When Tony Khan and Nigel McGuinness announced AEW All In on the April 5th edition of Dynamite earlier this year, no one could have predicted the success the show would attain. Four months on from the announcement, the show’s ticket distribution blitzed past SummerSlam 1992’s attendance of 79,127 at the original Wembley Stadium to become the highest-attended professional wrestling event ever held in Europe. But now, the show has achieved an even-bigger historic all-time record.
WrestleTix has confirmed that All In has surpassed 80,709 tickets distributed, the official attendance of WrestleMania 32, and currently stands at 80,846 at the time of writing. In doing so, All In has now become the highest-attended professional wrestling event of all time in terms of paid attendance.
It’s key to note that this figure is tickets distributed and not everyone who has a ticket will end up attending the event due to a variety of reasons. It is likely, but not a complete guarantee, that the attendance record will be broken on the day of the show.
In regards to general all-time attendance, the show is only beaten out by both nights of WCW and NJPW’s Collision In Korea events back in April 1995 which saw 150,000 and 165,000 attend the first and second nights respectively. However, as Dave Meltzer noted in the April 11th 2016 edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, the majority of attendees were ordered to do so by the North Korean regime and entered at no charge, therefore making it an unfair comparison to AEW’s event.
There are currently nine matches announced for AEW All In: In the show’s only pre-show match, Adam Cole and AEW World Champion MJF will team up to challenge Aussie Open’s Mark Davis and Kyle Fletcher for the Ring Of Honor World Tag Team Championship. Cole and MJF will also compete in the show’s main event, facing off against each other over Friedman’s AEW World Championship.
Elsewhere on the show: Hikaru Shida defends the AEW Women’s World Championship against British native Saraya, Toni Storm, and Britt Baker in a four-way match; The Young Bucks challenge FTR for the AEW World Tag Team Championship (although this match’s status is currently unknown due to the arrest of FTR’s Cash Wheeler yesterday); and IWGP United Kingdom Champion Will Ospreay will face Chris Jericho in a non-title bout.