Cody Rhodes Reflects on ALL IN: “I Have Trouble With The Fact That I No Longer Own The Name.”

Before there was All Elite Wrestling, there was ALL IN. Following a tweet claiming that Ring of Honor’s top stars could not draw a crowd of 10,000 fans “any time soon,” Cody Rhodes declared that he would “take that bet.” 16 months later, Rhodes and the Young Bucks co-produced ALL IN, the biggest independent wrestling event of all time. The success of this show combined with Chris Jericho’s match against Kenny Omega at NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 12 earlier in the year gave Tony Khan the idea and confidence to launch his own wrestling promotion, and the rest is history.

Cody Rhodes Reflects on ALL IN

Speaking on Dale Download with Dale Earnhardt Jr., Cody Rhodes reflected on running the event that changed the professional wrestling industry.

“We presented it as, ‘We’re doing this, we’re breaking all the rules, we’re bringing all the companies together, we’re literally going ALL IN,’” Rhodes said. “People think Ring of Honor footed the whole bill or we footed the whole bill. The truth is somewhere in the middle. The comments on social were that we couldn’t put 10,000 in an arena and I, all pre-workout up at the gym, ‘I’ll take that bet.’ Now, we’re stuck. We can’t sell 5,000 tickets. We have to sell 10,000 tickets.”

Those pre-production jitters were quickly shut down once tickets went on sale.

“We were trying to go on the site to buy tickets, and I’m thinking, ‘If the site is frozen, we’re screwed,’ or, ‘Is it blowing up? Can it crash?’ It crashed immediately. It was 11,236 in 28 minutes,” Rhodes continued. “I said, ‘We need this,’ that welcome to the Indies letter. ‘It can be bigger.’ I like to think big. It was all in front of us, and we had to execute and make it happen. A wonderful memory.”

Five years later, AEW produced a sequel to that initial groundbreaking show: AEW ALL IN: London. This follow-up was a supersized bet, as ALL IN: London ran from Wembley Stadium. Much like 2018, concerns about AEW’s ability to fill the house simmered over the course of the summer, as the show would go on to draw a crowd of 81,035.

“I have trouble with the fact that I no longer own the name to it,” Rhodes added, as AEW acquired the trademark when AEW President Tony Khan purchased Ring of Honor. “I kind of look at it in the sense of, it’s not mine, it’s the fans’. Let them have a good time with it.”