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It’s difficult to get an exact read on the size of All Elite Wrestling’s roster. Do you count names like Teal Piper, Ivelisse & Jazz, introduced last week for All Out’s pre-show Casino Battle Royale to determine one of the wrestlers who will fight to become the company’s first Women’s champion on their TNT premiere? The company has announced Marko Stunt and Orange Cassidy as signees, but neither is listed on their website yet.
There are 36 men and 11 women listed on AllEliteWrestling.com. Wikipedia has 38 and 12 names for the two divisions. So let’s just call it 50 for the sake of the discussion.
If that’s right, Executive Vice-President Cody Rhodes says the final roster will feature more than 100 wrestlers. At least based on a Twitter conversation he had with a fan in the UK over the weekend:
We want/have modern wrestlers. Big ones at that. No disrespect intended to the heritage and those who paved the road. 2019.
— Cody Rhodes (@CodyRhodes) August 11, 2019
We’ve revealed about 40% of the roster. Sometimes it’s better to let the painter paint and then judge the picture.
— Cody Rhodes (@CodyRhodes) August 11, 2019
They certainly seem to be going for a variety of different acts, from comedic to meta to scary. I think it would be helpful to have a few more hosses on the men’s side (with Awesome Kong, “The Beast” Nyla Rose, and an occasional appearance by Aja Kong, the women’s ranks are set on larger-than-life types).
Do they really need to more than double their current ranks, though? Seems like a big challenge to set for yourselves booking-wish, trying to write stories and find screen time for a line-up that big with only two hours of TV a week and a handful of events each year.
What do you think, Cagesiders?