On Sunday, October 1, AEW will hold its first WrestleDream pay-per-view event in Seattle, WA.
The event is a memorial to the late great Antonio Inoki. However, the show honoring the life and career of NJPW’s founder will not feature top New Japan Pro Wrestling stars.
Dave Meltzer mentioned on Wrestling Observer Radio that NJPW has a show at Korakuen Hall on this date and listed some of the names advertised, implying that they will not be appearing at WrestleDream. Will Ospreay, on the other hand, is not currently booked for it, so he could, in theory, appear at WrestleDream.
“Yeah. It’s a tribute to Antonio Inoki…..You’re going to think there’s going to be a bunch of New Japan guys, but New Japan has a show at Korakuen Hall that same day. Tanahashi, Okada, and Naito are all in the show, so none of them can be on this show. The only people who are not, you know, as far as the big names who I guess would be a possibility would be Hiroki Goto and Yoshi-Hashi, who, you know, they’re good, and actually they’re a really good tag team, but they don’t they wouldn’t mean anything. And then Will Ospreay is not on that show. Jeff Cobb is on the show. They could bring in Will Ospreay. It’s interesting that they did a pay-per-view. You know, two things are interesting. They’re doing a pay-per-view honoring the founder of New Japan Pro Wrestling, and none of the top New Japan guys are going to be able to be on the show. And far more important, this pay-per-view is on a Sunday. We were wondering, and I still don’t know what they’re doing on that November 18th deal [Full Gear]. What do they do about that? November 18th is a Saturday, I believe. And you know, they have Collision. So I don’t know how they’re going to handle it. This one, they’re going to do a Collision in Seattle on Saturday, and then the pay-per-view is on a Sunday.”
(h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription)
