WWE took over the city of Cardiff earlier this month with two mega sell-out events at The New Theatre!

Back in the summer, Visit Cardiff (the official tourism body for Cardiff) approached Theatre Director Stephan Stockton to say that WWE were looking at various venues in the City to host a special talk/Q&A event with retired WWE wrestler The Undertaker. This would be the first time The Undertaker had performed this show outside the USA.

Senior WWE management came along to the theatre and Stephan gave them a tour of the building which they loved! Stephan had ongoing dialogue with the team about how the venue could manage the ticketing and event, and later received a call to say that New Theatre had been selected as the host venue!

The event went on sale at 10am on 12 August, with one performance. There were 100 Meet & Greet tickets available (at £260 each) – which sold out in a venue-record of around 60 seconds – and at 9.59am there were 6,000 people on the website waiting for tickets, where the 900 standard tickets (at £105 each) sold out in 15 minutes! A matinee performance was added due to the overwhelming demand which went on sale on 24 August and again, the 100 Meet & Greet tickets sold out within minutes.

As well as the UK, New Theatre had bookings from Trinidad & Tobago, Belgium, UAE, Switzerland, Italy, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Ireland, Slovakia, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Poland and The Netherlands. The majority of local bookers had never been to the theatre before.

On performance day (2 September), people started to arrive at the theatre from 10am, ready for the 12pm Meet & Greet – many of whom were dressed as their hero! Ages ranged from a 6-month-year-old baby up to adults 70+. All were thrilled to have met the legend (or ‘The Phenom’). As the curtain rose on the main event, the audience was chanting “UNDERTAKER! UNDERTAKER!” as the house tabs rose and he appeared on stage.