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In the wake of Ring of Honor Chief Operating Officer Joe Koff revealing to PWInsider.com earlier this week that the promotion has lost its scheduled date with Madison Square Garden next year after what he described as "communications from the WWE" and that Ring of Honor has, thus far, been unable to secure any other dates with the legendary New York City venue, the obvious question to ask is whether lucha libre promotion AAA's dates with MSG are still in place?
After speaking with numerous sources this morning, we are told that AAA still has two holds on MSG in the Fall of 2018, including 9/16 and a back-up date as AAA was also looking at running Las Vegas on 9/16. Initially, we had heard that the second date was 9/23 but we were told this morning it is actually later in the Fall.
We are told that AAA is working on strategies for running this Fall but have also considered pushing back their debut until early 2019 as they want to maximize it and not waste the time, money and effort going into the debut.
So, while ROH has lost their date, AAA's holds on Madison Square Garden remain, at least as of this writing.
As previously noted on PWInsider.com, the Garden had been reaching out to other wrestling companies as WWE has not been running at the venue consistently, choosing instead to run the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. WWE is running all of their Wrestlemania 35 week events at Barclays, which has been in a promotional war with MSG over touring acts since the Brooklyn venue opened in 2012.
If any promotion does end up running Madison Square Garden, they will become the first pro wrestling company to run the legendary "Mecca of sports-entertainment" outside of the McMahon Family dating back to 1925 when Vince McMahon's grandfather Roderick “Jess” McMahon became the matchmaker for both professional wrestling and boxing in the venue. Both Vince McMahon and his father Vincent J. have been inducted into the Garden's "Walk of Fame."
Note: Dave Meltzer sent word that in my piece about Madison Square Garden I omitted the fact that Jack Pfefer controlled MSG in 1960 before Vince McMahon Sr. took it back in 1961.
AAA ran the Theater in Madison Square Garden in July 1994, headlined by Konnan & Cien Caras & Perro Aguayo vs. Eddie Guerrero & Art Barr & Jake Roberts. WCW (once in 1993 and once in 1996) and the original Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling also ran the adjacent Theater in the MSG complex but no promotion outside of WWE has ever booked a date in the 20,789-seat Garden.
WWE returns to Madison Square Garden, which used to be their home base arena, on 7/7 featuring first appearance of The Undertaker in MSG since September 2010 and the WWE MSG debut of former UFC Bantamweight Champ Ronda Rousey. PWInsider.com is told that The Undertaker was added as a special attraction and not in response to ROH or AAA looking to run the Garden.
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