Report: Top NJPW Stars Expected To Miss AEW WrestleDream

Coming out of All In, AEW President Tony Khan announced that the first ever AEW WrestleDream will take place on October 1 in Seattle.

Khan revealed during the post-All In press conference that the show will be a tribute to the late great Antonio Inoki, with the legendary New Japan founder having passed away on October 1, 2022.

However, despite the nature of the show and its obvious links with AEW partner NJPW, many top New Japan stars won’t be appearing on the show due to a schedule clash with an NJPW show slated for Korakuen Hall on the same day.

On Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer said the following about the schedule clash:

"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 [WrestleDream]. 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 [at Korakuen Hall]. Jeff Cobb is on the show. They [AEW] 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 honouring 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,” said Meltzer.

H/T: WrestlingNews.co