AEW is slated to hold its inaugural WrestleDream pay-per-view event on Sunday, October 1, in Seattle, WA.
The show is a tribute event to the late great Antonio Inoki. However, the show that will honor the life and career of NJPW’s founder won’t have top New Japan Pro Wrestling stars on it.
While speaking on Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer noted that NJPW has a show at Korakuen Hall on this date and listed some of the names advertised, meaning they won’t be appearing at WrestleDream. However, Will Ospreay is currently not booked for it, so he could, in theory, appear at WrestleDream.
“Yeah. It’s a tribute to Antonio Inoki…..You’re going to think there’s going to be a bunch of New Japan guys, but New Japan has a show at Korakuen Hall that same day. Tanahashi, Okada, and Naito are all in the show, so none of them can be on this show. The only people who are not, you know, as far as the big names who I guess would be a possibility would be Hiroki Goto and Yoshi-Hashi, who, you know, they’re good, and actually they’re a really good tag team, but they don’t they wouldn’t mean anything. And then Will Ospreay is not on that show. Jeff Cobb is on the show. They could bring in Will Ospreay. It’s interesting that they did a pay-per-view. You know, two things are interesting. They’re doing a pay-per-view honoring the founder of New Japan Pro Wrestling, and none of the top New Japan guys are going to be able to be on the show. And far more important, this pay-per-view is on a Sunday. We were wondering, and I still don’t know what they’re doing on that November 18th deal [Full Gear]. What do they do about that? November 18th is a Saturday, I believe. And you know, they have Collision. So I don’t know how they’re going to handle it. This one, they’re going to do a Collision in Seattle on Saturday, and then the pay-per-view is on a Sunday.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article, please credit F4WOnline.com with an h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription. An F4WOnline.com subscription includes the Wrestling Observer Newsletter and daily audio shows in addition to thousands of hours of archived audio shows.
