Tony Khan Comments on Ring Explosion, Christian Signing, Sting Wrestling, Itoh, Page & More

Tony Khan took questions from media after tonight’s Revolution PPV. Here are a few highlights:

Ring Explosion

“So, to quote Jon [Moxley] or at least paraphrase, Kenny Omega might be a bad son of a bitch, but he can’t build an exploding ring worth a shit. Kenny, the plans for this we saw in crayon, and all through the match we saw it’s very cool and it’s a very deadly and painful match, but at the end, I don’t know what people really wanted, unless you wanted us to actually explode the guys at the end, there’s only so much you can do. So without actually blowing the ring and both guys up, I think the basic explanation is that Kenny’s ring set to explode, his plan as a heel, who built this thing with a hammer and nails as we saw, the final bomb just didn’t go off.

“The Onita and Funk match, everybody would watch that, and several barbed wire matches to get a feel for it. We did a lot of tests and safety precautions with the fire marshal and I think the story kind of gave us an out for the ring not completely exploding and killing both guys because at the end it was Kenny’s construction, this thing he built, and we saw him kind of build it crudely with a hammer. The construction of it was we were using barbed wire and had to take a lot of precautions and treat it with great care, and we had to do a lot of rehearsals with the explosions. But again, there’s only so much you can really do with explosions without really hurting people, so I think that’s why it was good to give us an out with the story when we didn’t actually explode the ring. Maybe Kenny’s craftsmanship as a bomb builder is not his forte, maybe he should stick to wrestling.”

Christian

“He’s been a friend of mine for a long time. I met Christian Cage seven years ago and he’s a great person. I’ve always liked him as a person but long before that I’ve been a huge, huge fan of him as a wrestler. I think he’s one of the great wrestlers of the past couple of decades. I think he adds a lot here. He’s one of the best minds in wrestling and he’s in great physical condition. We saw him very recently compete on PPV. There was a lot of interest in it and he was interested in wrestling on a regular basis and he gave me a call and said ‘I’d really like to come wrestle in AEW for you.’ And I said I’d really like to have you come wrestle in AEW for me, that sounds awesome. I think it’s gonna be really good.

“It came up in the last few weeks, pretty quickly. Christian had just recently returned to the ring and looked incredibly impressive and I was not aware that he did not have a contract and was gonna be interested in wrestling for us. He’s a friend of mine and I didn’t know he’d be coming here. I never in a million years would have imagined it and honestly was kicking myself that he wasn’t here when I saw him come back. He got a great reaction and I can’t say it enough, I have so much respect for him and the locker room here does too. So many people here consider him one of their heroes. Against some of our main eventers, there’s so many he has history with and there’s so many he can have great dream matches with that people never thought they would see.”

Sting

“I think Sting was so awesome in this match and he’s got a lot in the tank. I think the cinematic matches in the right circumstances can be great to protect the legends, but that’s not to say Sting couldn’t have a great match and you might see that. I think the cinematic matches, we’ll see Sting in those probably but I wouldn’t rule out seeing Sting wrestle again because I think he’s shown he’s very capable of that.”

Maki Itoh

“Maki Itoh’s tremendous. I hope to see her often and we’ll definitely see her Wednesday night live on Dynamite in the six woman tag. She’ll be teaming with Britt Baker. Reba’s slated for the match, but already, I’m hearing that she’s trying to get out of the match. But we’ve got great opponents lined up for them with Thunder Rosa, Shida and Mizunami. So Maki Itoh’s gonna be involved with AEW this week on Dynamite, I’m very excited for that.”

Other Notes

– Touring: He said that they will still don’t currently have plans to tour in other arenas, but will continue to slowly expand the amount of audience members at AEW shows in Jacksonville as they continue to monitor the pandemic. He said that there were zero known transmissions so far from AEW shows. He felt Double or Nothing was too soon to have a packed audience.

– Ethan Page: He said Ethan Page is going to be a great addition to AEW for the long term and would be a good on the heel side of their roster, and his signing is something they’ve had up their sleeves for a while, but they had to wait for him to get his work visa. (Page is Canadian.)

– Tag Team Title Match: Pac and Fenix will wrestle the Young Bucks for the Tag Team titles some time “in the next several weeks” but “well before Double or Nothing.”

– Women main eventing Dynamite: When asked when women would main event Dynamite, he said, “Very soon. What if I told you it was gonna happen incredibly soon, like in the next several weeks, I have a feeling.”

– Red Velvet: When asked what Red Velvet has to do to get signed, he said “She has very little to do. It’s coming.”

– Big Swole: He said Big Swole “would have been a great contender” for the women’s tournament, but “she’s had some flare-ups” with Crohn’s disease keeping her out of action this year.

– More big things coming: In this year, 2021, I guarantee you I am going to have some aces up my sleeve this year. You are going to see some cool stuff, some stuff you did not expect to see. This is the beginning. I promise it’s gonna be a great year for AEW. I can’t wait until we get more and more fans in the arena.