WWE Goes After AEW Again Ahead Of Upcoming Residency

All remaining doubts that AEW is in a wrestling war might now be gone after WWE jumped ahead of them again, but failed to get the arena they wanted.

On May 2, it was announced that AEW will be heading to the 2300 Arena – the former ECW Arena – for an exciting new residency through the end of the summer. This will see the famous venue host three episodes of Dynamite, three episodes of Collision, and Ring of Honor Death Before Dishonor between August 27 and September 11.

But it seems WWE will also be in town very shortly before.

WWE issued a press release, confirming that they’ll be heading to Philadelphia in a venue 5 miles away from the 2300 Arena, just days before AEW’s residency begins:

July 7, 2025 – WWE®, part of TKO Group Holdings (NYSE: TKO), today announced that a special edition of NXT will take place Tuesday, August 19 at The Met Philadelphia. The episode will air live on The CW starting at 8pm ET.

Tickets will go on sale starting Wednesday, July 9 at 10am ET/7am PT via Ticketmaster.com. Fans can purchase tickets during an exclusive pre-sale by visiting Ticketmaster.com and using the code NXTLIVE starting Tuesday, July 8 at 10am ET/7am PT until 11:59pm ET/8:59pm PT.

WWE Looking To Hurt AEW?

Speaking on Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer gave more insight into the situation and revealed WWE had originally tried to book the 2300 Arena that AEW had booked:

Several weeks ago, the story was breaking that WWE was trying to book a show on that night in the 2300 Arena. I don’t know why, that was obviously the idea considering the date and everything, the idea was to go to the 2300 Arena and for whatever reason, they couldn’t get the date. Maybe AEW had put something in giving it exclusivity for a certain number of days before and after figuring WWE would do this.

So WWE had to move, they didn’t have to do anything but they wanted to so they moved to The Met. It’s a bigger building, it’s probably a better building than the 2300 Arena but it’s not a wrestling building, it’s a concert hall.

AEW All In Texas was moved to the afternoon of July 12th after WWE announced Saturday Night’s Main Event for the same night. WWE then followed up by announcing NXT Great American Bash to run head-to-head with Tony Khan’s biggest US show to date.

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