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TORONTO — Coming out of the COVID-19 lockdowns, Tony Khan had a plan for his All Elite Wrestling promotion: first Canada, then the world.

Khan's plan started to take shape last summer at the Collision tech conference in downtown Toronto. He was a speaker at the conference and used the opportunity to scout out the Coca-Cola Coliseum, a hockey arena adjacent to the Enercare Centre, which hosts the massive multi-day tech event.  

Four months after the tech conference, Dynamite — AEW's marquee television show — was televised from Coca-Cola Coliseum for the wrestling promotion's first-ever show outside the United States. The critical and commercial success of that live show emboldened Khan to do a summer tour across Canada this year and then a record-setting pay-per-view at Wembley Stadium in London, England this coming August.

"We're launching it all off Canada," said Khan on Tuesday, back at the Collision tech conference for a second year. "There are a number of great wrestling cities in Canada. It's a great wrestling market. 

"I love wrestling history and there are so many historic wrestling cities in Canada."

AEW's summer tour has included stops in Regina, Saskatoon, Hamilton, and most significantly back in Toronto at the significantly larger Scotiabank Arena for the Forbidden Door pay-per-view event on June 25. The name refers to wrestling slang where one or more rival promotions collaborate and have their onscreen talent appear on each other's programming.

In this case, the PPV was a joint venture between AEW and Tokyo-based New Japan Pro Wrestling. It was the third-highest grossing wrestling event in Canadian history, second only to WrestleMania 6 and WrestleMania 18 also in Toronto in what was then called the SkyDome.

According to AEW, Forbidden Door 2023 drew 14,826 fans, making it the largest wrestling crowd in Canada in the past 20 years. It also set a new live gate record for AEW of US$1.2 million, leading Khan to describe it as "the biggest event in the history of the company in many ways."

"Fans loved the show, critics loved the show," said Khan. "The live crowd was so supportive and it was a huge revenue boost for us."

Khan said that his roster of Canadian wrestlers like Kenny Omega, Chris Jericho, and Christian Cage make it easy to book the events but also that many of his staff behind the scenes are also based in Canada.

"There's hundreds of people that work in AEW every week," said Khan, of the promotion that he co-founded with his father Shahid Khan on Dec. 31, 2018. "It's a massive company we built and I'm very proud of what we do.

"Not only for the wrestlers that come in and fight for us every week, but for the hundreds of jobs we created and the hard-working staff and people across production and full-time office staff with people based all over including here in Canada."

There are two significant dates left on AEW's international tour. Calgary's Scotiabank Saddledome will host Collision — a new Saturday night show that Khan quipped was named after the tech conference — on July 15 and then the All-In PPV event at Wembley Stadium in London, England, on Aug. 27.

The Calgary show will be the final of the Owen Hart Cup, a single-elimination tournament with men's and women's brackets. That trophy is named after the late Owen Hart, a legendary professional wrestler and a member of the Calgary-based Hart family.

"(Calgary) is the final stop of our first-ever international tour, and after doing all these great events in Canada, it's very fitting to pay tribute to a great former champion there," said Khan, who noted that Hart also wrestled for New Japan Pro Wrestling.

Although no details of the Wembley Stadium card have been announced, Khan said it's already sold over 65,000 tickets with a total gate of $9 million.

"To have not only one of the top three events in the history of Canada, the biggest wrestling event in Canada in the past 20 years, but then to go do the biggest wrestling event in Europe's history, and one of the biggest in history of the world all in the same summer, that's pretty amazing," said Khan. "That's what this international tour is all about." 

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 29, 2023.

John Chidley-Hill, The Canadian Press