Tony Khan Announces HUGE AEW Rampage Buy In To Go Up Against WWE SmackDown

Bryan Danielson amongst those in action on a special AEW Rampage Buy In this Friday.

by Andrew Pollard
Bryan Danielson
AEW

With this Friday set to see AEW Rampage go head-to-head with WWE SmackDown for 30 minutes, Tony Khan has moved to announce a huge hour-long Buy In event to air prior to Rampage starting. Khan broke this news during an appearance on New York's WFAN Sports Radio.

To air live on YouTube, the Buy In will start at 9pm ET and will see both Bryan Danielson and recent AEW signee Bobby Fish in singles action.

Danielson and Fish are due to face each other on Saturday's episode of AEW Dynamite, and so Fish will take on Lee Moriarty on the Rampage Buy In to prepare for this bout, whilst Danielson will face a to-be-announced opponent on Friday's Rampage pre-show.

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SmackDown is this week being moved from FOX to FS1 due to the MLB play-offs, and WWE has reacted accordingly by announcing a stacked two-and-a-half-hour special blue brand outing that will feature Brock Lesnar, the semi-finals of both the King of the Ring and the Queen's Crown Tournament, and Becky Lynch vs. Sasha Banks.

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The final 30 minutes of this SmackDown will air at the same time as the first half-hour of AEW Rampage, which will mark the first time AEW programming will be going up against main roster WWE television. Now, you can add the Buy In as another way AEW will be on air at the same time as WWE programming.

In terms of what AEW has announced for this week's Rampage, the current card looks like:

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- CM Punk vs. Matt Sydal

- Ruby Soho vs. The Bunny

- Men of the Year & Junior dos Santos (w/Dan Lambert & Jorge Masvidal) vs. Inner Circle's Chris Jericho, Jake Hager & Sammy Guevara

As alluded to, this week's episode of AEW Dynamite will take place on Saturday and will see Lucha Bros. defend the AAA Tag Team Championships against Andrade's mystery masked tag team, Dante Martin will find himself going up against Malakai Black, and then there's Bryan Danielson vs. Bobby Fish.

Senior Writer
Senior Writer

Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main dayjob, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks, Jamie Hayer, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg.