From 1960 to 2019, if you were a wrestling fan who wanted to see a live event at New York’s City’s Madison Square Garden, that show was guaranteed to be run by a member of the McMahon Family. That finally changed on April 6, 2019 when New Japan Pro-Wrestling and Ring of Honor ran the supershow G1 Supercard, and fans have speculated ever since its launch whether or not All Elite Wrestling would eventually get a crack at the iconic venue. AEW star Chris Jericho confirmed in an interview with ComicBook this week that it was something AEW officials have considered prior to the pandemic, but nothing is set in stone as of now.
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“I know we talked about it, pre-pandemic, it was in the pipeline, because it’s The Garden,” Jericho said. “It’s the cathedral of wrestling in New York City. I think that’s one of the reasons why we started with the Prudential Center, and when we sold 15,000 tickets or whatever it was, that’s to show The Garden that AEW can draw. Because I think there’s a lot of naysayers from the other side. They’ll say, ‘Oh, you can’t have AEW in The Garden. WWE’s only drawing 6,000 people.’ Meanwhile, if we had a show at The Garden, we would probably sell it out in 20 minutes. But you have to convince the powers that be that have been [there]. WWE is Madison Square Garden. There’s been a relationship there for 50 odd years. So it’s going to take some finagling for us to get in there.
“But in the meantime, I think there’s other arenas that we could do in New York and sell them up quickly so that The Garden would go, ‘Hey, that’s cool.’ Little known fact, it’s hard to make money in The Garden though because it’s so expensive with unions and all that sort of thing,” he continued. “So I think the only reason why you play The Garden because it’s The Garden. But there’s plenty of other places in New York with the Barclays Center, and like we said, the Prudential Center just down the road in Jersey, that we could do as well. I’m just ready to go back to any arena. I don’t care which one it is.”
AEW is scheduled to return to the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey on Sept. 15, 2021. Jericho made the case during the same interview that a co-branded show between AEW and New Japan would worth of running MSG.
“So I think when that opens up, that’s the type of invasion angle I think would make some big money,” he said. “Because New Japan is one of the biggest companies in the world with some legit, legendary mainstream stars. And I just love the concept of AEW invading them in Osaka, Dominion in June, and then doing a Tokyo Dome invasion show, and then coming back to do a Madison Square Garden invasion show in our backyard, or Staples Center, something along those lines. So that’s an invasion that I really could get off on and get behind for sure.”
