Jeff Jarrett Weighs in on Controversy Surrounding Booking of AEW Women's Division

Jeff Jarrett has entered the discussion regarding the booking of AEW's female stars. The recent focus on the women's division in AEW was fueled by an incident where a sign reading "Book the women's division better" was visible in the crowd during Dynamite for a brief period. On that particular show, only one women's match took place, resulting in Taya Valkyrie's loss to Dr. Britt Baker DMD.

During an interview with WrestleTalk, Jeff Jarrett, AEW's Director of Business Development, was asked about the ongoing online chatter expressing the belief that AEW's women's division deserves more thoughtful and improved booking.

“The way social media, to me, has progressed and evolved, in my opinion, you have to have an understanding on reading it. In that, it’s not just the professional wrestling industry – here in the United Kingdom, I hear there’s a hot button called politics, I’m saying that sarcastically, but in America, the political… the divisiveness.

“The ability to (say), ‘Hey, I’m gonna tell you something, and you better agree with me, and if you don’t agree with me, shame on you’, that permeates society now. So that’s obviously in social media.

“So I think you have to take whatever opinion is given on social media, you have to take that with a grain of salt, and really try to drill down and say – and I’m a data junkie, I’m an OCD guy, I’m dialed into that – but Twitter has an audience that has one mindset. Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube comments, they’re all diverse, they’re not universal opinion. You can break it all up. So the criticism you have to take as one metric.”

Jeff Jarrett emphasizes that the most effective way to gauge what works is by attentively listening to the paying audience at the show.

“I still believe at the end of the day, the best barometer is going out into a live arena, with your paying audience – and I think there’s a huge disconnect when you have a paying audience vs a non-paying audience.

“A lot of times, you go to the Ric Flair (retirement) match, I’m just using that because it just popped into my brain, the criticism that was received. I think there’s a couple of different buckets – people that were there live, people that watched it on pay-per-view, and people that saw clips online, and then there’s some people that just read about it that hadn’t seen any of the three.

“They all have a different viewpoint, so I respect all of them, but also I have to take into account as a 37-year veteran, when you really, really drill down, listen to your audience, and then make the best decision.”

Refocusing on the critique of AEW, Jeff Jarrett highlighted the importance of discerning which feedback to consider while avoiding the temptation to disregard it entirely.

"So as it relates to the AEW criticism, they’re gonna criticize it this week, and next week they could be universally praising it. So you have to take the yin and the yang, you have to take the good and the bad, and just kind of move through it. You cannot discount it.

“If you just completely sweep it under the rug, that doesn’t do your business any good. But you also have to learn how to filter it as well."

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