Will WWE and AEW Have Pay-Per-Views Running Head-to-Head During Labor Day Weekend 2022?
WWE released the bulk of its 2022 pay-per-view schedule on Monday, confirming when and where some of the company's biggest events will take place next year. However, fans were quick to notice that an unnamed pay-per-view has been slotted for either Sept. 3 or 4, putting it somewhere on Labor Day Weekend. AEW has been running its All Out pay-per-view during that holiday weekend for three years now, meaning that the possibility of a WWE and an AEW pay-per-view running head-to-head was suddenly on the table.
"WWE and AEW will both run PPVs over Labor Day weekend next year, WWE did not indicate whether it would run on Saturday or the traditional Sunday," Wrestling Observer's Dave Meltzer tweeted on Monday. "They moved SummerSlam up several weeks as well so they don't have two shows in two weeks."
Fightful's Sean Ross Sapp then added that the unnamed WWE show will likely be a stadium event held in the United Kingdom, which has been rumored ever since multiple reports dropped several weeks ago. He pointed out that, even if WWE were to run on Saturday, the time difference would likely have their event end before All Out would begin.
September 3 or 4 is slated tentatively as the WWE UK PPV, as far as I understand. Even if they ran the day of All Out, the shows would likely be an ocean apart and not technically head to head
— Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful.com (@SeanRossSapp) October 25, 2021
So has the WWE vs. AEW war finally extended to competing pay-per-views? It doesn't look like that will be the case this time, but stay tuned for any further updates as they become available!
In the lead-up to AEW Rampage and SmackDown running head-to-head last week, AEW president Tony Khan talked about the financial benefits of the two companies opposing each other.
"In wrestling, we're worth more against each other and we're better off against each other. I believe there is greater value in the wrestling market when we're fighting and people want to see competition in wrestling," he told The New York Post. "I think it's one of the reasons people lost interest in wrestling was because there was not true competition for 20 years. Now with AEW in the mix and competition back in wrestling, I think there are more people excited about wrestling than there have been in a long time with the free-agent movement and good shows. At the end of the day, it has to be good shows. Through the 90s there were a lot of great wrestling shows. Every week, every month there would be great stories and great matches and you couldn't miss it. I think it's starting to get that way again."