AEW President, CEO, General Manager & Head Of Creative Tony Khan recently spoke with Mike Johnson of PWInsider to promote tonight’s AEW Dynamite on TBS.
Khan has been hyping a big talent announcement for tonight. A top talent is supposed to debut on Dynamite, sign his AEW contract, and then face Isiah Kassidy in the first qualifying match for the Face of The Revolution Ladder Match. Below is what Khan had to say about tonight’s big surprise:
Tonight’s surprise vs. previous debuts such as CM Punk and Bryan Danielson:
“It’s really exciting that we’re in this position right now. I think it’s a little bit of apples and oranges because CM Punk as the first dance is a very specific example where we made it very clear it was going to be him and I wouldn’t have brought out anybody else. There are other huge stars in wrestling that would’ve been great debuts on any other night, but that was not the night for those people. That’s a little bit different. Here, I don’t think I’ve exactly been so specific about who’s coming, but I said it’s going to be a major signing for us and I think it’s going to be a very exciting night. Like I said, I have opened the forbidden door and I don’t want to say exactly what’s going to happen or when it’s going to happen, but it’s going to be an eventful night. And I hope that people get their expectations met. And frankly, I’ve seen a lot of other speculations and there’s a lot of great names out there. And anything we do on this particular Wednesday night Dynamite, it doesn’t limit us in the future from finding some of these other people. There’s a lot of exciting names and opening the forbidden door there will allow to these big names.
“So there are a lot of possibilities and I don’t want to get too specific on the speculation, but there’s going to be somebody who’s going to sign with AEW going forward and be a part of the company and as I also said, I would open the forbidden door, and without getting too specific to what that mean is, it’s definitely opened up some speculation, but I think in a good way and I would be nervous or I wouldn’t be feeling good right now if I didn’t believe that we have the people in hand and they’re going to be in Atlantic city. But we do have those people. So it’s going to be a really fun night for the fans, I think, and also be some great wrestling on the card and a lot to look forward to. There’s been some stuff, like I said, that’s been announced. But there’s also going to be some other really exciting things on the show that have not been announced yet, more than one exciting thing on the show that have not been announced. So I’m really looking forward to this.”
All the conversation and speculation on the surprise, given his own history of growing up a fan in the position of fans waiting to see what is unveiled:
“First of all, I do want this to be something that the fans are happy about and I think whenever there’s lots of different names being tossed around, it’s a good thing and there’s a lot of good ideas from the fans and I like to listen to those ideas. Even if you can’t do them all in one night, there might be some stuff you can do in the future. So I have been monitoring that speculation. I like to stay in touch with the fans and follow the feedback. So it’s been really good for us. The last thing I would ever want to do is to disappoint the fans. So I really do believe we’ve got some exciting stuff for them and it should be a great show. And then if there’s more stuff they want to see, hopefully we could do that in the future too. But I know that this Wednesday we’re going to make a lot of people very happy and I love doing that as a fan. The last thing you want to do is have something built up and then people be disappointed. I remember when I was a kid and the higher power turned out to be Vince, that was very disappointing because at school we had spent so much time speculating who it might be and I think our big fear is that it was just going to be Vince. So I don’t want that to happen here. I definitely want people to back different names around and then hopefully a lot of people are going to be very happy with what they get on this show and if there’s more people the fans are calling for them, that the fans want to see, hopefully we can get them in AEW too.”
Whether there may be more than one new talent arriving in AEW tonight:
“I don’t want to get too specific to say exactly what’s going to happen, but it’s going to be a great night for the fans and I promise there’s definitely one surprise, and I think there’ll be some other really fun stuff along the way too.”
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