First rumored in December 2017, The Sunday Herald Sun can now confirm that WWE will in fact be heading to the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Victoria, Australia, for an upcoming PPV event in October, which is expected to be announced as part of the Wrestlemania 34 broadcast.
While currently unnamed, speculation is that WWE would resurrect the Global Warning moniker they used when touring Melbourne in 2002. At the time, this was WWE’s first event in Australia since the 1980s and was headlined by a huge triple threat draw of The Rock vs Triple H vs Brock Lesnar. The event was held at Etihad Stadium and drew a reported crowd of over 56,000 people.
Ronda Rousey could be coming to Melbourne with Dwayne The Rock Johnson in an event promoters hope will bring another 100,000 fans to the week after the AFL Grand Final.
Huge news came out a few months ago that WWE is planning on bringing back the WWE Global Warning. pic.twitter.com/jWnSoKD9h9
— Juanito’s Wrestling Vlog & MORE (@juanitosvlog) February 23, 2018
According to the report however, this time around, WWE is looking to almost double that attendance number and have chosen the Melbourne Cricket Ground as the venue because it has the capacity of over 100,000 and is the tenth largest sporting venue in the world. And unlike 2015’s Beast in the East, which was just a network special, WWE is planning for the big Australia event to be a PPV. This would make Australia only the fourth country outside of the U.S. (the other three being Canada, Puerto Rico, and England) to host a PPV and the first country not located in the Americas to host one since Newcastle, England hosted Insurrextion in 2003.
WWE is no stranger to touring Australia and has done so every year since Global Warning in 2002. The company has even had some years where they have done multiple tours of Australia including most recently in 2016 when both WWE Live and NXT Live embarked on separate excursions to the continent.
On a tour of the Melbourne Cricket Ground today – quite a stadium #MCG pic.twitter.com/SKTWVHzAlH
— Michael Sweeney (@SweeneysTweets) February 28, 2018
Normally, these tours have taken place in the summer but the Melbourne Cricket Ground will be quite busy during that time as it is the premier site of the Australian Football League and will be hosting 45 games for the league from March to September. The Grand Final, the equivalent of the National Football League’s Super Bowl, is scheduled for September 29. WWE’s PPV is expected to take place that following weekend, October 6-7.
Currently, TLC is scheduled for October 21 in Boston but at this time it is unknown if Melbourne Cricket Ground will be hosting that particular PPV or one entirely different.
With attendance at both Wrestlemania 32 and Wrestlemania III still highly disputed between what WWE claims and what actual gate numbers have revealed, if the company does manage to sell-out this 100,024 seat venue, it very well likely will be WWE’s largest crowd of all-time. Of course in order to do this, Global Warning II or whatever name the PPV ends up being given, will have to be much more than your standard fare WWE show.
Perth, it’s happening! TMDK vs. The Bullet Club inside a @njpwglobal ring!
Time to find out who really is the best faction on the planet… pic.twitter.com/4j5b2UNfZQ
— WORLD-BEATER (@DamianSlater) February 9, 2018
In addition to likely needing to feature the NXT/UK roster, if only to get the Iconic Duo of Billie Kay and Peyton Royce, and Australian tag team TM-61 (fka TMDK – The Mighty Don’t Kneel) on the card. The duo of Nick Miller and Shane Thorne are both Australian natives and their tag team originated in Perth, Australia at the Explosive Pro Wrestling promotion. Including Miller and Thorne, TMDK began as a stable which included fellow Australian wrestlers, Elliot Sexton, Marcius Pitt, Damien Slater and Slex. The foursome continue to wrestle under the TMDK name and were featured as part of NJPW’s Fallout Down Under Tour in which the group took on Bullet Club. While WWE does not tend to bring in outside stars, especially for PPV events, a one-night only TMDK advertised reunion would not be a bad way to help with that draw.
Of course, WWE will need a lot more than Australian talent to fill 100,000 seats and they’ll most certainly look to some of their own big names to do so. The Sunday Herald Sun specifically named John Cena, Rey Mysterio, and the Undertaker as guys WWE will likely target for the event. Others such as Chris Jericho and the Rock, depending on their respective touring and filming commitments, could be other big names WWE looks to in order to fill the seats. And then there’s always the return talk of CM Punk, who could almost fill a 100,000 seat arena of his own, if he were to make his return to pro wrestling.
https://twitter.com/PhenomenalOmega/status/969898757662781441
To put it into context, only five of WWE’s top-21 listed attendances belong to non-Wrestlemania events, and of those five none have surpassed the 65,000 mark. This most likely means that if WWE wants their first real 100,000 seater, they are going to need to pull out all the stops.
