AEW is set to host its first-ever stadium show in the U.S. on Saturday. The fast-growing company is looking to break a few records in the process, too.
ARLINGTON, Texas — All Elite Wrestling (AEW), the second-largest professional wrestling company in the world, is set to make history this weekend in North Texas.
All In: Texas, which AEW initially announced approximately 11 months ago, will represent the company’s first-ever stadium show in the U.S. The Saturday, July 12, event also boasts the honor of being the first professional wrestling show to be held at Globe Life Field in Arlington, the home of the Texas Rangers. (It is not, however, the first wrestling show to be held at an Arlington baseball stadium.)
An event six years in the making, All In: Texas also represents the realization of a vision for a company that was founded in 2019 with a simple ethos: Change the world.
As a brand, AEW was launched on the back of a group of wrestlers known as The Elite: Kenny Omega, Cody Rhodes and brothers Matt and Nick Jackson, who perform together in tag-team matches under the moniker of The Young Bucks. In 2018, The Elite put on the biggest independent wrestling show of all time — a suburban Chicago-hosted showcase also called All In that drew more than 11,000 fans to a venue that was at the time known as Sears Centre Arena. That record-breaking show would be the spark that proved there was indeed a broad American pro wrestling fan hunger for an alternative to the worldwide-dominant WWE brand.
Tony Khan — the son of Shahid Khan, the Pakistani-American billionaire businessman who owns the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars — was among those in attendance at the All In event in Chicago. And he said it became clear to him then that America was ready for another pro wrestling company option.
Still, when Khan launched AEW at the start of 2019, the idea of running a stadium show — like the company will do this weekend in Dallas Fort Worth — seemed like a distant dream.
“It’s something that I always felt like I would only want to do if the company had built to the point where it made sense,” Khan said. “At the beginning of AEW, what we were trying to accomplish getting over 10,000 people to come to a wrestling show in an arena. And that was a really major event.”
AEW’s held its first show, a promotion called Double or Nothing, in Las Vegas in May 2019. Darby Allin, who was one of the original signees to AEW and one of the wrestlers who is still considered to this day as one of the four pillars of the company, said he never expected back then that AEW would be elevated to stadium status by 2025.
“Being here six years ago, on the ground level of AEW, nothing was guaranteed with anything,” Allin said. “Everybody from the back to the wrestlers, we all had to work together and work extremely hard for moments like this. To be part of this from the very start and to watch this build has been awesome.”
When AEW first started, Allin said he was told it was a place where wrestlers could be themselves and do their own thing. That was a vastly different pitch from his past experiences in pro wrestling, where he’d been told he had to change into what the person in charge wanted if he ever wanted to make it.
“I said to myself, I’m either gonna make it as Darby or I’m gonna fail as Darby, but I’m not gonna change a single thing,” Allin said. “To be here from the start, and to be myself and watch this place grow, it’s amazing.”
That’s why, Allin said, he puts his absolute everything into every AEW match he fights.
“I don’t take any of this for granted,” Allin said.
Another one of AEW’s biggest stars has also been with the company from the beginning. Chris Jericho, who came up in alternative promotions like Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW), World Championship Wrestling (WCW) and New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW) before stints with WWE that saw him crowned Undisputed WWE Champion, saw much of the same appeal that Allin saw when he signed to AEW. Compared with WWE, he said he appreciated the freedom he was allowed in his match promotion and in the ways he was able to shape his own storylines.
His first AEW first promo was at an event called Fight for the Fallen in the summer of 2019. Without a script like he’d become accustomed to working with in WWE, he said he wasn’t even sure if he still knew how to do work the mic off the top of his head. But he said that initial promo reaffirmed that he didn’t need to work with a writer to make a mark on a crowd.
“[In WWE] you’d have to get your promo approved by [WWE owner] Vince [McMahon],” Jericho said. “At AEW, there’s no approval. When you’re a true pro, you know how to go to the ring and explain what you need to explain in your own words.”
At AEW, Jericho said he’s never once been asked to have a promo approved.
“That, to me, is really fun — because you’re coming up with amazing stuff,” he said.
Like Jericho before him, Ricochet left WWE for AEW last year — a decision he said he made so that he could once again do what had made him a world-renowned pro wrestler prior to joining WWE.
“Let me go over here and just kind of be myself and do what got me here in the first place,” Ricochet said.
Just a year removed from joining AEW after a lengthy run with WWE himself, current AEW World Tag Team Champion Bobby Lashley will be defending his title at All In: Texas. He too points to the creative input wrestlers have at AEW as what drew him to the promotion.
“I think WWE, they had their agenda and what they wanted to do, and you had to stay on course with what they were doing,” Lashley said. “I think with AEW, Tony Khan gives these guys an opportunity to voice their opinion, to kind of run their stories the way they would like to and have some say in it.”
Of course, Lashley said, Khan still has the final say — but he gives his wrestlers the opportunity to have their voice heard either way.
One of the oldest performers in AEW, the 56-year-old Dustin Rhodes, has been wrestling since 1988 when he was a teenager.
There aren’t many promotions he hasn’t worked for, and over the course of his nearly 40-year career, he’s seen massive shifts in the industry — including those that led to the birth of AEW.
“It is crazy the way it’s grown,” Rhodes said. “It’s crazy to be in there with those young kids and mentoring them and guiding them.”
Rhodes too cites his experiences with Khan as the enduring appeal of AEW, calling him one of the greatest bosses he’s ever worked with. It’s part of why Rhodes said he feels comfortable sticking with the company for the long term and ending his career in AEW.
He said that’s especially true after seeing how much respect the company gave the legendary wrestler Sting, who worked not just as a performer in AEW but as a mentor to younger wrestlers like Anthony Bowens and Allin, when he retired from the sport last year. He said that display showed him just how different AEW from WWE.
“AEW is a very special place,” Rhodes said. “And yeah, we are growing. Only five years in the business, we’re doing some amazing stuff.”
Even just having a relationship with Khan means a lot to Rhodes, he said.
“Because, the other place, it’s not like that,” Rhodes said. “It’s different, you’re walking on eggshells. It’s part of the reason I left there. My passion left me — until I reignited it here.”
There’s no denying that AEW has seen tremendous growth in its six years, having run two stadium shows at Wembley Stadium in London for its past two All In events.
Stateside, the company’s previous largest event in history was a 2021 event held at Arthur Ashe Stadium in Queens, New York, that was headlined with a singles match between international stars Bryan Danielson and Kenny Omega.
This year’s All In sees another marquee match featuring Omega, who will wrestle Japanese superstar Kazuchika Okada in their first-ever singles match on U.S. soil. It’s a highly anticipated affair, given the fact that the pair’s previous series of matches in Japan are regarded by many as among the best in wrestling history.
Matches like that are fitting for AEW, which has become well-known over the course of its half-decade run for its high-quality pay-per-view offerings. It’s why the company’s events regularly draw well, both in live attendance and in buys from viewers at home. Fans have come to expect top quality from the shows.
“From top to bottom, nobody puts on better pay-per views than AEW,” Allin said. “When we go to our first stadium show in the U.S., we’re gonna put out all the stops.”
It’s not a surprise that AEW would target North Texas for its latest pay-per-view event. The company has regularly held events here in the past, including its annual Winter is Coming AEW Dynamite shows, along with multiple pay-per-view events from its sister promotion, Ring of Honor. In many ways, it was only a matter of time before AEW brought a proper pay-per-view to the area.
“The city has been so great to us, and overall, the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex is one of the greatest wrestling territories really in the history of wrestling — it’s so iconic,” Khan said, name-checking the Von Erich family wrestling dynasty among others.
For Allin, the decision to bring All In to DFW was a no-brainer.
“Everybody for years has been saying AEW needs a pay-per-view in Texas — like, why haven’t we got a pay-per-view in Texas?” Allin said. “The fans, when they come out there, they’re supporting this new thing. It’s just a really good energy. And I feel like the fans pick up on that, and that speaks volumes.”
There’s a reason for that, said Rhodes.
“Wrestling always does good here,” he said. “Anywhere in Texas you go, they love pro wrestling. Even if they know it’s scripted, they love to come — and we love to entertain them.”
In Rhodes’ eyes, the Dallas crowds today are still as hot as they were when he visited the region early on in his career, working at the Dallas Sportatorium in 1989 and 1990.
“With different eras and different generations of people, their parents usually show the children, and then the children show their children,” Rhodes said. “And that’s how the wrestling business has been so wonderful for so many years.”
To that end, it’s important to remember — as Khan certainly does — that wrestling is, indeed, a business. And All In: Texas seems destined to be a success in that regard, having already broken records ahead of Globe Life Field opening its doors to the public on Saturday.
AEW reports that it’s on track to have more than 24,000 people in attendance for the pay-per-view, which will garner it a gate of more than $2.5 million. That’s enough to make All In: Texas the largest non-WWE pro wrestling gate in North American history.
For Khan, it’s just another realization of the dream he’s been working since 2019 to turn into a reality.
“It’s gonna be a great, great time, and it’s gonna be a really important week in pro wrestling,” Khan said. “AEW is having our best year ever, I really believe. And this is the biggest week of the year.”
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