AEW All Out 2022 Media Call: Injuries Affecting PPV Build, Rampage Ratings, Thunder Rosa, Talent Meeting, More

AEW CEO Tony Khan held a media call earlier today to promote this Sunday’s All Out 2022 in Hoffman Estates, Illinois.

Some of the topics discussed included Khan’s thoughts on why a lot of the matches were added late for the card of AEW’s upcoming All Out 2022 event. Khan stated that this was mainly due to the injuries situation with several talents he had plans for at the event, such as CM Punk. Khan also stated that injury issues were also the reason why the Bryan Danielson vs. Chris Jericho feud and match setup for the event started later than he wanted.

On the topic of AEW Rampage’s ratings, Khan stated that one reason for the lower than usual ratings in recent weeks was due to the amount of star talent that was not available for the show over injury-related reasons. Khan stated that this was the reason why he decided to focus more on boosting Dynamite’s ratings over Rampage’s ratings during that time period. Khan also stated that he will be focusing more on improving Rampage after this weekend’s event now that AEW’s roster is at its strongest level in months.

On the topic of the scheduled women’s matches at All Out, Khan praised Athena and Jade Cargill ahead of their upcoming match for the TBS title. Khan also stated that the reason for the four way match for the Interim AEW Women’s Championship was due to him wanting AEW’s four best women wrestlers competing in this match.

On the topic of the upcoming CM Punk vs. Jon Moxley rematch for the AEW World Championship, Khan stated that he decided to do the build for their match different than what he usually does for high profile pay-per-view matches. Khan also stated that is something that he believes can not be done often but wanted to do so on this occasion due to it being unique for a high profile AEW PPV match compared to how previous high profile matches were handled for AEW events.

On the topic of WWE’s recent changes and the idea of a potential future AEW-WWE Forbidden Door type event, Khan stated:

“I was pretty optimistic when they first made the change but I’m less optimistic now given how they’ve treated me.”

On the topic of the criticisms over Thunder Rosa only given a short amount of television time to discuss her injury and Interim AEW Women’s title situation compared to CM Punk’s promo time, Khan stated:

“I strongly disagree with that. I very strongly disagree with that. I give the TV time based on what I believe is going to draw the most ratings. If you want my honest opinion on an eight-minute Thunder Rosa promo vs. an eight-minute CM Punk promo, then you’re going to get an honest answer. I think the eight-minute CM Punk promo is probably going to do a better rating. As far as match length, I think Thunder Rosa has had some great matches as champion and to come out and do a live eight-minute promo, I’m not sure that would have been good for the television show, to be honest. Especially given where we were at with Thunder Rosa, I found out she was injured a few hours before a live television show, I don’t really have time to put an eight-minute promo in when I had just a couple hours notice vs. CM Punk, I knew days earlier he was badly hurt and we had already made a plan days earlier. Furthermore, a lot of people criticized the way Jon got his match with Tanahashi, so I guess you can’t please everybody, no matter what you do, and I’ve actually seen more people excited about the four-way match than they were for the original match and I think the four-way is one of the more anticipated matches on the card and I’ve seen people way more excited about that than, honestly, in some cases, the way we go through the Casino battle Royale match. I noticed people complained when Kyle got that opportunity. Jon vs. Kyle is one of my personal favorite TV matches. There were people criticizing that. I’ve seen less people, although there may be some, criticizing how we got to this. You can’t necessarily please every body, but I do think in this case, it’s been positive given the situation we were in.”

On the topic of the dropped plans for the Eddie Kingston vs. Sammy Guevara match at All Out, Khan stated that he is currently unsure if their feud will resume or be resolved on AEW television. He also stated that he is interested in continuing their feud and having their match happen but only if Kingston and Guevara are also on board and feel comfortable doing so.

On the topic of AEW’s recent talent meeting, Khan stated:

“There was a meeting. We went over a lot of different things. There were dozens of points that came up, I think it was just a lot of housekeeping, honestly, and we hadn’t sat down together. We used to do this on a pretty regular basis at Daily’s Place and it’s not something we had done in a while. A variety of things came up and it’s stuff that would be good to stay behind closed doors. Some of it did stay behind closed doors, amazingly, but a lot of it came out. Some of the things I saw reported in the meeting were pretty accurate, some of the things were wildly inaccurate. It definitely, across the spectrum of reports, I saw some stuff that I was like, ‘Wow, that’s like being a fly on the wall’ and other stuff where it was, ‘Okay, that never happened.’ That’s pretty much a day in wrestling journalism. I thought it was good for us all to get together and talk about a number of things.

There was one issue, that had come up, that people have seen stuff written about and I don’t really want to get into it, but if someone asked me, I guess I would get into it a little more, but there were issues the talent had come to us about and said, ‘I think you should probably know about.’ Based on the talent coming to us and telling us that and giving us their feedback and telling us stuff that happened with them, to them, both in the company and things happening outside the company, from other companies even, based on what the talent was saying to us, we thought it was good to have a meeting with everybody. I thought the meeting went really well, certainly this week was really a positive week of television and good energy going into the pay-per-view.”

Full media call audio: Fightful.com

Source: PWInsider.com

Transcript h/t: F4WOnline.com, Fightful.com 1 & 2