Michael Cole Takes Shot At AEW On WWE Raw
Michael Cole took an opportunity to have a dig at AEW during the latest episode of WWE Raw.
The November 14th edition of Raw was held in the Capital One Arena in Washington, DC, and saw Cody Rhodes teaming with Jey Uso to challenge The Judgment Day’s Damian Priest and Finn Balor for the Undisputed WWE Tag Team Championships in the main event.
As Rhodes was making his entrance for the bout, Michael Cole spoke about the significance of the arena for The American Nightmare, noting he had his first SmackDown match in the venue as well as “some other stuff.”
“Cody wrestled his first match back on SmackDown in the Capital One Arena. He did some other stuff in this building as well.”
There’s little doubt that the “stuff” Cole was referring to was Rhodes’ appearance on the debut episode of AEW Dynamite in the arena back in October 2019.
The former TNT Champion was in the first-ever match on the company’s flagship show and defeated Sammy Guevara to get the first victory. He didn’t have time to celebrate the achievement, though, as Chris Jericho viciously assaulted him and left him lying with a Codebreaker.
WWE Has Taken Shots At AEW Before
This isn’t the first time WWE stars have made reference to AEW. Most recently, Xavier Woods took a shot at the All In attendance record. The huge event in London sold an astonishing 81,035 tickets and staked a claim to the all-time record for paid attendance – although this has since been disputed.
On the September 11th edition of Raw, Woods cut a promo against Drew McIntyre and asked if McIntyre was jealous that Kingston won his WWE Title at WrestleMania 35 in front of “82,000 screaming fans” while McIntyre got his big WrestleMania moment one year later in front of no fans due to the pandemic taking hold in the spring of 2020.
WWE had announced in the past that WrestleMania 35 had an official attendance of 82,265, but it has since been reported the actual paid attendance was closer to 63,000, with a total attendance of 68,000-70,000.