Tony Khan participated in a post show media scrum following All Elite Wrestling’s Fyter Fest event this past weekend, and says fans shouldn’t expect to see intergender wrestling in the company, or hardcore matches on cable TV.
Khan was asked by the media about the potential of seeing intergender wrestling in AEW, but he said fans ‘probably won’t’ see it in the company. He said it’s a very complex question and cited Jordynne Grace getting punched in the face as one of the few things he didn’t like about ‘All In’, but said it’s not something he wants the company to focus on. Khan added that he’d rather focus on strong separate men’s and women’s singles and tag team divisions instead of trying to introduce a mixed match format.
Additionally, Khan was asked about the violence seen in the Jebailey versus Michael Nakazawa Buy In match and unsanctioned bout between Joey Janela and Jon Moxley. Khan said they are “definitely not” going to be featuring hardcore matches on TV and this was something reserved for the pay-per-view format.
“No, no, no. Definitely not. This was not on TV, this was a streaming show. It was not—it was effectively a pay-per-view in a lot of the world. In the U.S. it was presented free, but this was a pay-per-view, so you can expect different rules for pay-per-view. We said going in that these were non-sanctioned—unsanctioned—hardcore matches and that expectation was going in and we wouldn’t have advertised that kind of violence, we wouldn’t have offered that on TNT. 100% no. That’s a good question, and I’m glad you gave me a chance to clarify.”
Khan’s comments echoed Cody Rhodes’ post show comments after Double Or Nothing last month, where he said AEW pay-per-view events could be a ‘step up’ from their TV show.
“There’s not the standards and practices format we have at the moment, but I think when you look at TV, and our pay-per-views will take it a step up, if that makes any sense.” Rhodes said. “Wrestling—Tony has been very good about this—it’s sports-centric, and the other wrestling company, they almost run a TV-G show, with how protected it is. And I get that, you’re servicing the child audience, but there’s a huge part of the audience that still wants sports, still wants violence. In the NBA guys curse on the court, you move the camera off of them. It’s treated as a live sporting event and that will help our TV and drive how we want to do TV. But I think at the pay-per-views you’ll see a step up and even Tony—and I’m not trying to spoil it—but we’ve talked about a pay-per-view itself that’s another step up. So…wrestling is violent. It’s part of this combat sports, and we have a lot of great guys with legit backgrounds so I don’t mind using that word because everyone here tonight is happy, healthy, my brother is OK.”
You can listen to Khan’s full interview below:
