AEW: Tony Khan on Mercedes Mone is “Perfect to be Face of AEW”, Adam Copeland on Significance of I Quit Match with Christian Cage, Malakai Black

Tony Khan Comments on Mercedes Mone Being “Perfect to be Face of AEW”

As noted before, Mercedes Mone made her official debut for AEW at this past Wednesday’s AEW Dynamite Big Business show in Boston, Massachusetts.

NBC Boston held a recent interview with AEW CEO Tony Khan. One of the topics discussed included Khan’s thoughts about his belief that Mone is good fit in AEW and her being “perfect to be face of AEW.”

“Mercedes is one of the greatest wrestlers in the world. She is going to help bring in new audiences from all over the world. Not only is she going to come in as one of the faces of AEW, one of the top stars, but she’s also one of the best wrestlers, one of the most charismatic people, somebody who loves wrestling. Mercedes is not only someone who loves the wrestling business, loves getting in the ring and wrestling, but loves the fans. That’s what we’re all about in AEW and that’s why Mercedes is perfect to be the face of AEW.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com

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Adam Copeland Comments on I Quit Match with Christian Cage Being “Culmination of 40-Year Story”

The Toronto Sun held a recent interview with Adam Copeland. One of the topics discussed included Copeland’s thoughts about the significant of his upcoming I Quit match against Christian Cage for the TNT Championship being in his hometown of Toronto instead of at Revolution 2024 earlier this month.

“To me, the place is always the most important thing, and the opponent. It was a no-brainer. It was like ‘Is this match going to happen at Revolution and my way of thinking was ‘That’s Sting’s night’ and they deserve all the bells and whistles for his last match. With this being an ‘I Quit’ match, we were going to need some bells and whistles.

In looking at the schedule, Toronto popped up and it was ‘It feels like we should do this in Toronto and not in Greensborough. It was already a loaded show, it didn’t need us. But we can get to Toronto and we can do this right. For me, that’s kind of what this has been. It’s the culmination of a 40-year story.

So if you have an opportunity to culminate a story that long, why not do it where you both grew up?”

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Malakai Black on Wrestling “Needs Less Michael Bay and More Thought Provoking Methodology”

A recent episode of the Developmentally Speaking podcast featured Malaki Black as the guest. One of the topics discussed included Black’s thoughts about his philosophy on wrestling.

“No, that’s one of those things where I feel it’s become very convoluted. I’ve heard things come out of people’s mouths that have been wrestling for seven-eight years where I’m like, ‘Man, shut up.’ [Laughs]. Maybe it’s the perspective of someone who has been wrestling for 23 years and been on TV for almost a decade, I don’t want to turn into the old man yelling at the clouds, but I do believe there is a reason why the system has to be tougher. It’s not at the detriment of anyone, but I do know in broad strokes sometimes where the problem lies in regards to why things aren’t working or why things don’t have an attention span. I feel like wrestling has always been a reflection of how society is. It addresses issues on both a political and social-economical problem, in sometimes a very stupid and goofy way. It’s always been quite relevant and always tackled, and used, to its advantage and disadvantage topics such as abuse, racism, bullying, but also the good things like the underdog struggling and overcoming the big, bad, evil in the world. Wrestling needs emotion. Wrestling needs genuine interest, genuine love, and genuine anger. I feel like a lot of wrestling nowadays is based upon making…I don’t mean this in an attacking way because this is a notion where I’m attacking athletic ability because there are kids out there who can do things I’ll never be able to do.

Wrestling needs less Michael Bay and more thought-provoking methodology. You take guys like Gunther, who are insanely good. I don’t think I’ve ever watched that man have a match that made me, ‘Eh.’ He’s so incredibly good, and that is in a modern setting. He knows how to draw emotion out and that’s why I’ve always been into character stuff and building stuff throughout these lenses of characters because it allows an audience member to connect from an emotional level, whether you agree or not with what he says or not says, and leaving it up for you to decide. The emotional connection to the storyline or match is what will eventually, or hopefully, if the match is good, will be the payoff instead of having a lot of quick matches. Don’t get me wrong, we need quick matches too. We need a little bit of everything. It’s a big circus of everything. I feel like we’re sometimes driving away from working the position on the card that we wrestle and trying to steal the show every single time. I don’t think the attitude of ‘I want to do my best’ is a bad attitude, not by any shape, but I do feel sometimes you have to know when it’s you’re time to shine and sometimes you have to understand who have been building a certain storyline for months, years, and this is the big night so make sure they get all the attention so the company looks better. I feel sometimes that’s the thing that I miss. I feel like after 23 years, and I’ve never been critical of wrestling in general, and I keep a lot to myself, even to this day, I keep it to myself, I feel I’ve earned at least my right to voice certain parts of my opinion.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com