The Secret Link Between AEW & WWE Nobody Is Talking About
A stadium stampede of a different kind is happening in AEW, and look at what WWE could have won...
It's victory laps all round when it comes to All Elite Wrestling's All In London event at Wembley Stadium, and rightfully so.
A single week of sales resulted in Tony Khan announcing 60,000 tickets sold, as other reputable sources counting the dots on Ticketmaster.com dared to suggest it might be even higher.
Capturing the spirit of the original All In in 2018, every little detail about the facts and figures was more captivating than the last, returning AEW to a vibe typically beyond replication years removed from its launch. The ceiling hasn't even been reached either, and with enough space for walk-ups on the day there's a possibility the show will sell out and/or reach capacity, etching it even deeper into wrestling history as one of the highest gates and biggest attendances of all time.
After a four-year wait delayed by the pandemic (Fyter Fest 2020 was later confirmed to have been pencilled in as a UK event before every show became a Jacksonville one), the payoff to months of speculation - and in some corners, doubt - was more spectacular, bold and grandiose than anybody could have forecast. A less-than-stellar "London 2023" graphic was rushed out following an equally-harried Tony Schiavone announcement on the November 9th Dynamite about exciting news for UK fans, and at no point did anybody think England's national stadium was on the table. But it was, it is, and will now be the destination for the closest the United Kingdom has come to having its own WrestleMania weekend without a WWE logo in sight.
An enormous and unthinkable gamble had paid off. But was it really that much of a gamble, or was noted wrestling megafan and historian Khan spotting a pattern between his challenger brand and the market leader?
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