May 3, 20232 yr comment_6003829 In modern times, no doubt. Jim Londos had bigger crowds in the 30's for some shows in Europe or am I mixing stuff up?
May 3, 20232 yr comment_6003830 37 minutes ago, Jmare007 said: In modern times, no doubt. Jim Londos had bigger crowds in the 30's for some shows in Europe or am I mixing stuff up? There are certainly reports of him having drawn 50k+ crowds IIRC. Even Dara Singh is supposed to have drawn 50k+ crowds here in India, but given Londos was Greek and Singh obviously Indian, not sure whether they would come under the "American promotions" criterion.
May 3, 20232 yr comment_6003832 The numbers are very impressive, I expected something big but not that huge to be honest. I'm very happy seeing how wrestling can still draw big crowds.
May 3, 20232 yr comment_6003834 Rev Pro is the biggest promotion in the UK? What do they draw? From what I've seen it's in the ballpark of 300-1000. WWE pulls the plug on NXT UK, so it would not seem hugely popular over there. AEW is drawing a big house for this Wembley show, maybe it is under served or a lot of fans are flying in?
May 3, 20232 yr comment_6003844 Really sorry @Matt D , I guess ROH will be the new Dark/Elevation? There goes my hopes of ever having a round robin type tournament in AEW too...
May 4, 20232 yr comment_6003884 17 hours ago, MLB said: Rev Pro is the biggest promotion in the UK? What do they draw? From what I've seen it's in the ballpark of 300-1000. WWE pulls the plug on NXT UK, so it would not seem hugely popular over there. AEW is drawing a big house for this Wembley show, maybe it is under served or a lot of fans are flying in? NXT UK basically destroyed the indy scene but replaced it with nothing. The country is now underserved. Plus this show is likely to feature plenty of the people (UK and otherwise) that were the catalysts of when wrestling was drawing there very well, with Rev Pro and Progress and Defiant doing big numbers.
May 4, 20232 yr comment_6003888 The end of Dark and Dark Elevation happening the same week as Leva Bates leaving saddens me. Dark was what hooked my partner and I on AEW. We didn't have access to TNT/TBS but we had YouTube, so we watched it weekly, starting just a month before the pandemic. Cutler and Avalon, the Dark Order, Jon Cruz/Serpentico, Angelico... We eventually got Sling to watch Dynamite, but Dark was our flagship show. I know AEW is growing and changing, but this feels like the end of our era of AEW.
May 4, 20232 yr comment_6003901 The UK scene seemed to be doing pretty well before both NXT UK and before the pandemic. Progress seemed pretty comfortable trying to run shows at Wembley Arena and Alexandra Palace on a semi regular basis (see once a year). But I think there's something to the scene in the UK not being the major leagues and that perhaps hurting attendance for local promotions. We're used to having the best, or close to the best, leagues for a lot of sports (not going down the rabbit hole of whether wrestling is a sport but for the sake of argument let's say it is), we have the Premier League, Wimbledon, UK Open, and top leagues for Rugby League, Rugby Union and Cricket, even if they aren't the absolute best in the world. We can comfortably say we can go and see the best there is in these sports without travelling too far afield. That isn't the case for wrestling or any major North American sport. Basketball as a spectator sport is pretty much non-existent here in a mainstream sense, but whenever a regular season game pops up at the O2 Arena, it sells out in an instant. The NFL can ship over the least interesting, couldn't matter less matchup (historically involving the Jaguars) and they instantly sell out Wembley Stadium and now Tottenham's new stadium. Even baseball, which has considerably less traction than even basketball, comfortably sold out the Olympic Stadium in Stratford a few years ago. This is all to say that if WWE or AEW decide to run a PPV in the UK, I would never be surprised if they managed to sell 60k+ tickets in a stadium. Now, if they ran more regularly than once in a blue moon then things might be different...
May 4, 20232 yr comment_6003910 19 hours ago, Jmare007 said: Really sorry @Matt D , I guess ROH will be the new Dark/Elevation? There goes my hopes of ever having a round robin type tournament in AEW too... My poor Tuesday morning commute.
May 4, 20232 yr comment_6003925 After three weeks of staying put with the ratings against heavy competition, Dynamite got hit big this week. Good thing is them Wembley tickets still selling, so everyone in WWE vs AEW stan wats has ammunition to shit pots about them! 50k already is fucking insane.
May 5, 20232 yr comment_6003938 5 hours ago, Cien Caras said: Wasnt the problem with the UK scene the fact that most of the people involved were pedos? That was kind of the last straw, the big issue was WWE cock blocked the attempted relaunch of World of Sport then used NXT UK to crush all the promotions. Places like Rev Pro survived because they have a working relationship with New Japan and could at least get their guys when all the homegrown talent was poached. Also 50k for the presale is amazing. Before this I was thinking they should have run their first big UK show in Craven Cottage since it would have cost them zero to run there, but now I see that would have been a vast undersell of their potential. I wonder what they'll max out at now. Sold more than half the soccer capacity and they haven't even announced any matches yet. I'm sure it won't be set up for the full 90k with staging and whatnot, but at this point, but once they fill out the card it should be an easy additional 20k.
May 5, 20232 yr comment_6003968 They have sold a ton of tickets. Appears what's left is the uppermost seats, platinum seats in the lower level, and ticket packages that are combined with hotels.
May 5, 20232 yr comment_6003971 Seems like they could open up the whole damn stadium with the way tickets are selling, amazing. Also, not sure how legit it is but I read that the plan is to make Rampage the "Dark/Elevation" show and tape it every Wednesday. ROH would be taped every Saturday with Collision.
May 5, 20232 yr comment_6003981 Seems like the current estimate is somewhere around 70k sold which is wild. The crazy bastards may actually do it
May 5, 20232 yr comment_6003983 Selling around 70k would be excellent, but doing so without even a hint of what the card is is actually insane.
May 6, 20232 yr comment_6004022 Saw it pointed out that other than WCW/NJPW shows in North Korea that people were forced to attend, All In is the largest non WWE show in 60 years.
May 6, 20232 yr comment_6004025 3 hours ago, sek69 said: Saw it pointed out that other than WCW/NJPW shows in North Korea that people were forced to attend, All In is the largest non WWE show in 60 years. Are there any indications on how big the crowds at the Iraqi shows with Adnan Al-Kaissie were?
May 9, 20232 yr comment_6004201 The Nigel return rumors have started to gain some traction https://www.fightful.com/wrestling/nigel-mcguinness-files-trademark-ring-name?utm_source=TW-Fightful&utm_medium=Fightful Wrestling News&utm_campaign=dlvr.it Man, if he truly is having a comeback (for 1 or more matches) I hope he's been training for a while because All In is only three months away and that sounds like very little time to get into ring shape. Specially if he wants some sort of marquee matchup for that show.
May 9, 20232 yr comment_6004202 I highly doubt he hasn’t already been training. And yeah, they’re absolutely gonna run Dragon/Nigel that night now.
May 9, 20232 yr comment_6004204 Desmond Wolfe, motherfuckers. Let's go! Of course they'll tease or flat out do the ring post headbutt spot.
May 9, 20232 yr comment_6004207 I suppose one match in front of a giant UK crowd is fine, worked safely. I just hope it doesn't lead to a full on comeback.
May 10, 20232 yr comment_6004215 Danielson vs McGuinness? May as well make it a three-way with Shibata and have Chris Nowinski as special guest referee.
Create an account or sign in to comment