To promote this weekend’s ALL OUT pay-per-view in Chicago AEW President Tony Khan spoke with the media about a wide range of topics, including how injuries to top stars affected his booking of Rampage this summer, why he brought back the Zero Hour pre-show to ALL OUT, his thoughts on the criticisms of the Jon Moxley and CM Punk world title build, and more. Highlights can be found below.
-Khan said that the injuries to top stars this summer affected his booking lineup for Rampage. He explains that he had to put all his biggest angles on Dynamite because of said injuries and that hurt the Rampage ratings. However, he is very optimistic that ALL OUT will serve as a reset for Rampage, adding that he will give his full attention to improving the show after this weekend.
-AEW ALL OUT will feature the Zero Hour pre-show. Khan brought Zero Hour back because it ties into the history of All In/All Out at the venue in Chicago. He sees Zero Hour as its own event, and teases adding another matchup to it on Friday, or possibly another matchup to the ALL OUT main card.
-Khan would then be asked about the build to the Jon Moxley vs. CM Punk world title match. He says that the ratings for the match they had a couple weeks ago were huge, and thinks that it helped increase interest in Sunday’s rematch. He admits that AEW has never done a build to a main event like this before.
-Khan later talks about Punk’s injury. He says that he had planned to do Punk & FTR against the United Empire (Will Ospreay & Aussie Open) several weeks before Forbidden Door to build up interest for the show. He adds that Punk and Hiroshi Tanahashi would have tagged together to face an unknown tag team, but that the opponents were so special it would have easily produced a MOTy candidate.