Bully Ray Says AEW Continues Letting Fans Down After High-Quality PPVs

WWE Hall of Famer Bully Ray has had a lot of good things to say about AEW over the past few weeks and months, and after the success of AEW Double or Nothing 2026, he was very optimistic heading into the May 27 episode of "AEW Dynamite." However, rather than shining a light on how good Double or Nothing was, the company opted to move forward and begin building new stories for the Forbidden Door pay-per-view on June 28. This bothered Bully to the point where on a recent episode of "Busted Open Radio," he explained that AEW fans are being let down by the company as the momentum coming out of pay-per-views just isn't capitalized on.

"I thought that maybe, just maybe, with Philadelphia as the f****** backdrop for this first live TV show, and you've got about 4,000 people there. 4,000 people can sound very, very lively and then...business as usual. I can't stress to AEW enough how much they need a rallying cry from their fans. You can't just keep doing what you're doing. Yes, you'll have a great pay-per-view. Yes, people will love it, and then people are going be like 'The TV turns into no big deal.' AEW fans need a reason other than AEW TV, they need to be proud of the company. They need to want to be a part of this movement, otherwise I feel like they just keep getting let down every week with television, especially the TV coming out of pay-per-views."

Both Bully and his co-host Dave LaGreca were puzzled as to why AEW doesn't celebrate its victories as a company more often. Bully even went as far as to say that he would have started the show with the entire locker room in front of the crowd (and some even in the crowd) thanking the fans for the support, and blowing their own whistle about how good of a show Double or Nothing was. However, that didn't happen, leading to Bully saying that AEW as a company is very good at catching lightning in a bottle, but it's also very good at letting that lightning out almost immediately.

Bully Ray continued by revealing that someone in a position of power within AEW had recently sent him a text thanking him for speaking so highly of AEW in recent weeks. This led to the WWE Hall of Famer explaining that he tries to speak positively about every wrestling company, and is always happy to praise AEW when the company does something good. However, the reason why he wants AEW to celebrate its own victories more often is because he experienced first-hand what that can do for a company.

"I experienced it first-hand with ECW," Bully said. "I'm not saying AEW needs to be the next ECW, I'm saying you can learn from some of the things that ECW did really well, and there has never been a fanbase in history that has been as loyal to a company as ECW fans were to ECW, by far. So all I'm saying is AEW, please celebrate the victories with your fans. Don't allow them to forget about it because you just move on. Start off your show by going 'Hey, two nights ago we did this and we're going to continue to do this, and we appreciate you being by our side."

Bully rounded out by saying that the fans need more chances to prove how happy they are to be AEW fans, and opening "Dynamite" with a rallying cry that could have been over the top if they chose to would have been the perfect feel-good moment to get current fans excited, and newer fans even more engaged. Instead, the fact that the show moved on so quickly made him almost forget how good Double or Nothing was as a whole.

Please credit "Busted Open Radio" when using quotes from this article, and give a H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.