Tony Khan on if AEW TV Will Be as Hardcore as PPVs, No Intergender Wrestling, Time Limits, More

AEW president Tony Khan did a press conference after last night’s AEW Fyter Fest show and answered a variety of questions. A transcript of some of the highlights is below.

If AEW’s TNT TV show will also have “middle fingers, cursing, blood, chair shots” like this show:

No, no, no, no. Definitely not. Definitely not. This was not TV, this was a streaming show. It was effectively a PPV. You can expect different rules for PPV. And we said going in, these were unsanctioned hardcore matches and I think that was the expectation going in and we wouldn’t have advertised that kind of violence. We wouldn’t have offered that on TNT. 100% no, so no.

If there will be intergender wrestling in AEW:

Probably won’t see it in AEW. If there was one thing – I’ll just be like super frank about this… At the battle royal at All In, does anybody remember when Jordynne Grace got hit in the face? That was probably the one thing I didn’t like about All In.

There were two things I didn’t like about All In… that and the penis druids. I wouldn’t do the penis druids on TV. I wouldn’t be able to do it on TV. On PPV you could probably do the penis druids. On PPV I probably would have done the penis druids. Here’s what I didn’t like about it. I’m a big Hangman guy, and he won the match, and you almost kinda forgot he won the match.

But yeah I didn’t like when Jordynne Grace got hit in the face and I don’t think that’s cool. You know, like domestic abuse. I’m not saying that is… It’s a really complex question, but it’s probably not what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna focus on a men’s division, singles and tag, and a women’s division, singles and tag.

If AEW will have time limits on TV:

We only have so much time on the show so I think we’re gonna have time limits because you have to go on and have other matches because otherwise one match could take the whole show. But yeah, we will have time limits, yeah.

On Cody’s chair shot:

It was obviously really regrettable what happened. I don’t know if this is the time to go into detail about what happened but we had taken precautions in this situation and a doctor was available and Cody does not have a concussion and he has staples and we’re all very grateful for that.

It was an unfortunate situation. And all I’m gonna say to you right now, and I will talk about it more in detail, but you could build the safest airplane in the world and if there’s pilot error, there’s pilot error. And that was not good.

On being able to fit wrestlers onto each show:

You’re not gonna see everyone on the roster every week, like stuffed in just for the point of having them on the show. I want to get people into meaningful segments. That means that a lot of people are not gonna be on every show and a lot of our best performers weren’t on this show.

On the biggest PPVs, we’re gonna try and get every big name. Double or Nothing and All Out and the biggest PPVs, whether it’s four or five of them a year, you’re gonna see everything but the kitchen sink. There’s a difference between a four hour PPV with a one hour pre-show with how many people you can get on, to this where it’s a streaming special and you schedule a one hour pre-show and a little under three hours. And on a two hour TV show you’ll obviously be able to use even less people.

So I just think rotating performers and trying to make sure you have everyone keeping storylines, that’s where social media will be involved. I think you can keep things manageable and keep people relevant and give people things to do in wrestling without keeping them on the road like five, six days a week.

If they’re looking to sign more wrestlers to their roster:

We’re not actively trying to sign people to fill out the roster. I think we have a really deep, awesome roster and top stars too so it would have to be like, something really really captivating, so you know if we’re making moves in free agency, it’s because we feel really strong.