On a media call held this afternoon, AEW President and owner Tony Khan revealed that the card for this Saturday’s All In card will be changing in the coming days – though he doesn’t expect that to include changes to the World Tag Team Championship match, despite the recent legal issues that co-champion Cash Wheeler is going through.
“As for things that have happened outside of the ring (regarding Wheeler’s arrest), I can’t comment on that at this time,” Khan told the media during the hour-long conference call. “Based on the information we have at this time, we’re still keeping an eye on that situation. At this time, I think it’s a very inconclusive situation. It differs from other times where we’ve acted on a situation based on the evidence, because in this case… I don’t think we have those facts right now. I do very much look forward to the match.”
While Khan didn’t go into specifics as to what’s caused the changes, he noted that they would be limited to the undercard. Though that doesn’t mean they weren’t big challenges to overcome, such as the injuries that have forced Bryan Danielson, and UK stars Jamie Hayter and PAC, all of whom he wanted to feature in prominent spots on the show, which is taking place in London England’s Wembley Stadium.
“Bryan Danielson, I had figured to be in one of the main matches. Losing Bryan Danielson… has been very challenging. Then we lost two of our top British stars – Jamie Hayter and PAC. I wanted them in very prominent positions on the card. To lose (those three) changed a lot of plans.”
As for the other changes to come, he noted that there are some that were not injury-related, but again, didn’t go into details.
“Some of them… are not changes I expected to make; they are changes that were necessitated by things in the real world, that are not related to professional wrestling.”
“I plan to add something, and I may have to make some more changes within the body of the show. But the substance of the card and the essence of the card will not change. Hopefully those changes will make the card better.”
While unfortunate, Khan accepts that sometimes plans do go awry, and that you cannot plan for every contingency.
“I would love it if (ideas) I wrote down months ago for a pay-per-view card would actually come to life. I wish that everything in pro wrestling could happen in a vacuum and that all of our best ideas on paper didn’t get changed. But I understand that things happen. If somebody gets injured doing a wrestling move, that’s going to change the card. There’s been a lot of that with this show.
But, fortunately, he notes that none of the changes should affect the aforementioned Tag Team Championship match. And, even more importantly, the main event World Championship match between MJF and Adam Cole.
“There are ideas you have on paper that click, and I think the stuff with Adam Cole and MJF is going so well,” he said proudly. “That has been a real blessing for the company, and for this show. MJF and Adam Cole has been given a lot of attention, and that’s been by design. You want to spend a lot of time building up the main event, and in the case of MJF and Adam Cole, there has been a lot of story-telling. We posted a highlight reel of (that storyline) and it’s about two hours long.”
He noted that those two matches are highly-anticipated and should help in garnering crowd reactions befitting of the record-breaking attendance that the show is expecting.
“As of now, we have approximately 80,000 tickets distributed and a gate of close to ten million dollars,” Khan beamed. “It is by far the greatest gate in AEW history, and will be one of the largest (wrestling) crowds in the history of the world. This is the most exciting week in the history of the company. This feels like the biggest month ever for our business.”
When asked about the numbers in attendance, Khan said that he’s excited that the show is in the territory of some of the highest numbers ever for a wrestling event. When asked if he would share the actual attendance figures – as opposed to some historical numbers that WWE has boasted about some of their events in the past, for example the oft-disputed 93,000 for WrestleMania III – Khan said that he would be pleased to provide auditable figures once he has them.
“We’ll definitely be doing a very thorough audit at the building,” he promised, “and I’ll do my best to get you guys the best possible number. I look forward to announcing an accurate number… hopefully a historic number that we can all be proud of.”
One would assume that the success of this show’s attendance and revenue figures would have Khan planning future events in the UK very soon to capitalize on the market’s demand. While he teased a future announcement about that – possibly at the post-PPV media scrum – he did say that the broader international strategy for the company certainly leaves the door open.
“We have AEW on in 150 countries around the world, so there are definitely opportunities for international events,” he said. “We’ll learn a lot from (All In), and I expect more international events in the future. It’s been a good year for us in terms of international touring. It’s definitely something we want to keep doing.”
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