Kevin Nash Says AEW Hasn't Grown Beyond Audience Seeking Blood & 'Spot Fest'

All Elite Wrestling is going through some growing pains at the moment, as the company recently codified its safety precautions for wrestlers, leading many to wonder if the company's leadership is regretting the amount of creative freedom that wrestlers have. On his "Kliq This" podcast, two-time WWE Hall of Famer Kevin Nash said he thinks that AEW is hoping to widen its audience.

"I think that what you do ... What you do when you allow that much blood and that much spot fest," Nash began, "you paint yourself into a certain demographic that's going to watch that program. They haven't grown that audience. There's a reason why they're not growing the audience ... while in the meantime, WWE is doing some really nice ratings."

Nash admits that he's a "WWE guy," but thinks his criticisms aren't any less potent.

AEW programming has had difficulty breaking one-million viewers overall during the course of its four-year existence, with "Dynamite" hovering around an average of 850,000 viewers for some time, well under WWE's averages for "Raw" and "SmackDown."

AEW has come under fire for the amount of blood in the matches during the course of its shows and could be looking to course correct, but the Wrestling Observer's Dave Meltzer says that many of the rules in the new safety guidelines have been in place since AEW's inception in 2019, they simply hadn't been written down.

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit "Kliq This" with an h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.