platinum country singer Warren Zeiders,<\/a>who will perform at 7 p.m. Sept. 4. Tickets for his show also go on sale at 10 a.m. April 10.<\/p>\nTop participants <\/p>\n
Official matches will be announced later on the fair\u2019s social platforms.<\/p>\n
But the lineup includes:<\/p>\n
\u2022 The Good Brothers, who were two-time WWE Raw tag team champions 2016-19 and competed in the WWE until 2025.<\/p>\n
\u2022 N-Zo (formerly Enzo Amore), a two-time WWE cruiserweight champion who last year wrestled in TNA.<\/p>\n
\u2022 HEATH (Heath Slater), who wrestled in WWE 2006-2020, and later in the TNA. He was the first wrestler to have won both the WWE SmackDown and Raw Tag Team championships.<\/p>\n
\u2022 \u201cThe Franchise\u201d Shane Douglas, a former WWE Intercontinental champion and a four-time ECW World Heavyweight Champion.<\/p>\n
\u2022 James Ellsworth, who wrestled in the WWE and multiple independent organizations.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Ricardo Rodriguez, a former WWE wrestler.<\/p>\n
\u2022 The Patriot, a former WWE and WCW wrestler.<\/p>\n
Santana, who was in the WWF (now WWE) from 1979-93 and was a two-time Intercontinental Champion and two-time tag-team champion, will interact with fans. <\/p>\n
He battled such wrestling icons as Hulk Hogan, Randy “Macho Man” Savage and fought Ric Flair to a draw. Santana was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2004.<\/p>\n
‘Deep roots’<\/p>\n
The show will revive “a tradition that played a key role in the sport\u2019s rise during the late 20th century,” the fair said in a release.<\/p>\n
In the late 1970s and the 1980s, Allentown Fairgrounds, particularly Agricultural Hall, served as a regular television taping site for what was then the World Wide Wrestling Federation.<\/p>\n
Matches filmed in Allentown were broadcast throughout the Northeast, helping introduce professional wrestling to a broader audience.<\/p>\n
\u201cBringing wrestling back in 2026 allows us to honor that history while offering today\u2019s fans the chance to experience live professional wrestling in a setting that helped shape the sport.\u201d<\/p>\n
Allentown Fair Marketing and Entertainment Manager Jessica Ciecwisz <\/p>\n
During that era, the fairgrounds hosted appearances by many of wrestling\u2019s most recognizable stars, including Andre the Giant, Bob Backlund, Ivan Putski and Greg \u201cThe Hammer\u201d Valentine. <\/p>\n
The venue became widely known among wrestling fans and earned Allentown a lasting reputation as an important wrestling town.<\/p>\n
\u201cProfessional wrestling has deep roots at the Allentown Fairgrounds,\u201d Fair Marketing and Entertainment Manager Jessica Ciecwisz said. <\/p>\n
\u201cBringing wrestling back in 2026 allows us to honor that history while offering today\u2019s fans the chance to experience live professional wrestling in a setting that helped shape the sport.\u201d<\/p>\n
A WWF wrestling card last was a fair grandstand headline show in 1994, with others in 1993 and 1992 that drew nearly 4,000 fans to the grandstand.<\/p>\n
In 1985, a card by the National Wrestling Alliance at the fair grandstand drew 3,194 fans. That year closed out eight straight years during which the fair had a headline grandstand wrestling card.<\/p>\n
The first WWF card shown in fair records was 1978. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. \u2014 Professional wrestling is set to return to headline an Allentown Fair grandstand show for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":155672,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[1101,70553,70554,153,155,154,70555,70556],"class_list":["post-155671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-allentown-fair","tag-allentown-fair-and-grandstand","tag-allentown-fair-and-headliners","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-professional-wrestling-and-allentown","tag-professional-wrestling-and-allentown-fair"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}