The Nittany Lion football team is away, but a national broadcast with plenty of hard hits will still be beaming live from State College this weekend.
All Elite Wrestling makes its Bryce Jordan Center debut Saturday, presenting a live episode of its “Collision” program on TNT. AEW’s brand of professional wrestling is a good fit for fall in Happy Valley, according to broadcaster Mark Henry.
“The crowd experience is just tremendous,” he said in a phone interview. “It’s like a party. If you go, be rested. … It’s like going to a football game and being at a tailgate.”
Doors open at 6:30 p.m. on Saturday and the action begins at 7:30 p.m. The live broadcast of “Collision” runs from 8 to 10 p.m.
Henry’s authority on wrestling — and muscle-centered sports — is undisputed. In 2021, Henry transitioned to AEW after a two-decade career wrestling in World Wrestling Entertainment, where he’s honored in the company’s hall of fame. He also represented the U.S. in weightlifting at two Olympic Games (1992 and 1996) and picked up the moniker “World’s Strongest Man” after a victory in the 2002 Arnold Strongman Classic, an annual feats of strength competition presented by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Now, he’s a broadcaster for AEW as well as a regular co-host on “Busted Open,” SiriusXM’s pro wrestling talk show.
AEW launched in 2019, founded by Tony Khan, the son of Shahid Khan, owner of the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars. In the years since, it’s challenged the market leader WWE in ticket sales, TV ratings and fan buzz. (The Bryce Jordan Center has played regular host to the WWE since opening in 1996, including multiple broadcasts of the live “Raw” program on primetime TV.)
AEW has not announced matches for Saturday, but one can imagine an appearance by Dr. Britt Baker, D.M.D., a 2013 Penn State grad who boasts one run as AEW’s women’s world champion and a doctor of medicine in dentistry degree from the University of Pittsburgh. (Fans yell along with the ring announcer, emphasizing the “D.M.D.” during her ring introduction.)
“I always respect somebody that works hard, graduates and becomes what they’ve intended,” Henry said. “She is a legitimate doctor, a legitimate dentist. … There’s a lot of work that went into that.”
The “Collision” show kicked off June 17 on TNT, bringing AEW’s weekly programming on TNT and TBS to five total hours. Announcing the show in May, Khan said “Collision’ delivers “more of what fans and viewers tell us they want: athleticism, big personalities, exciting storylines and hard-hitting wrestling action.”
Henry highlighted several wrestlers as ones to watch on AEW programming: highly respected veterans such as Bryan Danielson and Samoa Joe; the current world champion Maxwell Jacob Freidman; and The Young Bucks (Nick and Matt Jackson) and Kenny Omega, a trio who played a significant role in the company’s launch and act as executive vice presidents. Henry also singled out Jade Cargill, a former collegiate basketball player who made a quick jump to stardom in AEW.
“You talk about grabbing your attention,” he said. “She’s like a mutant. Like there’s nobody that looks like her, and there’s nobody that’s built like her in wrestling. There are certain people that they’re just like x-factors, and AEW’s got a few of those.”
Saturday’s show comes after two successful pay-per-view events in recent weeks, including AEW’s European debut, which packed 81,035 fans into London’s Wembley Stadium on Aug. 27.
It also comes two weeks after AEW parted ways with CM Punk, one of its star wrestlers who is still prominently featured in the graphic promoting Saturday’s show. The termination of the performer named Phil Brooks followed “a weeklong internal investigation of an incident occurring backstage at AEW – All In London on Sunday, Aug. 27,” the company announced.
“AEW is confident in the fact that they have 30 players that can get the job done and then another 30 that are working on everything so they can be THE guy,” he said. “So, you know, it is what it is. We all have transitional phases, and this is just one that the company has gotta go through.”
Henry is not among the active performers in AEW … for now. He’s put off surgery to repair “slight nerve damage” in his hip but said that moment is nearing.
“If I do and I feel great,” he said, “and I’m like, ‘Man, I’m gonna come back for one last match,’ then I will do that. But it’s going to be on my terms. Nobody else’s.”
For now, he’s enjoying being a mentor instead of an in-ring opponent.
“I want to be remembered as somebody that did not take what I knew with me,” he said. “If I left the company or died or whatever, I want to give all the knowledge I have to help people be better than they are currently. And everybody, I think, knows that. So I get people that come to me and go, ‘Hey, man, you’ve been around a long time, what do you think about this?’ And I get more joy out of answering those questions than I do anything else.”
