Various: Tony Khan on Origin of AEW & Impact Partnership, Matt Cardona Impact Update, ROH Rankings

Jan 20, 2021

Tony Khan Comments on Origin of AEW & Impact Partnership

A recent episode of the Oral Sessions with Renee Paquette podcast had AEW CEO Tony Khan as the guest. One of the topics discussed included Khan revealing the origin of the working partnership between AEW and Impact Wrestling.

“It was Kenny’s idea. He asked me about it and I love good ideas and I don’t do every idea. I try not to do the bad ones… This was something Kenny brought up that I thought was a great idea and he put a lot of time and thought into it and I give 100 percent of the credit to Kenny.
And Don Callis and Kenny have a really close relationship and, you know, I think that that is what was behind it. But I also think Kenny believed Don would be a very powerful advocate for him and could still roll with a really really strong heel manager for Kenny as the top heel in the territory, and really I think the top heel in wrestling right now. And I think that’s something people wanted to see. There are some wrestlers like say Steve Austin in 2001 where I don’t think people were ready to boo him or that they wanted to see that person be a villain. But I absolutely think people were ready to see this Kenny Omega and he was excited to present it. He didn’t just want to present the same Kenny Omega people had seen. He put so much thought into innovating and into changing…
And then I went with Kenny to the taping and they’ve got their pay-per-view this weekend and it was something he believed in. He wanted to help Don but he also thought that it could help us and he was right. And I wanted to support the idea, so I greenlighted it. I said, ‘We’ll do this. We will partner with them and I’ll come with you.'”

Transcript h/t: Cultaholic.com

Matt Cardona Impact Wrestling Status Update

As noted before, Matt Cardona made his official debut for Impact Wrestling at their Hard to Kill event this past Saturday.

Fightful’s Sean Ross Sapp reported that Cardona has not been signed to a full-time contract with Impact but will appear on Impact television for the next couple months due to him working at Impact’s tapings this past weekend.

Sapp also reported that several wrestling promotions are currently interested in Cardona.

ROH Rankings for January 19, 2021

Ring of Honor recently released their updated Top 5 rankings for their Television and Pure Championship divisions, along with the debut of their official Top 5 rankings for their World Championship division.

ROH World Championship: