{"id":80672,"date":"2020-12-14T11:00:36","date_gmt":"2020-12-14T16:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/?p=80672"},"modified":"2020-12-13T21:19:18","modified_gmt":"2020-12-14T02:19:18","slug":"wrestling-meccas-sears-centre-arena","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2020\/12\/14\/wrestling-meccas-sears-centre-arena\/","title":{"rendered":"Wrestling Meccas: The Sears Centre Arena"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Wrestling Meccas is a series of features at Last Word on Pro Wrestling that looks at the history of some of professional wrestling\u2019s most iconic venues, from large stadiums to small indie havens. Today we travel to the Chicago suburbs to look at the<\/em> <em>Sears Centre<strong>.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>The Sears Centre is notorious for hosting the independent wrestling event <strong><em>All In<\/em><\/strong> on September 1st, 2018. Renamed the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nowarena.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NOW Arena<\/a> in 2020, the arena opened in the Chicago suburb of Hoffman Estates in 2006. After hosting the <em>All In<\/em> event, the arena hosted the sequel event, <strong><em>All Out<\/em><\/strong>, in the summer of 2019. The arena has hosted several high profile wrestling shows. Let&#8217;s take a quick look at the notable wrestling shows that have taken place inside the Sears Centre.<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Making an Impact<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><strong>Total Nonstop Action Wrestling<\/strong> (TNA) hosted the 2008 edition of <strong><em>Bound for Glory<\/em><\/strong> in the first wrestling event at the arena. The event took place on October 12th, 2008. It was headlined by <strong>Sting<\/strong> defeating <strong>Samoa<\/strong> <strong>Joe<\/strong> for the TNA World Heavyweight Championship. It also featured <strong>Jeff Jarrett<\/strong> pinning <strong>Kurt<\/strong> <strong>Angle<\/strong> with <strong>Mick<\/strong> <strong>Foley<\/strong> as the guest enforcer. Other notable matches on the card included <strong>Booker T<\/strong> vs. <strong>AJ<\/strong> <strong>Styles<\/strong> vs. <strong>Christian<\/strong> <strong>Cage<\/strong>, and <strong>Jay<\/strong> <strong>Lethal<\/strong> becoming the number 1 contender for the X-Divison Championship in a Steel Asylum Match.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Bandido, Mysterio &amp; Rey Fenix vs Young Bucks &amp; Kota Ibushi | ALL IN: FULL MATCH\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ZIUvAJRW2zU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Going All In<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>In May of 2018, Dave Meltzer responded to a tweet about the ability of <strong>Ring of Honor<\/strong> (ROH) to sell 10,000 tickets to a show. Dave responded to the tweet with his opinion that ROH could not achieve that number. <strong>Cody<\/strong> <strong>Rhodes<\/strong> and <strong>The Young<\/strong> <strong>Bucks<\/strong> were signed to ROH at the time. They respond, taking the tweet as a bet. At the end of 2017, an episode of the YouTube series Being the Elite teased several locations for the event before Chicago was announced as the location.<\/p>\n<p>On January 10th, 2018, on Being the Elite, it was announced that the Sears Centre would host <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2018\/03\/05\/breaking-news-chicago-september-1st\/\" target=\"_self\"><em>All In<\/em><\/a>. The event produced by Rhodes and The Young Bucks was billed as the &#8220;Biggest Independent Wrestling Professional Event&#8221;. <em>All In<\/em> was held at the Sears Centre on September 1st, 2018. The event sold out in 30 minutes with over 10,000 fans in attendance.<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>The All In Card<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">The event streamed live on pay-per-view outlets and FITE TV. Headlined by <strong>Kota<\/strong> <strong>Ibushi<\/strong> and The Young Bucks defeating <strong>Bandido<\/strong>, <strong>Rey<\/strong> <strong>F\u00e9nix<\/strong>, and <strong>Rey<\/strong> <strong>Mysterio<\/strong>, the card also had a few notable title matches. Cody Rhodes defeated <strong>Nick<\/strong> <strong>Aldis<\/strong> for the NWA World Championship. <strong>Flip Gordon<\/strong> unsuccessfully challenged Jay Lethal for the ROH World Championship. Other matches included <strong>Tessa<\/strong> <strong>Blanchard<\/strong> vs. <strong>Chelsea<\/strong> <strong>Green<\/strong>\u00a0vs. <strong>Madison<\/strong> <strong>Rayne<\/strong> vs.\u00a0<strong>Britt<\/strong> <strong>Baker<\/strong>, and <strong>Kenny Omega<\/strong> defeating <strong>P\u00e9nta El Zero M<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: center;\">Planting The Seeds<\/h3>\n<p>After the Sears Centre hosted <em>All In<\/em>, Cody Rhodes, The Young Bucks, and <strong>Adam<\/strong> <strong>Page<\/strong> let their ROH contracts expire. This led to the announcement of <strong>All Elite Wrestling<\/strong> (AEW) on New Years Day 2019. The inaugural AEW event took place on May 25th in Las Vegas. During the event, a video aired announcing that AEW would return to the Sears Centre for <em>All Out<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/youtu.be\/4gDiUIVrups<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: center;\">All Out<\/h3>\n<p>The Sears Centre played host to <em>All Out<\/em> on August 31st, 2019. The spiritual successor to <em>All In<\/em> sold out within minutes. The card was headlined by <strong>Chris<\/strong> <strong>Jericho<\/strong> defeating Adam Page to become the inaugural AEW World Champion. Other notable matches included <strong>The<\/strong> <strong>Lucha<\/strong> <strong>Bros<\/strong> vs. <strong>The<\/strong> <strong>Young<\/strong> <strong>Bucks<\/strong> in an Escalera De La Muerte for the AAA World Tag Team Championship. <strong>Riho<\/strong> also defeated <strong>Hikaru<\/strong> <strong>Shida<\/strong>, earning the opportunity to face <strong>Nyla Rose<\/strong> to become the inaugural AEW Women&#8217;s World Champion.<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Counter Programming at the Sears Centre<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>During Starrcast Three, The Young Bucks announced an episode of AEW Dynamite at the Sears Centre. The November 27th booking aimed to counter-program against WWE. The latter company hosted four shows in Chicago during the same week as part of <strong><em>Survivor Series<\/em><\/strong> weekend. The Dynamite card ended with <strong>Jon<\/strong> <strong>Moxley<\/strong> staring down AEW World Champion Chris Jericho. This set up for their feud and eventual title run for Moxley. Notable moments from the show included the Chris Jericho Thank-You Celebration, Kenny Omega vs <strong>Pac<\/strong> in an <em>All Out<\/em> rematch, and <strong>The Butcher and The Blade<\/strong>\u00a0debuting. The December 3rd episode of <strong>AEW Dark<\/strong> was filmed the same night. The program aired from the Sears Centre on tape daily on the AEW YouTube channel.<\/p>\n<p>The Sears Centre has only hosted a few professional wrestling shows. Although the venue has not hosted the most shows, it holds a special place in wrestling history. <em>All In<\/em> was the catalyst for AEW in many ways. AEW returning to the venue a year later for a pay-per-view felt poetic for many fans. Once public health restrictions loosen, it is likely the Sears Centre will hold more wrestling shows. Will the arena become the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2020\/05\/27\/wrestling-meccas-madison-square-garden-new-york-city\/\" target=\"_self\">Madison Square Garden<\/a> for AEW? Time will tell but it&#8217;s likely that AEW will host <em>All Out<\/em> for years to come from the Sears Centre.<\/p>\n<p><em>Stay tuned to the<a href=\"http:\/\/lastwordonprowrestling.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u00a0Last Word on Pro Wrestling<\/a>\u00a0for more on this and other stories from around the world of wrestling, as they develop. You can always count on LWOPW to be on top of the major news in the wrestling world.\u00a0 We provide you with analysis, previews, videos, interviews, and editorials on the wrestling world.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wrestling Meccas is a series of features at Last Word on Pro Wrestling that looks at the history of some of professional wrestling\u2019s most iconic venues, from large stadiums to small indie havens. Today we travel to the Chicago suburbs to look at the Sears Centre.\u00a0 The Sears Centre is notorious for hosting the independent [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3722,"featured_media":80703,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4677,2,7,6,2192,8],"tags":[4133,1774,5284,1527,647,81,7054,7055],"class_list":["post-80672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aew","category-featured","category-impact","category-north-america","category-wrestling","category-roh","tag-aew","tag-all-in","tag-all-out","tag-bound-for-glory","tag-chicago","tag-roh","tag-sears-centre","tag-sears-centre-arena"],"modified_by":"Robbie Sutter","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3722"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}