grayson Waller, Zilla Fatu, and Cruz Montana.

Meltzer stated, “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 also noted that the AAA wrestlers were more over than the NXT Superstars. Meltzer continued, “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, and really was not.”

He went on that WWE likely learned that they should put NXT first before AAA if they run the two promotions back to back. He added, “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.”

WrestleTix reported that 5,440 tickets had been sold the day of the event. The show had a get-in ticket price of $37.17.