Injuries happen in pro wrestling, and AEW is no stranger to rearranging plans because of them. The AEW World Title Eliminator Tournament that is currently underway has already been shaken up a little due to an injury to Ricky Starks, and his ailment has forced the entire tourney timeline to be reshuffled a bit.
Most notably, the tournament final will no longer take place at AEW Full Gear this Saturday. AEW head Tony Khan confirmed that during his pre-event conference call on Thursday afternoon.
“We could not clear Ricky to wrestle last week, so that set that tournament schedule behind.” Khan said. “So I think what is going to happen is, of course, on Rampage, Ricky Starks vs. Lance Archer, and the winner of Archer vs. Starks will wrestle on the Zero Hour [pre-show] against Brian Cage.
“And then the winner of that match on the Zero Hour will then go on to Wednesday night Dynamite in Chicago … and is going to be the finals there, with Ethan Page wrestling the winner of the match on the Zero Hour.”
Page advanced to the final Wednesday night on Dynamite, defeating Bandido. The other side of the bracket has yet to even reach the semifinal stage since Starks and Archer have yet to have their first-round match.
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Even without the tournament final, AEW Full Gear is set to have 10 matches on its main card, headlined by an AEW World Championship match between champion Jon Moxley and challenger MJF. If the tournament semifinal between Cage and the Starks-Archer winner is confirmed for Zero Hour, Khan suggested during the conference call it won’t start right at 7:00 p.m. when the pre-show goes live.
The Full Gear main card will get underway at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT this Saturday, Nov. 19 from the Prudential Center in Newark.