Get ready to wake up really early or stay up really late if you’re a WWE fan in the U.S. and want to watch Elimination Chamber live next February.
WWE announced this week that the event will take place at Optus Stadium in Perth, Western Australia, on Saturday, Feb. 24, 2024. Australia hasn’t hosted a live WWE show since 2018, so the demand for Elimination Chamber in that market should be huge.
So much so, in fact, that it will be shown locally in primetime. In his latest Wrestling Observer Newsletter (subscription required), Dave Meltzer says he confirmed that with WWE.
It will be a very early morning show, likely starting about 6 a.m. Eastern and 3 a.m. Pacific on a Saturday morning. When UFC goes to Australia they run the show early morning in Australia so it’s at 10 p.m. Eastern in the U.S., but WWE confirmed to us the show will air in prime time Australia time.
As Meltzer explained, the early morning time slot is fine with Peacock, who streams WWE premium live events in the U.S., because it is more concerned with the number of people who watch in the first 24 hours than the number who watch live.
While a live wrestling show at that time is unusual for WWE, New Japan fans in the U.S. are probably nodding their heads at the situation since that company’s big events regularly start at what is late night or very early morning in the U.S. One thing that may help is the show’s position on the “Road to WrestleMania” portion of the WWE schedule, which may convince more fans here to either set an early alarm in the east or pour another cup of coffee out west.