Gabe Sapolsky and WWE had this planned out for three years.
This coming Saturday, streaming live on the WWE Network for the first time will be an EVOLVE show. EVOLVE's 10th Anniversary show will emanate from the 2300 Arena in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and the match card includes an NXT Championship match, EVOLVE Champion Austin Theory and WWN Champion JD Drake putting their respective titles on the line in a winner take all match and Matt Riddle versus Drew Gulak.
WWE has been releasing a series of videos onto their YouTube channel of their current stars who competed in EVOLVE, talking about their experiences in EVOLVE and how the promotion helped them progress in wrestling. Last night on WWE RAW, a promo for EVOLVE's 10th Anniversary show aired live and to further promote the upcoming show, EVOLVE booker Gabe Sapolsky joined 'Wrestling Inside The Ropes' with James Stewart and shared that EVOLVE being on the WWE Network in some fashion has been in the works since 2016.
“Well its actually been in the works since 2016. So, before the Cruiserweight Classic, they had reached out to us about having some of our guys in it which of course, I was thrilled for at the time, and our relationship has grown since then and there was talk of it all the way back then and it was just a matter of a whole bunch of stuff way above my level of knowledge and pay grade at WWE that I don’t know about, but it was just one of those things where now, everything seems to be coming together and then you add to the fact that we are in Philadelphia at the 2300 Arena on July 13th which is the legendary ECW Arena and just a tailor-made venue to walk in and do this kind of thing." Sapolsky said. "So it’s still for TV, and also, the other factor is that WWE has a pay-per-view in Philly the next night so all of their people are there already. So, it’s a very affordable thing, a very easy thing for them to do. So all those factors came together and made July 13th the magic date but its been a long time in the making and one thing about Triple H is, this guy has a long-term vision on things. He knows where he’s going, he knows how to get there and he’s patient on how to get there. He’s gonna come up with a plan and he’s gonna take the steps and he’s gonna make sure it’s done right and July 13th is the day that we’re gonna do this thing right.”
Gabe Sapolsky recently did an A.M.A. on Reddit and he revealed that AEW's Darby Allin was slated to win the EVOLVE Championship during WrestleMania 35 weekend and for more on that story, click here.
If the quote in this article is used, please credit 'Wrestling Inside The Ropes' with an H/T to Fightful for the transcription.
