Cody Rhodes was a guest on The Jim Ross Report this week ahead of All Elite Wrestling’s Double or Nothing Ticket Party in Las Vegas on Thursday.
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Given that AEW is still building up to its first wrestling event, Double or Nothing, in May, there are still plenty of questions surrounding the budding wrestling promotion. Rhodes was asked to give his expectations on the show, starting with the number of tickets the company expects to sell.
“Right now I have the building, MGM Grand Garden Arena,” Rhodes said. “Me, Matt (Jackson) and Nick (Jackson), we scale it for 11,600. Some folks may know, some seats may become available because if we thought we had a camera there and we kill that camera, that might open up a few hundred seats. We’re aiming to hit 11,600. We want to be honest about our tickets from Day One, because it’s real easy in this day and age just to look it up, or just to talk to the fire marshal. You can’t really say, ‘We’ve got 100,000 people in the building,’ anymore, unless you have.”
Rhodes and The Young Bucks’ first self-promoted event, All In, famously sold out the 10,000-seat Sears Centre Arena outside of Chicago last year in just under 30 minutes. The final attendance for the show came out to 11,263, and Rhodes poked fun at the fact that calling the next show Double or Nothing is a misnomer given it can’t be double the attendance of All In.
“It’s funny, we were kicking ourselves over calling it Double or Nothing. We couldn’t find a building that had 20,000 to compete with the 10 (thousand),” Rhodes said. “But this building, it’s got wrestling history. I went to WCW pay-per-views here, Matt and Nick did as well, and I’m real excited in bringing our fans.”
In recent weeks AEW has announced a number of new wrestlers signing with the roster, including Pentagon Jr., Fenix, Jungle Boy and Jimmy Havoc. Rhodes said going forward the promotion is looking for new faces not seen by a nationwide audience to mix in with established stars like Chris Jericho and Pac (formerly Neville).
“We’re looking for fresh, more than kind of the equity-garnered individual who has perhaps popped around on various television shows already,” he said. “We’re looking for someone who hasn’t been seen, that’s kind of the directive. Of course there’s folks like Chris Jericho, just an absolute star — wrestling’s freaking rock star, he’s done it all and seen it all. But I want have the juxtaposition of somebody on that level seen with somebody who our audience (is) maybe seeing for the very first time ever.”
Rhodes said that a number of new talent signings will also be announced during Thursday’s event, which will be live-streamed on the Being The Elite YouTube channel and social media accounts.
Double or Nothing will take place on May 25 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
