Following the announcement of AEW Collision last Wednesday, company President Tony Khan announced hours later on Dynamite some of the first several cities the company will be running Collision shows. The list of dates includes:
Saturday, June 24 – Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Thursday, June 29 – FirstOntario Centre in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Saturday, July 8 – Brandt Centre in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada
Saturday, July 15 – Saddledome in Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Saturday, July 22 – Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey
The premiere episode on June 17 was believed to be Chicago at the United Center, but the company has a backup plan of running Daily’s Place in Jacksonville, FL, in case they don’t work things out with CM Punk.
While speaking on Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer noted AEW is off to a rough start with selling tickets to these Collision shows.
“They were told that it would be something that they would know one way or the other within a week. So obviously Daily’s place is being looked at as a backup, I would presume if the CM Punk thing doesn’t happen. No one has said specifically that if Punk doesn’t happen they’re going to Daily’s Place. But the fact that they contacted people at Daily’s Place pretty much tells you that’s probably the case. Without Punk, United Center is probably too big.
They don’t have a big buzz for Collision because they put three shows on sale, they put Toronto on sale, they put Hamilton on sale, and they put Newark on sale, and Newark has about 3500 tickets out, which is…you would want more. I wouldn’t call it a disaster or anything, but for the New York market, it would be the weakest first day since they’ve been going there.
Toronto was like 1600 and that’s the day before the pay-per-view that sold out instantly. And Toronto is a great market, and I heard from some people in Toronto about the publicity of it, the fact that, like, nobody really knew till Wednesday, and then they sprung up on him as far as the thing and everything but all that.
It’s like that’s not good in Hamilton, where they’re going on a Thursday. That’s sold in the under 600 range. Really bad advances, which is not a good sign for the excitement, and people aren’t talking about it, and for that reason, I mean the names that were announced and everything like that it’s not enough. And you know you need…if you launched this thing…it’s a really, really tough situation,” Meltzer stated.
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