AEW Battle Of The Belts III Set For August

It appears AEW's "Battle of the Belts III" special will emanate from Grand Rapids, Michigan later this summer.

Although AEW has yet to officially announce the date, local advertising reveals that AEW will be in Grand Rapids for a live episode of "Rampage" on August 5, followed by a taping for a BoB special.

Since the previous BoB specials aired Saturdays on TNT, one can assume the event will take place on Saturday, August 6.

Debuting in January, the one-hour specials typically feature three title bouts. During the inaugural BoB special, Sammy Guevara defeated Dustin Rhodes to become the Interim TNT Champion, FTW Champion Ricky Starks retained over Matt Sydal, and then-AEW Women's World Champion Dr. Britt Baker retained over Riho in the main event. At the second BoB special, Guevara defeated Scorpio Sky to reclaim the AEW TNT Title, Jonathan Gresham retained his ROH World Title over Dalton Castle, and Thunder Rosa retained her AEW Women's World Title over Nyla Rose. That show saw a 25% drop in viewership from the first BoB special.

The AEW World Championship has yet to be defended on a BoB special.

According to F4WOnline, tickets for "Battle of Belts III" go on sale a week from this Friday.

It was previously reported that four BoB specials would air on TNT as a part of the network's "Saturday Fight Night Series" and that they would air quarterly in 2022. It would appear from the previous announcement that "Battle of the Belts IV" is likely to take place in December.

"They will be Saturday night quarterly specials, Saturday night fight nights in prime time," AEW President Tony Khan said back in January. "They'll be an hour at 8 PM, it's a lot of fun. It was something that, along with the move to TBS, I was talking to TNT and we had something really great going with TNT in addition to TBS."