{"id":80475,"date":"2019-05-26T23:02:58","date_gmt":"2019-05-27T04:02:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/?p=80475"},"modified":"2019-05-26T23:02:58","modified_gmt":"2019-05-27T04:02:58","slug":"aew-president-tony-khan-discusses-moxley-contract-terms-weight-divisions-c-m-punk-ppv-schedule-pac-controversy-itv-uk-plans-wwe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/2019\/05\/26\/aew-president-tony-khan-discusses-moxley-contract-terms-weight-divisions-c-m-punk-ppv-schedule-pac-controversy-itv-uk-plans-wwe\/","title":{"rendered":"AEW President Tony Khan discusses Moxley contract terms, weight divisions, C.M. Punk, PPV schedule, Pac controversy, iTV, UK plans, WWE"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"pwtor-2077457333\" class=\"pwtor-before-content pwtor-entity-placement\"><hr \/><b>SPOTLIGHTED PODCAST ALERT (YOUR ARTICLE BEGINS A FEW INCHES DOWN)... <\/b>\r\n\r\n<iframe src=\"https:\/\/widget.spreaker.com\/player?show_id=3076978&theme=light&playlist=false&playlist-continuous=false&autoplay=false&live-autoplay=false&chapters-image=true&episode_image_position=right&hide-logo=false&hide-likes=false&hide-comments=false&hide-sharing=false&hide-download=true\" width=\"100%\" height=\"140px\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe>\r\n<hr \/><\/div><p>Tony Khan, the 36 year old President of the upstart formidably funded pro wrestling organization AEW, met with media last night after AEW&#8217;s debut event, Double or Nothing, in Las Vegas, Nev. at the MGM Grand Garden Arena. AEW debuts on TNT this fall with a weekly pro wrestling series. The following is a transcript of the &#8220;media scrum&#8221; where he answers a free flow of questions from a gathering of reporters after the event. [Thanks for PWTorch reader Rubin Jay for recording the session and supplying PWTorch with the link to the Q&amp;A.]<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Tony Khan Comments After AEW Double Or Nothing: Jon Moxley, TNT &amp; More!\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/HzxcWsXhDf0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u2022On his initial review of Double or Nothing:<\/strong> &#8220;I&#8217;ve seen, like I said going in, every wrestling pay-per-view ever, and I had very high expectations this would be amongst the best and I feel we delivered. I think it&#8217;s one of the best pay-per-views anyones ever done, anybody&#8217;s going to see.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u2022On his belief that this was a successfully event:<\/strong> &#8220;Just trying to do the best possible shows we can. Everybody&#8217;s trying to do the best shows they can. We weren&#8217;t trying to compete with anyone or be better. We&#8217;re just trying to do the best show. I think we&#8217;ve done the best PPV anyone&#8217;s done this year.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u2022On when he struck a deal with Jon Moxley, a\/k\/a Dean Ambrose, formerly of WWE&#8217;s Shield faction:<\/strong> &#8220;As soon as he was out of his deal and wanted to talk to people, he came to me and I was really excited to talk to him when he was able to talk to me. He was great. I&#8217;m really excited he&#8217;s part of the roster.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u2022On the best moment of the night:<\/strong> &#8220;My highlight of the night was at the end of the show after Mox [Jon Moxley] took down Kenny, we go off and we realize we&#8217;ve done one of the all time great PPVs. There&#8217;s nothing that can stop us now. It looked like Kenny was okay. I thought Kenny was okay. Kenny is okay. That was pretty much my only concern at that point. I knew we hit a home run of a show. At that point I relieved and I knew everything was okay.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u2022On Bret Hart&#8217;s condition after he fell when leaving the ring:<\/strong> &#8220;Bret slipped and fell. He didn&#8217;t come in the way he left. I was at Gorilla and I think that&#8217;s what happened.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u2022On early indications of PPV buys for the $49.99 priced event:<\/strong> &#8220;I think commercially we&#8217;ve done very well. We had good expectations to do the best numbers anybody&#8217;s done since WCW, nobody other than WWE had done numbers like this. I think we&#8217;re in position to do the best numbers anyone has done since and hopefully be a really strong national, international company.&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">This poll is just for those who were iffy about ordering AEW because of the $49.95 price&#8230; In the end, did you end up giving in and paying the price or opt not to? <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/AEWDON?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#AEWDON<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Pro Wrestling Torch (@PWTorch) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/PWTorch\/status\/1132794721728729088?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">May 26, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u2022On whether he&#8217;ll become an on-air personality like most other pro wrestling executives over the years:<\/strong> &#8220;No no no. We have way too many performers for that&#8230; You know me really well. Did I ever try to suit up [with the Jacksonville Jaguars]?&#8221;<\/p><div id=\"pwtor-204414386\" class=\"pwtor-content pwtor-entity-placement\"><div align=\"center\" data-freestar-ad=\"__336x280 __336x280\" id=\"pwtorchcom_test_300x250\">\r\n  <script data-cfasync=\"false\" type=\"text\/javascript\">\r\n    freestar.config.enabled_slots.push({ placementName: \"pwtorchcom_test_300x250\", slotId: \"pwtorchcom_test_300x250\" });\r\n  <\/script>\r\n<\/div><\/div>\n<p><strong>\u2022On Cracker Barrel:<\/strong> &#8220;They are a sponsor, they are a great sponsor. They provided some excellent catering. Everyone really enjoyed it on top of being a great sponsors and friend of AEW. They love our performers, they love our guys. We try to work in their props.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u2022On the controversy with Pac, a\/k\/a WWE\/NXT wrestler Adrian Neville:<\/strong> &#8220;It would have been great if Ben would have been able to be here. I&#8217;m a big Pac fan. I&#8217;m a huge Pac fan and we love Pac and hopefully he&#8217;ll be doing a lot of shows for us in the future. It didn&#8217;t work out. There were a lot of reasons why. I think the show came together great. And I think we would have loved to have him here and we&#8217;d love to work with him here in the future. We love Pac. We all respect him as one of the best performers. Super professional.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u2022On whether being a super-fan of pro wrestling himself will help him succeed as head of AEW:<\/strong> &#8220;I mean, yeah, by loving wrestling and watching a lot of wrestling, it is going to help. I think I understand what a fan wants to see from top to bottom. I feel like today I was able to go in and sit with the guys. Everyone had great opinions on what was going to make this a great show. That&#8217;s what makes this such a great collaborative process with the group we have for booking. We communicate really well. I think I offer a little bit different perspective not just as a fan but as a businesssman too. It&#8217;s a little different from what the guys are used to. It&#8217;s great synergy, not just the tip executives, but the whole roster. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. There&#8217;s real synergy of us all working together. We all bring something different.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u2022On the ITV deal in the U.K.:<\/strong> &#8220;The ITV deal came together long before there was an AEW or a roster of wrestlers. I live in England a good chunk of the year. I had gone to the folks at ITV sport. ITV entertainment had been running the wrestling at ITV and they had done this World of Sport. I know the sport people very well from English Football and that&#8217;s where this connection paid off. I told them that there is a real chance to have a wrestling product that is a huge huge huge hit that does the kind of numbers you&#8217;ve dreamed of for wrestling on ITV and would be a real success. We&#8217;d have a lot of advantages working together. I know those guys personally and they trust me. We had a couple of meetings. As stuff developed, they saw everything I was saying was legit&#8230; It&#8217;s been a great relationship. Those guys are awesome.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u2022On the AEW Women&#8217;s Division:<\/strong> &#8220;What is great we have really, really diverse amounts of executives and coaches who are super knowledgable about women&#8217;s wrestling. Dave [Meltzer] is here and I&#8217;ve honestly learned about a lot of the great female performers from reading the Observer. Kenny Omega had found a lot of names and sent me a lot of videos. Kenny and Brandi and I together have done a lot of work on that. So, internationally it&#8217;s a great time for women&#8217;s wrestling and we&#8217;re going to be a big part of it&#8230; We had really top people. Kenny was proud of it. He was proud of his match, but he was proud that the ladies he&#8217;d found for us delivered and had a great match.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u2022On the shots taken by Cody at Triple H:<\/strong> &#8220;I&#8217;ve seen people say that there&#8217;s not a party line, like &#8216;they need to have a company line.&#8217; Nah, we don&#8217;t. Everybody&#8217;s trying to get something different out of it. We all just want to do the best shows. If any of us, if it fuels our fire, the competition, that&#8217;s great. I&#8217;m just trying to do the best shows possible. I hope their shows are great. At the best times of wrestling, honestly, everybody was doing great stuff. There was a time 20 years ago when all the shows were great. Maybe 21 years ago more than 20 years ago; 1998 was a really great year. [laughs] I think we can get there again. I&#8217;m so excited when we get to weekly. We got a show we can hang our hat on that we&#8217;ve done one of the great wrestling pay-per-views. I&#8217;m really excited when we get to weekly. It&#8217;s going to be a better quality of life. The work is going to be better than it&#8217;s ever been. It&#8217;ll be like it was 20 years ago where you can watch a lot of wrestling and it&#8217;s not going to be a chore, either. It&#8217;s going to be a lot of fun.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u2022On when the AEW World Title match will happen, and if it will be Aug. 31 at All Out:<\/strong> &#8220;Hangman [vs. Chris] Jericho, I believe it&#8217;s a TBD. I don&#8217;t believe anyone has announced a date for Hangman-Jericho yet. We&#8217;re going to make an announcement. It will be for the AEW World Championship and Hangman and Chris are going to have an awesome match. We&#8217;re all very excited about it and we&#8217;ll announce the time and date soon.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u2022On the weigh-in and whether that means there will be weight divisions:<\/strong> &#8220;No, because I&#8217;m not planning on weight divisions. It&#8217;s like shoot sports stuff and the weigh ins is a neat thing about sports. You&#8217;ll see a lot more elements like that, you&#8217;ll see more Tales of the Tape. As we build up stats and wins and loss records, what has and hasn&#8217;t worked in matches, you&#8217;ll see a lot of that in our TV presentations. I hope it&#8217;ll be like what you see in combat sports&#8230; I think that resonates with viewers and that&#8217;s what people want to see. You&#8217;ll see the wrestlers with the best records facing the champion. I think we&#8217;re kind of past the point of weight classes because to me a lot of the best quote-unquote &#8216;heavyweights&#8217; would be the junior heavyweights and then what are you saying about the junior heavyweight belt when the best junior heavyweights aren&#8217;t competing for that. So I just think we&#8217;re going to have a world championship. We&#8217;re not calling it &#8216;heavyweight.&#8217; With weights, it&#8217;s just a legitimate fact about sports. There will be David vs. Goliath matches. Sometimes there will be a big disparity and it will be an interesting fact.&#8221;<\/p><div id=\"pwtor-295324980\" class=\"pwtor-content-1 pwtor-entity-placement\"><!-- Tag ID: pwtorchcom_test_300x600 -->\r\n<div align=\"center\" data-freestar-ad=\"__336x280 __300x600\" id=\"pwtorchcom_test_300x600\">\r\n  <script data-cfasync=\"false\" type=\"text\/javascript\">\r\n    freestar.config.enabled_slots.push({ placementName: \"pwtorchcom_test_300x600\", slotId: \"pwtorchcom_test_300x600\" });\r\n  <\/script>\r\n<\/div><\/div>\n<p><strong>\u2022On how feels right after Double or Nothing:<\/strong> &#8220;I&#8217;m not surprised. I&#8217;m glad everything came off. I&#8217;ve been through a lot of stuff. There&#8217;s a difference between knowing that you have the group of professional performer teed up &#8211; not just the wrestlers, but production, the coordinators who work backstage, the people top to bottom who made this happen. I really trust everybody. We&#8217;re not working against the common enemy. There&#8217;s a big difference between doing this and being at Foxboro and playing [NFL quarterback for the New England Patriots] Tom Brady. You can&#8217;t control that, and we had a lot of things we can control. It&#8217;s nerves, but it&#8217;s a totally different kind of nerves from other situations, if that makes sense.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u2022On what his dad, Shahid Khan, the self-made Pakistani-American billionaire\u00a0immigrant\u00a0(worth an\u00a0estimated $6.8 billion) who is the lead investor of AEW:<\/strong> &#8220;He really enjoyed it. He&#8217;s glad commercially it&#8217;s going to do well and he&#8217;s very happy about that as well.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u2022On the plan for AEW&#8217;s pay-per-view schedule:<\/strong> &#8220;The definition of what a pay-per-view is is changing. An event like this will probably be a quarterly show. We certainly won&#8217;t be doing just quarterly shows. This is the biggest kind of show we can do. I think we&#8217;ll be doing a lot of big shows, but these four hour shows with a one hour pre-show will probably be a quarterly thing.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u2022On streaming plans for other events other than those quarterly PPVs:<\/strong> &#8220;Our media partners are very excited about how some of this came off. I don&#8217;t want to commit to anything yet, but I&#8217;ve had a very good night. [laughs] I think we&#8217;ll see where we end up and where that content goes.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u2022On C.M. Punk:<\/strong> &#8220;What&#8217;s a one person wrestling company? There&#8217;s no such thing. He was on the first roster when I sketched out a list of, &#8216;Hey, I want to start a wrestling company, who are all the names you&#8217;re going to get.&#8217; Everybody we got is on that list, and he was on that list, to be honest with you. But a lot of people were on that list. Most of them are here, to be honest with you. I got almost everybody I wanted on this show. Phil is great and I have a good relationship with Phil. I think he&#8217;s awesome. He was not here, as you saw. That&#8217;s not the story of this show and it&#8217;d be a real insult to all we&#8217;ve done to make that the story of the show.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u2022On whether he will run again in Las Vegas:<\/strong> &#8220;Yeah, I do imagine running Vegas again soon. Every year, if not more often than once a year.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u2022On the ITV deal perhaps leading to an AEW PPV in the UK:<\/strong> &#8220;Yeah, I expect that. The announcement on that is not imminent, but I expect we will be doing that. We&#8217;ve had great support in the UK. We&#8217;ve put a lot of effort into branding in the UK. I am really appreciative of my really good friend Jack Whitehall. The support we&#8217;ve had from ITV has been amazing. I expect we&#8217;ll do a PPV in the UK. I haven&#8217;t booked a date for it and I haven&#8217;t booked an arena for it, but I think we will do it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u2022On the Jon Moxley contract details:<\/strong> &#8220;He is a multi-hear contract and he will be on a full time deal. When we go weekly, he&#8217;s going to be working full time. But same as with some of the other guys, especially when the schedule is light, I&#8217;m going to be open about him working some international indy dates. But he is full time with us, domestically he is essentially our guy. He&#8217;s definitely an AEW full time wrestler.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>RECOMMENDED:<\/strong>\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/2019\/05\/25\/5-25-aew-double-or-nothing-ppv-results-kellers-report-on-omega-vs-jericho-cody-vs-dustin-battle-royal-more\/\">5\/25 AEW DOUBLE OR NOTHING PPV RESULTS: Keller\u2019s report on Omega vs. Jericho, Cody vs. Dustin, Battle Royal, more<\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"pwtor-end-article-groups pwtor-entity-placement\" id=\"pwtor-3674309622\"><div id=\"pwtor-2220947545\"><div align=\"center\" data-freestar-ad=\"__336x280\" id=\"pwtorchcom_medrec_3\">\r\n  <script data-cfasync=\"false\" type=\"text\/javascript\">\r\n    freestar.config.enabled_slots.push({ placementName: \"pwtorchcom_medrec_3\", slotId: \"pwtorchcom_medrec_3\" });\r\n  <\/script>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\nTHANK YOU FOR VISITING<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\"><p>Tony Khan, the 36 year old President of the upstart formidably funded pro wrestling organization AEW, met with media last night after AEW&#8217;s debut event, Double or Nothing, in Las Vegas, Nev. at the MGM <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/2019\/05\/26\/aew-president-tony-khan-discusses-moxley-contract-terms-weight-divisions-c-m-punk-ppv-schedule-pac-controversy-itv-uk-plans-wwe\/\" title=\"AEW President Tony Khan discusses Moxley contract terms, weight divisions, C.M. Punk, PPV schedule, Pac controversy, iTV, UK plans, WWE\">[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":80480,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6163,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aew-news","category-prowrestlingnews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/post\/2019\/05\/KhanTony_RubinJay_3x2_600.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80475"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80481,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80475\/revisions\/80481"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}