10 Things You Didn't Know About AEW Double Or Nothing

With a live audience of 3,400 and 99,000 further tuning in via pay-per-view, the 1999 Heat Wave was ECW at its financial best. Although the prior year's incarnation was the promotion at its best, the '99 Heat Wave - headlined by Rob Van Dam and Jerry Lynn toppling The Impact Players - maintained its position as Paul Heyman's monetary success.

It was far from a bad figure, given the established standing ECW had as an alternative product to the warring WWF and WCW - but then All Elite Wrestling came along, two decades later, to ruin their moment of glory.

Initially estimated by Dave Meltzer as having drawn 98,000 pay-per-view buys, later figures detailed that the inaugural Double or Nothing drew somewhere between 98,500 and 113,000 buys, far surpassing ECW's record, and earmarking itself as pro wrestling's biggest economic show outside of WWE and WCW.

AEW has drawn significantly greater pay-per-view buys since, of course - most strikingly the 215,000 who purchased All Out 2021 - but for a first showing, Double or Nothing proved to the world, if it needed to, that AEW would turn a profit.

In fact, they turned a major profit just three years later...