AEW: Will Ospreay on Wanting to See More Tournaments in AEW, Kenny Omega on His EVP Role Makes It Hard to Continue to Do BTE-Style Comedy in AEW Over Issues “It Would Offend Somebody”, More News

May 15, 2025

Will Ospreay on Wanting to See More Tournaments Held in AEW

Will Ospreay recently gave his thoughts on Twitter about how he would like to see AEW hold more tournaments and his belief that tournaments are the “heart of pro wrestling.”

“Tournaments are the heart of pro wrestling.
It gives people opportunities to tell their own stories and potentially have someone to climb up the card with shocking wins.
Love to see in AEW do a king of trios, Tag League, Women’s Continental Classic or cruiserweight/Jr cup”

Tournaments are the heart of pro wrestling.

It gives people opportunities to tell their own stories and potentially have someone to climb up the card with shocking wins.

Love to see in AEW do a king of trios, Tag League, Women’s Continental Classic or cruiserweight/Jr cup https://t.co/3wKxxylbtu
— Will Ospreay • ウィル・オスプレイ (@WillOspreay) May 14, 2025

Kenny Omega Comments on His EVP Role Makes It Hard to Continue to Do BTE-Style Comedy in AEW Over Issues “It Would Offend Somebody”

Adi Shankar held a recent interview with Kenny Omega. One of the topics discussed included Omega’s thoughts about why he can’t use Being the Elite style humor anymore in AEW due to his EVP role in the company and the reason why the Being The Elite series hasn’t been brought back.

“For me, that was [one of] the most regrettable things about becoming an EVP for AEW. By becoming an EVP for AEW, we were now on the hook for anything that we did, said. If it wasn’t to the network’s liking or if it offended people or fans and they wrote a formal complaint, we could essentially immediately be taken off the air. That responsibility to our fan base and the hundreds of people that we employed at AEW, that’s a bit of responsibility. It really made me miss the days of just having a ragtag group of guys that were just being creative and doing whatever it was that came to our minds that we thought would entertain our fan base and create new fans. It was like myself, the Bucks, Hangman, Cody, all of us were respectful, polite individuals, always trying to do things — we would never go out of our way to maliciously hurt anybody. If ever we did anything in character in that manner, it was to tell a story. As the times changed — I was actually recently watching some old clips back when I was joking around with the Bucks cause they were going through some old footage — we’re just laughing at all these old scenes where we’re just doing the silliest of things. It’s like, we knew we were joking. People loved what we were doing back then and they’re all laughing with us and at us and we love that they were. We’re just like, man, isn’t it kind of sad that we just can’t do it anymore? It’s like, who did we hurt by doing this? Nobody. Who would we hurt if did it again today? Nobody, but it would offend somebody and that somebody would go out of their way to make sure they hurt us. They would feel empowered by that. It’s like, okay, well I’ll just stay in my shell and just do what I am being paid to do then. That part of it was kind of a debbie downer.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com

AEW News & Notes

Wednesday’s AEW Dynamite Beach Break 2025 show in Hoffman Estates, Illinois featured AEW and Taz paying tribute to the life and legacy of the late Sabu.

Wednesday’s AEW Dynamite Beach Break 2025 show in Hoffman Estates also featured Mina Shirakawa debuting a new entrance theme song for her AEW Women’s Championship Eliminator Four-way match. In an interesting note, Shirakawa’s prior theme played for the outro following her victory in the match. AEW CEO Tony Khan confirmed on Twitter that he had changed Shirakawa’s theme song back to its original song due to the online negative backlash from fans over the new song.

The Hollywood Reporter reported that Warner Bros Discovery’s MAX streaming service will be changing its name back to HBO MAX starting this summer.

AEW, Reebok, and Champs Sports will be collaborating together for a new Swerve Strickland sneaker that is scheduled to be released on May 28th. This new sneaker features Reebok’s Allen Iverson’s Answer 3 sneaker as its base design and includes a customization design based on Strickland’s Killmonger ring gear from AEW Dynasty 2024. This new sneaker has a price tag of $160 per pair.

AEW announced that Thunder Rosa and Hologram were in attendance at this past Tuesday’s Mexican Heritage Night baseball game between the Miami Marlins and Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Stadium in Chicago, Illinois.

Disney recently announced that the upcoming second season of their Percy Jackson and the Olympians television series will be premiering on their Disney+ service this December. This series featured Adam “Cope” Copeland portraying the role of Ares, the God of War.

In a recent digital exclusive backstage interview with AEW, “Timeless” Toni Storm gave her thoughts about her upcoming match against Mina Shirakawa for the AEW Women’s Championship at AEW’s Double or Nothing 2025 event. Storm stated “MINA SHIRAKAWA! DOUBLE OR NOTHING! Let’s live like we’ve never lived before!” The AEW Women’s World Champion, ‘Timeless’ Toni Storm, is looking forward to her date with her “busty little buttercup,” @MinaShirakawa, at AEW Double or Nothing on Sunday, 5/25!“

Former WWE wrestler Zack Gowen reflected on Twitter about his match against Ricochet at Wednesday’s AEW Beach Break 2025 show and him thanking AEW and AEW CEO Tony Khan for giving him the chance to wrestle one more time. Gowen stated “Thank you @AEW for welcoming me into your locker room and being so kind. Thank you @TonyKhan for giving me a chance to live out my dream one more time 🙏“

In a recent interview with the Women’s Wrestling Talk podcast, former AEW talent Saraya gave her thoughts about her recent departure from AEW and AEW CEO Tony Khan leaving the door open to her for a potential return to the company in the future. Saraya stated “I was like, alright, time for me to bow out. Tony was amazing with it. It ended up being mutual, which is great. He was like, let’s do it. Like- that’s perfectly fine. He was extremely supportive about my my future endeavors and he encouraged me and the door was left open, you know, which is great, and yeah, it was just a lot of brainstorming on my time off where I was like, okay, now it’s time for me to bow out gracefully, I guess.” (Transcript h/t: Fightful.com)

In a recent interview with WGN Radio, Kyle Fletcher gave his thoughts about Trent Beretta’s recent return and Rocky Romero recently joining the Don Callis Family in AEW. Fletcher stated “Rocky is someone that I met in 2017/2018, so it’s one of those things where we’ve never been affiliated on TV together, but backstage, we have a really good relationship. Literally, that eight-man that you spoke about, that’s the first time we’d ever teamed together. So like, you can see it in the match, we’re out there and we’re having banter. We’re having fun with each other. It’s because it’s that real relationship now coming out and playing out on-screen. Same with Trent. I wrestled him in 2019 for the first time. So, it’s cool to me when these pre-existing relationships now get to play out in front of fans, because they’ve never gotten to see this stuff. So like, I now get to bully Rocky on TV all the time. I can’t wait.” Fletcher also gave his thoughts about the recent growth of the Don Callis Family in terms of members size. Fletcher stated “I think it depends. Everyone needs to have a role in a faction. Everyone needs to have their lane and serve their purpose. I think when you just start adding people for the sake of adding people, that’s when it’s kind of like, ‘Okay…’ If you can’t find enough TV time for everyone, and that kind of thing. I think the Don Callis Family is probably starting to teeter-totter on that line, but that just means I get to punch someone in the back of the head and throw them to the wolves.” (Transcript h/t: Fightful.com)