It seems odd to say, but it looks like AEW All In 2 is bigger than any WCW show ever.
Now, this may seem like an overexaggeration. There are many metrics you could use to measure the “biggest”. In terms of cultural impact, nothing AEW has done can top shows like Starrcade 1997.
AEW will never be pulling in near-tens of millions of fans on a weekly basis, as WCW did in its pomp. The status of TV simply won’t allow it any more.
However, when you look at purely attendance records, AEW All In 2 is bigger than every WCW event to take place.
As of the first day of presales (the tickets were only on sale to a select number of fans), AEW sold 36,000 tickets for All In 2.
Tony Khan called the ticket sales “one of the best days in AEW history”
The gate for the show already stands at a whopping £3.8 million (or $4.7 million), an astonishing feat for a company founded just four years ago.
The ticket sales have already broken the record for the largest gate in English history, which was held by WWE’s Summerslam 1992 event, in the old Wembley Stadium.
This has also already outsold all but one of WCW’s events, although it is expected to surpass that show later on today.
AEW All In 2 surpassed the paid attendance for the January 4, 1999 episode of WCW Monday Nitro. This show took place in the Georgia Dome, and saw 38,000 fans (although only 31,000 paid) come to see Kevin Nash defend his WCW Championship against Hulk Hogan.
This match is better known as “The Fingerpoke of Doom“, and saw Nash lay down for Hogan, in a move that was heralded as one of the main reasons for the sharp decline in WCW ratings and attendances.
The only WCW event AEW have yet to beat (as of the time of writing) is the famous WCW Nitro show from July 6, 1998.
This episode saw 41,000 fans packed into the Georgia Dome, to see Hulk Hogan take on Goldberg in a huge main event.
This match saw Goldberg pin Hulk Hogan, ending his reign as WCW Champion and building up the home-grown star into one of the biggest stars in the industry.
While AEW were 5,000 tickets off this historic event (after only one day of pre-sales, mind you), they still come a long way off some of the NJPW/WCW super shows, in terms of attendance.
Edit: Tony Khan has confirmed that AEW All In 2 has surpassed the WCW Nitro episode, selling 43,000 tickets in just 32 hours!
These shows were essentially NJPW shows featuring WCW talent, like Ric Flair, so do not exactly count toward WCW’s record attendances.
The two companies put on two shows in the Tokyo Dome, in 1991 and 1992, which saw over 60,000 fans show up for some huge matches like Tatsumi Fujinami vs Ric Flair.
However, Collision in Korea knocks any other event out of the park. Under threat of death if they failed to attend, an alleged 170,000 North Koreans packed the Rungrado 1st of May Stadium to see the top stars of NJPW and WCW battle it out.
AEW will have to build a second stadium next to Wembley if they are to be physically able to sell 170,000 tickets, so I think they’ll be happy with a 90,000 ticket sell out, which looks possible in the near future.
