AEW booked a surprising match for All Out. Hikaru Shida put out an invitation for the best women wrestlers in the world to come and face her. Fans didn’t expect a champion from the NWA to show up.
Thunder Rosa will face Hikaru Shida at All Out on September 5th. This match will only have the AEW Women’s World Title on the line. It is also a very rare cross-promotional match on a pay-per-view card.
It was noted in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter that this match just took a call between friends to book. Tony Khan and Billy Corgan know each other and TK called up the Smashing Pumpkins singer to ask his permission. Since the NWA is branching out into weekly pay-per-views soon this seemed like great advertising.
The Shida vs. Rosa match with the AEW champion vs. NWA champion was basically an idea Tony Khan had, and he knows Billy Corgan and called him up over it. For Corgan it made sense, it gets his NWA brand and his women’s champion on TNT and on a major PPV as he embarks on his own weekly PPV idea starting next month
AEW All Out will be a big night for the company, and the Women’s Title match is also very interesting. We will have to see what kind of booking they go with in this champion vs champion match where neither competitor should lose heat from the encounter.