Chris Jericho Comments On AEW Heading To New York City
Avoid the WWE venues
Jun 17, 2021
All Elite Wrestling will head to New York City later this year and the promotion plans to hold AEW Dynamite: Grand Slam at the USTA Arthur Ashe Stadium on Wednesday, September 22.
The September show will be one of AEW's biggest to date being inside the 23,000-seat tennis stadium.
New York, particularly Madison Square Garden, is synonymous with WWE and Chris Jericho believes AEW decided to run the Arthur Ashe Stadium to avoid a venue with a "WWE brush on them."
"We've expanded to a lot of people that are just excited to see a different style of wrestling after being fed the same dish for 20 years plus. One of the reasons why AEW's done so well is we're different from WWE and that's obvious. We do things differently than the way they do it. They're a huge successful company, especially in the New York market. That's a WWE stronghold," Jericho told New York Daily News.
"But there are a lot of people who are excited to see things done a little bit differently and I think that's one of the reasons why we're making our debut in New York City in a stadium WWE's never been in. I'm sure we could have gone to the Garden or done the Barclays Center, but those do have a WWE brush on them. Let's go somewhere else and make it our New York market arena. Let's go to Arthur Ashe Stadium and that now becomes an AEW stronghold in the middle of New York, which is a McMahon country."
While AEW may not be running the Garden, other promotions haven't avoided heading to the famous arena. NJPW and Ring Of Honor ran the G1 Supercard at MSG in 2019 and New Japan plans to return for Wrestle Dynasty at some point in the future.
H/T to Fightful