AEW Goes All In - Tony Khan's Biggest Announcement Ever!
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00:00 Hello there my very good friends on today's Wrestling News video, AEW is heading to Wembley
00:04 Stadium which is crazy and awesome and ambitious and I'm going to talk about it.
00:10 FTR's wrestling future was determined on last night's episode of Dynamite.
00:15 Also on Dynamite, a major free agent returned and signed with the promotion.
00:20 And finally we'll talk about Tony Khan speaking up the prospect of Wrestlemania style events
00:26 in AEW.
00:27 I'm Andy from WhatCulture, this is the news.
00:30 Lots of AEW stuff to get through today which I guess makes a bit of a change from the past
00:34 four days or whatever I've spent talking about you know who.
00:39 Um, Wembley.
00:40 AEW's going to Wembley Stadium.
00:42 This is wild.
00:43 Um, so Tony Khan had hyped up one of his big announcements for last night's episode of
00:48 Dynamite calling it one of the most important in company history, something he'd dreamed
00:51 of doing for a long time.
00:53 And it turned out to be that London show which was always likely to be a candidate for that
00:57 announcement because it's been on the stove for what feels like months and months and
01:01 months.
01:02 A few people were like hey maybe they'll run Craven Cottage, Fulham's stadium.
01:07 He of course runs Fulham Football Club.
01:09 I think that's like a 25, 26, 7 thousand seater stadium.
01:13 Probably pretty realistic.
01:15 Or maybe they'll run the O2 which WWE of course is running for money in the bank.
01:20 So they've gone big.
01:21 They're running Wembley Stadium.
01:23 Right, for those of you who don't know, Wembley Stadium is the national arena of England.
01:27 It's a 90,000 seater stadium when set up for football which is the primary sport that happens
01:34 there.
01:35 Uh, it's also where this event, SummerSlam 1992 took place.
01:39 Bret Hart, British Bulldog, all of that stuff.
01:41 So if you're a wrestling fan that's probably what you know it from.
01:44 Now the stadium has been demolished and rebuilt since then but it's, you know, it's still
01:48 Wembley.
01:49 It's just a new stadium.
01:50 And that was in 2007.
01:53 So this is, I should probably tell you when the show is actually.
01:57 Sunday the 27th of August.
01:59 It's All In as well.
02:01 All In, London, Wembley Stadium.
02:03 Tony talked about All In when he was making the announcement alongside Nigel McGuinness
02:07 and it was Adam Cole who showed up and formalised the whole thing and said the venue.
02:13 So yeah, it's nuts.
02:14 It'll be the biggest venue that AEW has ever run.
02:17 It'll be their biggest, well their only show in the UK so far of course.
02:21 And barring any major disaster it will be the highest attended show in company history.
02:26 That record is currently held by Grand Slam 2021 which I think attracted around 20,000
02:31 like 170 people to Arp Arash Stadium.
02:35 So even if they have a poo with their pants on and all of that, AEW is still going to
02:41 outdo that in London.
02:43 Selling it out, interesting.
02:46 It's a huge building, obviously.
02:48 I'll talk about that a little more when we get to the Twitter questions.
02:51 But yeah, really ambitious move, big statement of intent.
02:55 Yeah I'll talk about it a little more when we get towards the end of the video.
02:58 Stay tuned for that.
02:59 But also, FTR's wrestling future determined on last night's episode of Dynamite.
03:04 Spoiler alert for anyone who hasn't seen the show but you can click the timestamp, yeah
03:08 it's down there.
03:09 Do that.
03:10 I'll give you five seconds.
03:11 Four, three, two, one.
03:15 They're sticking around, it seems.
03:17 They defrauded the guns as AEW World Tag Team Champions last night.
03:21 The stipulation for that match was of course that if FTR lost, they would leave.
03:25 So it seemed very much like AEW turning a bit of real life contract situation into on-screen
03:30 drama.
03:31 And that way if they did leave, Dax and Cash, perfect.
03:34 You've got the storyline tie up for it.
03:37 Stipulation, all that.
03:38 But it would appear that they're sticking around.
03:40 Of course FTR speculation has been rife for a while now.
03:44 Dax Harwood revealed a couple of months ago that their contracts were up in April.
03:49 And since then there's been speculation on them heading to WWE, going back there, all
03:53 of that stuff.
03:54 Dax has been very open and forthright when talking about this situation, particularly
03:58 on this podcast.
03:59 And I'm sure he'll have some interesting words on the next episode.
04:05 I'm not sure when that drops but it'll be an interesting listen nonetheless.
04:08 Anyway, they beat the guns.
04:11 Basically the guns were their last opponents in AEW and they confronted them at Revolution
04:15 in March and all of that stuff.
04:17 It's an ongoing storyline.
04:18 It was like a double pinfall.
04:19 They both hit simultaneous sunset flip style pins, Dax and Cash did to get the win.
04:26 Big ticker tape celebration.
04:27 Actually I thought the celebration afterwards was quite funny because they got the confetti
04:31 but there must have been some kind of breeze in the building because all the confetti just
04:34 kind of blew away from the ring when they were celebrating.
04:37 So that was quite funny.
04:38 But yeah, it's cool.
04:41 For me personally, I think that they have a better chance of having great matches in
04:45 AEW because if they're signed there they can go and work Ring of Honor and they can go
04:49 and work New Japan and they can do indies and all of that stuff as they please.
04:53 So for me it's a bit more interesting.
04:55 There's more scope for them to have good matches in a variety of different places.
04:58 Obviously if they went back to WWE there's plenty of teams for them to have great matches
05:02 with there but you know, a bit more variety.
05:04 I think that's cool.
05:06 But it's good that they had the option as well and that they were able, presumably,
05:11 to score themselves a good deal because they could have gone back to WWE and I think they
05:14 probably would have been quite happy there.
05:16 But good for them.
05:17 I'm glad that they're kind of sticking around and we'll see what their first, second, sorry,
05:23 run with the World Tag Team titles does.
05:25 The first one, 63 days, a little bit short.
05:28 Hoping for a longer one this time.
05:30 But anyway, let's move over to J White.
05:33 So yesterday we did the whole gimmick where we spoke about WWE's interest in J White or
05:41 J White's interest in WWE.
05:42 It wasn't quite clear which way around it was.
05:45 He wasn't going there, it seemed.
05:47 And that's definitely the case now because he was on Dynamite last night and he's got
05:50 an All Elite graphic on Twitter.
05:53 So he showed up.
05:54 Ricky Starks was hitting the ring to face Juice Robinson when J White's music hit, Switchblade
05:59 came out onto the ramp and that allowed Juice to ambush Ricky, two on one beatdown, they
06:04 retreated up the ramp, all of that stuff.
06:07 J has been a free agent since leaving New Japan earlier this year.
06:10 He of course had two separate Loser Leaves matches there which was quite fun.
06:14 Both of them were good as well against Hikaleo and Eddie Kingston.
06:17 And now he's in AEW.
06:19 So I'm quite surprised by this.
06:20 I thought he was going to head to WWE where I thought he would do a very good job.
06:24 Not that he won't do a very good job in AEW, don't get me wrong.
06:26 He's a good wrestler.
06:27 He can do a good job anywhere pretty much.
06:30 But yeah, it's cool.
06:32 I think that he would have done, I think he would have been a megastar over there but
06:36 I think he'll be a megastar over here as well.
06:39 Can't really fail with this guy.
06:40 Obviously he is Bullet Club so that's where the Juice link comes from.
06:45 It's cool stuff across the board.
06:47 Him and Ricky would be a really great match down the road as well.
06:50 So hopefully we get that.
06:52 And our, what story are we on?
06:53 I'm all over the place with the positivity today.
06:56 Tony Khan talking about doing a Wrestlemania style event for AEW.
07:00 Like a multi-day weekend spanning thing.
07:03 He talked about this in an interview with Sports Illustrated that actually went out
07:07 before last night's All In Wembley thing announcement.
07:11 I'll just read the quote to you.
07:13 We could do one event spanning a weekend and we could also do multiple events across a
07:17 week.
07:18 It's something we're considering, especially as we keep entering so many new debut markets.
07:22 We're looking forward to expanding and holding more huge events.
07:26 So this is pretty cool.
07:27 My favourite thing about Wrestlemania is the whole carnival surrounding it.
07:30 It's not just the big shows, WWE's two granddaddy of them all or whatever you want to call them.
07:37 But everything that happens around these things.
07:40 Like the indie event, you obviously get an NXT show.
07:44 Loads of companies flying in and taking advantage of there being thousands of wrestling fans
07:49 in town.
07:50 You've seen them buzzing, like conventions, WrestleCon, like all of that stuff.
07:54 I love all that.
07:55 It's like a party, like a music festival for wrestling.
07:58 It's the sickest thing ever.
08:00 I'd like to see an AEW version of that for sure.
08:03 Will that be in London in August?
08:05 I mean I think that would be cool, but there's no confirmation of that.
08:09 By the way, if you want to see the press release for the London event on the 27th of August,
08:14 it's on our website.
08:15 You can check it out there.
08:17 We're going over to the Twitter questions today and I've taken five today because the
08:20 past few days have just been non-stop negative stuff about Vince and things.
08:25 So I want to talk to the people for a little bit.
08:29 That's what I want to do.
08:30 The first one comes from All Elite Positivity.
08:32 I like that.
08:33 I like that.
08:34 Positive spin on wrestling.
08:35 Morning Mr. Murray, the H stands for hype.
08:37 Yes it does.
08:38 Not only have we got a UK show, it promises to be the biggest UK wrestling event in the
08:42 history of the company, of any company outside of WWE and the biggest in the UK since SummerSlam
08:47 '92.
08:48 Absolutely.
08:49 My question is, do you think it will sell out?
08:51 I do.
08:52 It's going to be tough.
08:53 It's going to be really, really difficult.
08:56 So there's a lot of factors to weigh up here.
09:00 Obviously, it's a huge arena.
09:01 It's a 90,000 seater stadium.
09:04 The wrestling set up will probably bring that number down a little bit and there's not to
09:08 say that AEW will open up all of the seats, like the top level bowls and all of that stuff.
09:15 Maybe it'll be a slightly reduced capacity.
09:17 You never know.
09:18 So that would obviously improve their chances.
09:21 It's their first show in the UK.
09:23 There is a big hunger for AEW in the UK.
09:25 The TV ratings are good.
09:27 The TV network's weird actually.
09:28 It goes out on ITV and it's like, it's a TV channel everyone has.
09:32 It's free to air.
09:34 But it's like a couple of days late, so there is that thing balancing against it.
09:39 But the TV does well.
09:41 I think there is an appetite for this in the UK.
09:45 Is there enough to sell tens and thousands of tickets approaching 100,000?
09:50 I'm quite dubious.
09:51 I will say that Tony Khan is a smart guy.
09:54 He's a smart businessman.
09:55 And I don't think he would have booked this show if he thought he was only going to sell
10:00 20,000, 30,000 tickets, right?
10:02 I think this guy's probably got a few aces up his sleeve.
10:05 Now you can speculate on that, right?
10:07 You can rumour about CM Punk coming back or, I don't know, bringing in some top, bringing
10:14 in Goldberg.
10:15 I don't know if that would help actually.
10:17 But you know what I mean.
10:18 I think he's probably got a few big things to pull off that will spark ticket sales as
10:23 well.
10:24 So I'm looking forward to seeing how this plays out.
10:26 I'm immensely excited for the event.
10:27 This and Money in the Bank happening in the UK within two months of each other.
10:31 This summer is just extremely cool for us UK fans.
10:35 I think it's really awesome.
10:38 And yeah, you know, I've got to give you a straight answer, haven't I?
10:40 I can't just sit here and waffle.
10:43 Okay, yes, yes.
10:46 They're going to sell it out.
10:48 I'm quite happy to look like an idiot if they don't.
10:50 But you know what?
10:51 After the week we've had, I would prefer to veer on the optimistic side.
10:55 Yeah, screw it.
10:56 They're going to sell 300,000 tickets.
10:57 Obviously, not that much, but it's going to be cool.
11:01 Howie Potter has been on.
11:02 Andy, serious question.
11:04 Do you see Glimper enjoying a long title reign as Intercontinental Champion despite Vince's
11:08 uncanny ability to bollocks up the booking of great wrestlers regardless of how over
11:12 they are?
11:13 Howie uses Cesaro as an example.
11:15 Perfect example.
11:16 I would have a lot less confidence in Vince doing it than I would if Triple H was still
11:23 the big boy right in the shows with the final say.
11:26 I think that prior to this week, I wouldn't have been surprised if this Glimper run continued
11:32 for another six months to a year.
11:35 That being said, I think the story is right there.
11:37 The Sheamus story is on WWE's lap.
11:41 Sheamus beating him one-on-one is a really nice bowl on top of their ongoing feud and
11:48 what they did at Clash, what they did at Mania, what they've done between then.
11:51 Sheamus becoming a Grand Slam Champion is really romantic.
11:54 It's a great pro wrestling story and actually I would do that sooner rather than later.
11:59 I would do that within the next two to three months.
12:02 So yes, it's Vince.
12:05 He could bollocks that up, but I think a good story is right on their lap.
12:08 It doesn't necessarily mean that Glimper has to hold the belt for too much longer.
12:12 I think he's already had an awesome run.
12:16 One of the best Intercontinental title reigns, frankly, of all time.
12:18 He has brought that belt to a whole new level and I'm delighted with how it's gone for him
12:24 and I hope it continues to go well.
12:26 But it is Vince, so hard to feel as optimistic about his long-term prospects now that the
12:32 crazy old man is back, for sure.
12:35 My phone's being weird, but question number three comes from Adam Ryan who asks, "With
12:39 the pending sale to Endeavor, where do you see WWE being at come SummerSlam?"
12:44 Yeah, I think they'll still be immensely successful.
12:46 I think they're failure-proof at this point, bringing in big duo, big crowds, all of that
12:51 stuff.
12:52 I think Creative will feel a lot more like pre-July 2022, when the changeover happened,
12:58 of course.
12:59 I think that maybe there'll be a bit less buzz about the company as a consequence of
13:03 that.
13:04 I think that we will start to see some of the business changes creeping in.
13:07 I do think that there will be cuts, sadly.
13:10 It's just what happens in these situations and we will cover them accordingly as they
13:15 come out.
13:16 Yeah, I think it's going to feel like kind of the old days, to an extent.
13:22 And I think that's a real shame, because what Triple H has built over the past nine
13:26 months clearly connects with a lot of people.
13:29 And I fear that people might lose that connection.
13:31 I don't think that half of WWE's audience is going to abandon the company.
13:36 I think that WWE, when you listen to the live crowds, it seems very much like the beach
13:41 ball, CM Punk, AEW chanting people.
13:44 I think they've all gone actually and gone over to AEW now, where they can get a different
13:47 flavour of wrestling.
13:49 So I don't think there'll be wide scale exoduses and stuff.
13:51 I think things like that are always a little bit overstated in this era, but it will feel
13:57 different and I do think there'll be cuts, sadly.
14:00 But we'll see how that pans out.
14:01 I obviously hope there aren't, but you know, it's how it goes.
14:04 Kylie Fuller's been on.
14:05 Shoutouts to Kylie, asking, "Would you be into Nigel McGuinness managing the BCC?"
14:10 Yeah, barely got to talk about this.
14:12 Yeah, Nigel's in AEW, that's cool, good for him.
14:15 Like, I love Nigel, he's a great dude.
14:17 Yeah, this would be sick.
14:18 I think a lot of people drew this line when the graphic dropped last night, the "Is All
14:21 Elite" thing, and it would be a perfect fit because obviously he has immense history with
14:25 Bryan Danielson from their time in Ring of Honor.
14:28 He's English, so there you go.
14:32 Perfect, why not?
14:34 Following in William Regal's footsteps.
14:36 You know what, I'm a sicko.
14:37 I'm a total sicko.
14:38 I kind of want to match it.
14:41 I don't know if he's physically capable of doing that, right, and clearance and all that,
14:45 and obviously if he's not, fair enough.
14:47 That takes priority.
14:48 But if there's a way to have one last Nigel McGuinness match, me as a psychopath, I want
14:54 to see that.
14:55 But yeah, I'm totally into him as the BCC leader.
14:57 I think that'd be cool.
14:58 That'd be a great direction to go, and a nice way to use him that isn't just a commentator,
15:01 even though he's a really good commentator.
15:04 So cool.
15:05 And our final question of the day comes from John Harrison.
15:08 Shoutouts to John.
15:09 "Good morning, Andy and his sexy co-host.
15:11 There is nothing sexy about this slivery little freak, John.
15:15 But fair play.
15:17 What's your favourite arena/stadium of all time to house a wrestling event?
15:21 Have a great day.
15:22 Peace and love."
15:23 Peace and love.
15:24 Good message.
15:25 Madison Square Garden, honestly.
15:27 I know it's a bit cliche, but watching the old WWE Royal Rumbles and pay-per-views in
15:33 that building, when you have the entranceway directly in front of the hard cam with a short
15:37 distance to the ring and the doors, I love that set up so much.
15:41 I know they don't run it anymore because you can't fit the stage, you can't fit their silly
15:44 video boards and all that stuff that I don't really like.
15:47 You can't fit that in there, but that's my favourite.
15:50 Also the opportunity to go there to watch the G1 Supercard in 2019.
15:53 It's just such a nice building in such a wonderful and chaotic city.
15:58 So yeah, it's MSG.
16:01 A lot of people would say that, but I've got to be real and tell you what I think.
16:07 It's just a great building when you're there in person and when you're watching it on TV.
16:13 And I wish WWE ran it with that old school set up at least once.
16:16 Just for me.
16:17 Do it for me, guys.
16:18 I'm sure you're watching this video and going, "Yeah, we've got to do what that bald idiot
16:22 says."
16:23 Anyway, thank you so much for joining me for another Solo News video.
16:26 I'll be back with another one of these tomorrow.
16:28 You're not getting rid of me that quickly.
16:30 It's been a pleasure, but don't forget to follow.
16:32 No, wait, you're already on the video.
16:35 Like, share, subscribe, ring the bell for notifications.
16:37 Stuff like that really does help us out, so it's very much appreciated.
16:40 Then, if you could follow us on Twitter @whatculture, @wwe and myself @AndyHMurray.
16:46 The H stands for Hoop.
16:47 51, blow my neck.
16:49 Indiana Jones and the Temple of Hoop.
16:52 Back tomorrow.
16:53 See you later.
16:54 Eel.
16:55 Eugh.
16:55 Blegh.