Sports Entertainment

Xenrauk said:

Could become like the MJF defends at ppvs only, while Orange Cassidy defends every week just to have a belt defense for the shows. But that's also under one brand, since wwe it's two brands it would still be shitty for one brand that has a champ that only shows up once a month to defend, while the other has a champ that shows up every week. Essentially the heavyweight belts should be defended at ppv's while the inter and us titles are defended every week. There use to be some structure when they had people go through the intercontinental belt before heavyweight, but then they made that worthless when they kept pushing people to heavyweight immediately.

Does anyone really put stock into days held anymore? like ok back in the days of Bruno people were still under the impression wrestling was "Real", these days that illusion is gone and really it's up to the promoter who holds belts to sell merchandise. I'd be impressed with MMA titles held that long, but not wrestling. All that long run says is how much the talent in wwe has been held back behind Roman and his shitty contract, while they work 52 weeks of the year compared to his minimum 12-20 days. Who's bright idea was it to give the bloodline all the belts in the first place, now they're in a position to make a entirely new belt cause they don't want to tarnish Roman in any way, even though technically he's getting stripped of a belt still.

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The AEW International Title is intended to be like the old WWF Intercontinental Title in that it's the "workhorse" title held by guys who can go and who are in theory on their way to the main event.

TNT Title was originally supposed to be defended every week (so a television title) but that idea fell by the wayside. Not sure it still has a reason to exist. It was created to be Cody's alternate title that he'd hold for a while and make stars with.

At this point the International title is the one being defended every week so there isn't much use for the TNT Title. Far as I know there were no talks of merging them or anything so now AEW basically has two IC titles. Bad enough that WWE has the US and IC titles basically being redundant with each other.

With Punk technically a lineal champion AEW also has the perfect opportunity to do a brand split with two different titles once he comes back. They're not going to do that though. Not sure I would either, I think two world titles is dumb.

Araxen said:

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Those tweets are kind of idiotic (yeah both of them).

Mike whatever's tweet is idiotic because they have barely even started selling tickets yet and the guy apparently has clairvoyance to know it'll sell 40k, a FAR CRY from this other thing that happened in a different industry!

TK tweet is idiotic because he acts like a manic squirrel and I guess that's spilling over to his tweeter now.

Also I don't think it's a total lie, I think the stadium is legit set up for 40-45k currently. AEW never puts an entire arena on sale (and these days neither does WWE). It just looks like the whole place is on sale, but in actuality they pick specific sections and seats right off the bat and have only those available until they fill out the areas they want (AKA areas the cameras are going to pick up). Once all of the priority sections are filled, they'll open up more seats/sections as more buyers trickle in. However, they always funnel the initial buyers where they want them to be. Wembley is set up to prioritize / get the lower bowl full and THEN it'll start unlocking more of the upper level.

So Mike whatever is technically sort of correct but not really, and also phrasing it in an idiotic way. And it isn't technically a lie that AEW sets things to like 50% of total seats in order to get priority sections filled, as the days of wrestling instantly selling out or completely filling arenas/stadiums ended a while ago. In the early 00's it used to be you could just put the whole building onsale from the get-go and not worry about it. Doesn't mean the area they're funneling to is the only area they're going to fill though, LOL. What utter dumbassery.

38k on first day which is lower than I expected* but we'll see how much Friday adds. Not too bad given no matches are announced and the company is being very vague about what All In even is so far. Should have been promoting it as their Wrestlemania from the get-go. Half the audience isn't sure how important the show is intended to be at this point (for all they know it could be a house show) given the dearth of specifics they're giving, and that'll show in the initial ticket sales.

* - Lower than I expected but still the biggest non-WWE wrestling crowd of all time in Europe, and 3k away from being the biggest non-WWE or NJPW crowd of all time in the world.

45k tickets sold now, officially toppled WCW's attendance record.

Next up: 65k to beat NJPW's attendance record, then 82k to beat Summerslam '92. Where are we gonna land here?

Also CM Punk has been completely left off of all of All In's promotional material, so the Cornettes of the world will be robbed of their "All In will only be a major draw if they add Punk to it". Once it does a large number, then Punk gets added to the promotional material to squeeze out some more sales.

Araxen said:

60k. Wow. I didn't expect them to sell that many. I thought 50k was doable.


It's laughable the Bucks think they are any major reason why they are selling so many tickets. I firmly believe they are a non-factor when it comes to ticket sales. The real ticket sellers are Kenny, John, MJF, White, plus whomever they bring in from NJPW(Osprey)

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You're right about who the ticket sellers are and the Bucks aren't much of a draw (they do draw, however, just not a lot, and mainly as a package deal with Omega or Bullet Club historically).

That said, the Bucks don't think they're the reason tickets are moving. They mean "we did it again" in the sense that the company they (and Cody) started continues to defy the odds and set new benchmarks. The "we" there basically includes everyone who's with them on this.

Over 70k now. Good chance this sets the worldwide record for paid attendance at a wrestling show. People are going to have to figure out what the actual record is, since WWE has inflated so many numbers over the years. WM3 was purported 93k, actual 77k. Summerslam 92 was purported 82k, actual 79k, and was their real biggest show for a pretty long time. Kinda short-changed Bret to lie about that, but it's par for the course really. WM32 broke Summerslam 92's actual record (and WM3's pretend record), but I don't know how much. Hearing it "only" had around 88k paid attendance and the remaining 14k were comps, arena employees, and just general kayfabing the number to get it into six digits. This comes right from a WWE shareholder call where they had to admit as much.

So if we can find out for sure what WM32's actual paid attendance was, most likely that's the record to beat worldwide. AEW would need to get over 90k for that. Wembley could potentially fit 95k if the stage got heavily scaled-down and floor seating got re-arranged so I think it's doable. Just can't do any major level of comps and can't fudge the numbers. If AEW posts an honest paid attendance number over 90k it might be the first time that's happened in wrestling, but we'll see.

I had faulty info, it is not over 70k at this time. Also about 5k tickets are comps for staff/wrestlers/friends of wrestlers so the actual paid ticket sale is 61k with 66k overall in attendance. This exceeds Clash in the Castle in Cardiff, but obviously falls well short of Summerslam 92 (which sold out faster, as well). The initial ticket-buying flurry seems to have finally subsided, so any further sales will have to come from build/matches announced rather than simply the name.

Collision ticket sales are pretty bad so far. First episode (Chicago) isn't on sale yet or even announced 'cause of fuckin' CM Punk. The next few episodes however are on sale and around 500 tickets sold is the norm so far. WAY below Dynamite's average, for something that is supposed to be an equally important brand. Punk not being advertised at all for them is likely hurting sales a lot too, but he can't be advertised if nobody knows what the fuck he's doing.

feels good.