How late is too late to announce a card for an event that could well be the biggest you ever run and one you're billing as the biggest event in wrestling history?
Rhetorical and unreasonable, perhaps, but the lack of obvious builds and buzz for both All In London at Wembley Stadium and All Out from Chicago the following week made for quite the strange disconnect with the obvious business successes both shows will come to reflect. Nearly 100,000 people will pay to attend company events over a seven day period and eventually a couple of zeroes can be added to that to denote the dollars its various television properties will command. This marks an incredible year for AEW, so why hasn't the television felt that way?
Going into another key Dynamite, a fairly moribund card didn't generate much buzz, but could the lack of in-ring and abundance of promos plug the gap for punters keen to know who they're going to be paying to see?
Michael is a writer, editor, podcaster and presenter for WhatCulture Wrestling, and has been with the organisation for 10 years. Alongside the production of daily written, audio and video content covering WWE and AEW, he also provides knowledge and insights on all aspects of the wrestling industry thanks to a passion for it dating back over 35 years.
As one third of "The Dadley Boyz" Michael has contributed to the huge rise in popularity of the WhatCulture Wrestling Podcast and its accompanying YouTube channel, earning it top spot on the UK's wrestling podcast charts with over 10,000 episodes and 70,000,000 total downloads. He also co-hosts Benno & Hamflett, In Your House!, Podcast Horseman: The BoJack Horseman Podcast, and has guested on long-running Sunderland AFC podcast Wise Men Say.
With WhatCulture, he has provided in-person coverage of some of the biggest pay-per-views and Premium Live Events in wrestling history, including WrestleMania, Survivor Series, All In & Double Or Nothing in destinations such as New York, New Jersey, Chicago, Dallas, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, London and Cardiff. He has also been featured as a wrestling analyst for the Tampa Bay Times, Fightful, POST Wrestling, GRAPPL, GCP, Poisonrana, 411Mania and Sports Guys Talking Wrestling.
Michael's background in media stretches beyond wrestling coverage, with a degree in Journalism from the University Of Sunderland (2:1) and a series of published articles in music and culture magazines The Crack, Pilot as well as Sunderland AFC's premiere fanzine A Love Supreme. When not offering his voice up for daily wrestling podcasts, he can be found losing it every other Saturday at the Stadium Of Light, and at Cribs gigs nationwide.
