AOP's WES UK Show Has Been Cancelled (And It's An Absolute Mess...)
All the fallout as the Authors of Pain's WES cancels its over-ambitious UK arena show.
Wrestling Entertainment Series, the nascent promotion headed by former WWE tag team the Authors of Pain, has cancelled its first event.
The ambitious arena event was originally scheduled for Nottingham, England's 10,000-seater Motorpoint Arena for 4 June. This was later rescheduled for this Saturday, 9 July, with a public holiday in the United Kingdom cited as the reason. Now, WES has confirmed the cancellation via Twitter.
The statement blames "so many talent not showing up" as the reason.
WES UK had undergone a number of major card changes since being rescheduled, with big names Adam 'Braun Strowman' Scherr, CJ 'Lana' Perry, Lina 'Nia Jax' Fanene, and Deonna Purrazzo leading the list of pull-outs. Earlier this week, it went public that the promotion had sold less than 350 of the thousands of tickets made available for 9 July.
Fightful Select has published a lengthy report on the cancellation, noting that rather than talent pull-outs, poor ticket sales and mismanagement were behind the show being scrapped.
Per Fightful's writeup, WES' claim that it had paid talent booked for the show was a half-truth. While some wrestlers (including Eric Young, Big Damo, Steph De Lander, and Moose) were paid, Fanene ended up making only half of what was originally agreed up front. Several UK-based wrestlers have not received a penny, meanwhile.
Elsewhere, talent had reportedly not received visa and travel information required for the trip to England - and some didn't learn of the show's cancellation until they'd read about it on social media.
Dean Muhtadi, who wrestled as Mojo Rawley in WWE and was due to compete for WES, has announced he will hold a free meet and greet following the show's cancellation.
Meanwhile, a number of other wrestlers due to be involved in WES UK have put the promotion on blast:-
Instead of blaming the talent who took weeks off to come work for your NEW company under the impression you could be trusted… try refunding the fans & apologizing for your lack of organization. https://t.co/PDePCzITAF
— CHELSEA GREEN (@ImChelseaGreen) July 6, 2022
Straight garbage to try and blame talent not showing up. I’m not a stooge but the truth will come out. Y’all are good at finding it.
— Adam Scherr (@Adamscherr99) July 6, 2022
Talent “not showing up”
What a laugh… https://t.co/nLviKrWwUa
— Matthew Rehwoldt (@DramaKingMatt) July 6, 2022
For now, it seems Sunny Dhinsa and Gzim Selmani's ambitions of becoming wrestling promoters have taken a big hit.