Earlier this week Andrew Zarian of the Matt Men Podcast took to Twitter and announced that per a source of his AEW is planning a TNT Special on Jan 8th. They would not be able to use the clash of champions names for obvious reasons However, it is being reported that the possible name for this show will be “Battle of the Belts” A throwback to NWA/CFW. Well, More details on the planned special have been released.
Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer reports, the previously reported ‘Battle of the Belts’ will be taking place on January 8th, specifically on TNT of course, and the ‘quarterly special’ will only be a single hour long. Essentially there will be four installments of this special throughout the year, reportedly.
As was also specified by Dave Meltzer, the four events will be very reminiscent of Clash of the Champions from days gone by. The intention here is for the events – all for of them – to be like pay-per-view events, much like they often do, airing shows like Fight For The Fallen, etc., all having been aired on TNT.
According to Meltzer, these super cards were planned to have been longer when the ‘Battle of the Belts’ was at the mere stage of inception. It must be understood that things may change as we draw closer to the eighth of January, however.
The aforementioned Clash of the Champions dates back to 1988, when the first event was held by the NWA. It subsequently would become a series of events put on by WCW as well (even when they broke off from the NWA), and historically has been held in high regard by fans of the early WCW and of course NWA. They continued to air until 1997 under WCW (Jim Crockett Promotions).
There are a recorded 35 complete episodes of these events…all of which are on the WWE Network library. They’re certainly a treat for fans that love wrestling history, and it’ll be interesting to see just what AEW does with the idea.
It will be interesting to see how the special will work out and one has to assume if the event is successful that it would become an annual event.
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