As mentioned earlier, a new report on Tuesday noted that the AAA lucha libre promotion was looking to run an event at Madison Square Garden in New York City this September, but it was unclear it if would be at the smaller MSG theater or the Garden itself.
A new report by PWInsider on Tuesday afternoon notes that the date in September that AAA has a hold on is for in fact Madison Square Garden, the world’s most famous arena.
WWE’s longtime deal with MSG for several decades has been that the company has the right to first refusal should another pro wrestling company seek to run the venue, but in recent years WWE has been holding most of their events in the New York City area at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. This started when the venue opened in late 2012 and hosted the WWE TLC PPV that same year.
With WWE running WrestleMania 35 next April at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, WWE will be holding all of their WrestleMania week events including RAW, Smackdown, NXT TakeOver and the Hall of Fame at the Barclays Center. Nothing is scheduled for Madison Square Garden, which was host to the Hall of Fame when WWE held WrestleMania 29 at MetLife Stadium back in 2013.
Madison Square Garden is said to be more open than at any time in the venue’s history at holding non-WWE pro wrestling events and has even sent out word to other pro wrestling companies, gauging iif there is any interest.
This might shed some more light into The Young Bucks and Cody at the ROH TV tapings last weekend at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City, teasing that they might have a second “ALL IN” event in 2019 at a “building a couple blocks away”, which would imply to be Madison Square Garden.
Other pro wrestling companies have run the smaller MSG theater in years’ past, including WCW, AAA and the original GLOW promotion, but no company other than WWE has run Madison Square Garden in well over 50 years. AAA nor MSG have confirmed an event as of this writing.
WWE does have a live event set for MSG on July 7 featuring The Undertaker and Ronda Rousey on the card.
Source: PWInsider