Game Changer Wrestling owner Brett Lauderdale feels AEW “maybe” violated some unwritten etiquette by running the Hammerstein Ballroom so close to GCW’s upcoming show there.

It was announced last month that GCW will return to the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City for a January 19 show. Since then, AEW has revealed that it will run the venue for three consecutive days from December 20-22. There will be an ROH pay-per-view, a live episode of AEW Collision and an AEW Dynamite taping.

Having four wrestling events in such a short period of time may lead some ticket buyers to choose AEW events over GCW. While appearing on the Business of the Business podcast, Lauderdale was asked if he thinks AEW is running these shows because GCW booked the venue.

“Well, I don’t know Tony Khan personally and I don’t know their people well enough to know or speculate that they would particularly do something like that just to hurt us,” he replied. “Now, having said that, you know, the traditional etiquette would be: there’s a window where you don’t go to the same buildings. Should that window exist? Often you can call it an unwritten rule — or in many cases, it’s a written one rule. And I’m sure most of the arenas, when AEW goes to arenas, they probably have a rule written in that no other wrestling show can go there within 30 days or 60 days. It’s a pretty common practice in wrestling industry – and many entertainment industries there are such rules, both written and unwritten.

“Do I think they literally wanted to look for a way to hurt GCW? I’m not ready to go that far with it. But do I think maybe it wasn’t the most polite thing to do? Maybe. I mean, they’re a billionaire company with infinite resources and they run multiple TV shows every week, so they could have an event there whenever they wanted. They don’t have to do it in December or January or whatever. They can do it in February, March, May, June, July, August, September. They could do it every month if they wanted to. But they chose to do it at the end of December, which happens to be less than 30 days before we’re there. So, it’s not the best circumstances for us.”

This is the second time that GCW has operated the Hammerstein Ballroom. Dubbed “The People vs. GCW”, the theme of the show is that GCW has unfinished business after their first event at Hammerstein in January 2022 received negative to mixed reviews from a large portion of fans.

With this being GCW’s second time at the Hammerstein – and with the three AEW shows happening there – Lauderdale knows it’s even more important for him to provide a card people want to see.

“People going to our show just because it’s a wrestling show at the Hammerstein Ballroom, that’s off the table now,” he told Business of the Business. “So, yes, we have to win people over. We have to sell our card. And, yes, of course, we have to give a card that is worth the attention and worth the prestige of being there. And we have to get people to buy tickets. Yes, that is the game plan. We’re working on it. I think we’ll start to see some of the picture come together this weekend, and we’re working on it and trying to get the rest of it together.”

Lauderdale said the goal is to sell out the Hammerstein Ballroom or sell as many tickets as possible. He will take every opportunity to get people’s attention, put flyers in their hands and make them want to come to the show.

The AEW events will be the promotion’s Hammerstein debut, although ROH held shows there in the pre-Tony Khan era. Located in the Manhattan Center, the ballroom has hosted ECW events in the past, along with WWE’s first two ECW One Night Stand PPVs.

Khan told SportsGrid this summer that he thought AEW/ROH running the Hammerstein Ballroom was a “good idea”, but it wasn’t something he had given much thought to before then.