GCW owner reacts to AEW Hammerstein shows: ‘Not the greatest of circumstances for us’

Game Changer Wrestling owner Brett Lauderdale feels AEW “maybe” violated some unwritten etiquette by running the Hammerstein Ballroom so close to GCW’s upcoming show there.

It was announced last month that GCW will return to the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City for a show on January 19. Since then, AEW has revealed that it will be running the venue for three straight days from December 20-22. There will be an ROH pay-per-view, a live episode of AEW Collision, and an AEW Dynamite taping.

Having four wrestling events in such a short period could lead to some ticket buyers choosing the AEW events over GCW. While appearing on the Business of the Business podcast, Lauderdale was asked if he thinks AEW is running these shows because GCW booked the venue.

“Well, I don’t know Tony Khan personally and I don’t know enough of their people well enough to know or to speculate that they would particularly do something like that just to hurt us,” he responded. “Now, with that being said, you know, the traditional etiquette would be: there’s a window where you don’t go to the same buildings. Should that window exist? Often times, you can call it an unwritten rule — or in many cases it’s a written rule. And I’m sure most of the venues, when AEW goes to venues, they probably have a rule written in that no other wrestling show can go there within 30 days or 60 days. It’s a pretty standard practice in the wrestling business — and a lot of entertainment industries there’s rules like that, both written and unwritten.

“Do I think that they literally set out to look for a way to hurt GCW? I’m not ready to go that far with it. But do I think that maybe it wasn’t the most polite thing to do? Maybe. I mean, they are a billionaire company with endless resources and they run multiple television shows every week, so they could run an event there anytime they wanted. They don’t have to do it in December or January or whatever. They can do it in February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September. They could do it every month if they wanted to. But they chose to do it in late December, which happens to be less than 30 days before we’re there. So, I mean, it’s not the greatest of circumstances for us.”

This is GCW’s second time ever running the Hammerstein Ballroom. Named “The People vs. GCW,” the theme of the show is that GCW has unfinished business after their first event at the Hammerstein in January 2022 received negative to mixed reviews from a sizable portion of fans.

With this being GCW’s second time at the Hammerstein — and with the three AEW shows happening there — Lauderdale knows that it’s even more important for him to deliver a card people want to see.

“People going to our show just because it’s a wrestling show at the Hammerstein Ballroom, that’s off the table now,” he told the Business of the Business. “So, yes, we do have to win people over. We do have to sell our card. And, yeah, of course, we have to give a card worthy of the attention and worthy of the prestige of being there. And we have to make people buy tickets. Yeah, that’s the game plan. We’re working on it. We’ve got ideas. I think we’ll start to see some of the picture start to come clear this weekend, and we’re working on it and trying to make the rest of it come together.”

Lauderdale said the goal is to sell out the Hammerstein Ballroom or sell as many tickets as possible. He’s going to take advantage of every opportunity to get people’s attention, put flyers in their hands, and make them want to come to the show.

The AEW events will be the promotion’s Hammerstein debut, though ROH held shows there in the pre-Tony Khan era. The ballroom is located in the Manhattan Center and played host to ECW events in the past, along with WWE’s first two ECW One Night Stand PPVs.

Khan told SportsGrid this summer that he thought AEW/ROH running the Hammerstein Ballroom was a “great idea,” but it wasn’t something he had thought about much before that point.