ROH/NJPW Madison Square Garden Event Draws Biggest Gate Since 1999 Nitro At Georgia Dome

The Ring of Honor/New Japan Pro Wrestling which is set 4/6/19 in Madison Square Garden has broken some pretty impressive records since tickets went on sale and you'll see why WWE is aggressively going after their talent. Dave Meltzer outlined some of the records broken below in the latest edition of The Wrestling Observer Newsletter:

The Ring of Honor/New Japan Pro Wrestling show on 4/6 in Madison Square Garden sold out on 8/10 less than 19 minutes after the public on-sale began. Of course, they had already sold 12,000 of the 15,000 seats put on sale, with the first 9,000 going to Honor Club subscribers on 8/8, and another 3,000 going to those with codes that weren’t hard to get, and in fact were tweeted out. The significance of this could be monumental in ways that are obvious and other ways perhaps less obvious. While ROH officials would not release a gate number, it was confirmed to be well in excess of $1 million, making it the largest gate for a non-WWE pro wrestling gate not only in the United States, but likely anywhere in the world except for the Far East.

The previous largest gate for a non-WWE show in North America was $1 million, set on September 11, 2014, for the Atlantis vs. Ultimo Guerrero mask vs. mask mach at Arena Mexico. The largest ever in the United States was $930,735 set on January 4, 1999, for an episode of Nitro at the Georgia Dome. The Hulk Hogan vs. Bill Goldberg gate at the Georgia Dome months earlier was $906,330. It is possible this would be the second largest gate ever for a pro wrestling show in Madison Square Garden for wrestling, trailing WrestleMania 20 that did $2,401,000. It was the fastest sellout since WrestleMania 20 in Madison Square Garden, and second fastest of all-time. It sold out farther in advance than any pro wrestling event at the Garden. And it was the first Madison Square Garden sellout for pro wrestling since 2015.