AEW Vice President Rafael Morffi recently appeared on the Talk Is Jericho podcast to discuss a wide range of topics, including some insight about one of the company’s first pay-per-views.
During the interview, Morffi revealed that AEW was considering running their 2019 Full Gear event from Arthur Ashe Stadium, the venue that AEW runs every September for their Grand Slam events. However, due to the weather they ended up taking the show to Baltimore instead.
It was a venue, a venue being an Arthur Ashe Stadium, it’s something that we embraced, took over and something we were gonna do right in our infancy. We were, we were. We were gonna have that pay-per-view (AEW Full Gear 2019) on your birthday. We thought about it, Arthur Ashe. But Arthur Ashe, similar to Safeco (Field), where you had that match with Shawn (Michaels) at WrestleMania 19, it’s open-aired even though it has a roof and we were concerned about the conditions, big show in New York, right in the first month of our existence. Let’s play it safe and we were right because if you remember, in Baltimore where we did have the pay-per-view, Full Gear, it was 20 degrees that night in the northeast. I mean, I remember because it was your birthday. So, we had a conversation with Arthur Ashe Stadium and great dialogue, great people, Danny Zausner there, Chris Dudley, great folks. We nurtured that and we were gonna have a show soon after the pandemic date. It was gonna be sometime in 2020. Obviously we didn’t have it. I’m amazed that we were able to keep it under wraps and surprise everyone.
Shifting subjects, Morffi discussed working alongside Jeff Jarrett in AEW.
I’ll say this, after I left WWE, Jeff Jarrett and Bruce Prichard at the time were reaching out to me because they were at TNA/IMPACT and I owe a lot to Jeff and Bruce for bringing me back into the business. They did (get me back in). I was a little burned out and they got me in and I loved working with Bruce and I love working with Double J. I work with him now. I have great chemistry with Jeff, what we’re doing now (with) the house shows, House Rules we’re gonna do here with AEW but, we get each other, we have great chemistry. We’re great teammates in that regard and I learned a lot from him when he was my boss too in that regard so…
Check out the full interview here.
(H/T and transcribed by Post Wrestling)
