AEW's grand shambles - Grand Slam Australia was a leap too far

A venue change, scheduling issues, and some (rightfully) angry fans

Picture the scene: It's a warm night in Las Vegas, you're a rich businessman out to dinner with one of your equally rich friends, and you've just heard some incredibly juicy tea.

Your business rival has had to move venues in the city because of low ticket sales. To make it even better, that weekend you're running your own Vegas event in the shadow of the massive stadium your competitor has had to accept defeat on.

After dinner, you decide to share the events of that evening with the world because, after all, you are the underdog, you're the little guy, and there's nothing wrong with celebrating your competitors' losses. This will never come back to bite you in the ass.

Your tweet might read something like: “Yesterday: one of my favorite days, including dinner with my dad and Dana White, where I got to break the news to Dana about Money in the Bank moving to MGM.”

What a difference two and a half years can make.

This weekend, AEW presents Grand Slam Australia live from the Brisbane Entertainment Centre. It's an event that, if it were a match, would be Russo-levels of overbooked, with swerves, miscommunication, and an overwhelming feeling that things haven't gone to plan.

Grand Slam Australia was announced last August during All In at Wembley for February 15th at the Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane, a venue set up for 52,000 fans.

The timing of the announcement made perfect sense, announcing your next stadium show in front of your biggest crowd of the year, and initially, it looked as if Grand Slam was shaping up to be something huge.

In a press release that followed Tony Khan said: “Our historic Australia debut will mark another milestone for AEW in 2025 and we look forward to fans from all over Australia converging on Brisbane for an incredible night.”

But the announcement was immediately met with questions from fans and commentators who wondered if AEW was big enough in Australia to fill a 52,000-seat stadium.

WWE had done it. In February 2024 they headed to the other side of Australia for Elimination Chamber Perth, with over 52,000 fans in attendance at Perth Stadium for a show headlined by Aussie star Rhea Ripley.

Some Australian fans online were quick to say that the venue choice was a mistake, pointing out that the company does not have the visibility, in what is a massive country, to make a show like this feasible.

Even Dave Meltzer questioned the decision, saying on Observer Radio: “The idea of going to a stadium. Man, they don’t have the viewership, they don’t have the popularity they do in the UK. It’s not even close. Maybe they’ll pull it off. I mean WWE pulled off three stadium shows, they were all successful. UFC pulled off stadium shows there. I don’t know, I’m skeptical of it."

That quote from Dave is particularly funny to read as someone based in the UK who finds talk of AEW's ratings over here to be overblown and badly interpreted (I would point out here that AEW did not automatically sell out their UK Dynamite debut as some in the company predicted they would based on ITV numbers).

While AEW may have been taking a huge risk in booking a stadium, it at least initially appeared they were making an effort to promote the event, with Toni Storm travelling back to her home country to do press.

But a couple of Toni Storm interviews weren’t enough to get tickets moving.

I’ve spoken before about AEW’s apparent aversion to promotion, something which became strikingly apparent during the build to All In Wembley in 2023.

It’s a problem that I don’t think is down to the people working on the PR/media side of AEW but more Khan’s lack of attention to areas outside of the television product (which probably leads to his team lacking the needed budget and manpower).

It was always incredibly unlikely that AEW would manage to promote a show so far away from home successfully when in the UK, a place Khan visits frequently, they made zero effort to plant their flag during WWE’s downtime.

When it comes to local promotion, Khan seems to lean towards thinking: ‘If we build it they will come.’ For All In they did, for Grand Slam, they did not.

While All In in 2023 managed to sell over 70K tickets despite AEW’s promotional failings, Grand Slam wouldn’t be so lucky.

The news of Grand Slam's venue change came in November 2024, first as a report from Fightful after much chatter online about the lack of ticket movement.

An email soon came from Ticketek, telling those who had purchased tickets that the show would now be held at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre.

Seats which had been purchased for the stadium would now be swapped for ones in a 13,500 area - a bit of a drastic change.

With the venue move, the next big question for AEW to answer was: What the hell was Grand Slam going to be? Would it be a PPV or a TV special?

This was a question that fans would be waiting a long time for the answer to. In fact, the answer was only officially confirmed by AEW a few weeks ago.

First fans were told that Grand Slam Australia would air on TNT and Max at 8 pm ET on Saturday, February 15. Then it was discovered that TNT would be airing coverage of the NBA All-Star Weekend at that time (who could have known?).

It was then confirmed that Grand Slam would air after the All-Star coverage, taking the place of that week’s Collision. Not only would the show not be a PPV, it wouldn’t even air live.

Of course Khan had a positive spin on the news, telling TV Insider: “It’s something the network brought to us recently as an opportunity to follow NBA All-Star Saturday. We saw it as a huge opportunity. It was a great vote of confidence for our partners at Warner Brothers Discovery. It will be one of the biggest nights of the year on TNT. It’s a great opportunity given the lead-in.”

Because historically NBA fans have always reacted so well to AEW…

But the preceding sentence caused the most controversy online as Khan also said, “Having this be a TV event has always been the plan.”

Many have called Khan out on this, stating that fans were led to believe it would be a PPV given that, you don’t usually book a stadium to bring your B-show to the other side of the world.

But in Khan’s defence, when he was first asked about the airing of Grand Slam back in November during the Full Gear media call, he did point out that airing it as a PPV would prove difficult.

“As far as how it’s going to run, I think it will present some challenges in terms of the timing of the event and the time zones, especially when presenting it as a conventional pay-per-view here domestically. That’s something to keep an eye on.”

Now I don’t necessarily believe Grand Slam was intended as a show on such a small scale but I don’t think Khan ever promised a PPV, even if his actions lead you to believe otherwise. If Khan is guilty of anything it’s more of a mixture of incompetence and withholding information rather than outright lying.

However, someone in AEW did think it was a PPV, as a few days ago the AEW X account sent out a scheduled tweet calling it a PPV before quickly editing the post.

Whoever’s to blame for the Grand Slam shambles, the paying fans in Australia have good reasons to be angry.

Even if AEW puts on the best two-hour TV show they can, there are people who spent a lot of money on tickets and travel expecting something much bigger.

On Reddit a thread called ‘Feeling Scammed by AEW Grand Slam Australia. The PPV is now a Collision TV Taping’ has over 1,000 comments.

In the thread, you’ll find stories of fans paying hundreds or even thousands to attend the show all under the pretence that they were getting a big stadium event.

Some fans have also mentioned that they were not able to get refunds from Ticketek because they were given a ticket to the new show with an ‘equivalent seat.’ I did reach out to Ticketek regarding this but did not get a response.

I spoke to one AEW fan, Dale, who paid AU$548.45 in total (approx US$345) for his ticket, which included a $39.95 addition for a refundable ticket.

He is travelling to the show from Perth and spending around $2,200 on the trip.

While Dale is excited to see Omega, Takeshita and Toni Storm wrestle, he described himself as feeling “completely let down” by AEW’s handling of the event, adding: “Buying my ticket has felt like more of a mistake as the weeks went on and the show has been diminished.”

He adds: “Backtracking to say was only ever a TV special is hard to see as anything but a lie considering the original venue and (pure speculation alert) the half-assed focus on TV feels more like sour grapes due to the low ticket sales.

“Don't get me wrong, three of the four matches booked look great – the all-star tag, Toni/Maria and Mone/Cameron – but they've been talking ahead to Revolution for weeks.

“I was so deflated when Moxley actually referred to it as Collision in Australia on the last episode of Collision. Kind of tells you all you need to know about how they see it.”

As it stands Grand Slam Australia has five matches on the card with the added threat of a Learning Tree match to be added.

There’s no doubt that if Khan is asked about any criticism of the handling of the event or fans’ valid complaints he’ll ignore them by focusing on how ‘great’ the show will be.

But how ‘great’ it will be will be down to the talent in the ring, while the rest of the messiness surrounding the show is becoming a staple of Khan’s promoting.

Booking SunCorp Stadium was an overly ambitious move by AEW.

Ambition is usually a good thing. It was ambition that led Khan to start AEW in the first place. But Grand Slam Australia seems like a clear case of entering a new market blindly and just hoping people love you as much as you think they do.

AEW is not in a good position right now with its live event ticket sales and TV ratings. For lack of a better word, the company is on a downturn and it did not happen overnight. WWE in the past has had instances of business being on the slide but unlike AEW, it has a recognisable brand name that’s been built up over decades.

At this point, I don’t know what will get through to Khan and cause him to address many of AEW’s big issues. AEW got their TV deal and that seems to be the only endorsement Khan wanted as a booker and a promoter.

However good the show on Saturday night is, if Grand Slam Australia is remembered at all, it will likely be as a massive warning sign to the company about where AEW finds itself six years in.

Whether or not they heed the warning is more difficult to predict.

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Personal note update

Read my last post here.

Dear readers, I’m currently in Ireland after spending nearly a year in Toronto leading to a change in all sorts of circumstances, however, I am now settled for a bit and intend to update this Substack weekly and work through my essay ideas list. Along with my move, I have also been working on a project that’s taken all my time and that I’m about 50K words deep into.

I will no longer be using X as a platform (unless I absolutely have to), not even to receive messages, but you can find me on Bluesky.

To contact me about anything regarding my work, including opportunities, story ideas, guest spots ect you can email me at stephchasewrestling@gmail.com or use my phone number if you have it.

I am also distinctly aware that women in the business need another woman to talk to, feel free to confidentially reach out to me about anything via email, a Signal number can be provided if needed.

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