There’s a good reason why Tony Khan continues to strengthen the All Elite Wrestling roster.
Tony Khan recently appeared on STRONG STYLE on John Rocha’s YouTube channel to discuss a wide variety of subjects. While talking about the size of the All Elite Wrestling roster, Khan revealed how happy he was to sign CM Punk, Bryan Danielson, and Adam Cole when he did. Because just a short time later, they lost their first three AEW World Champions in Chris Jericho, Jon Moxley, and Kenny Omega.
“There’s still so many people in AEW, so many great wrestlers that are on the roster that actually have not been around lately that I’m excited to get back in the mix,” Tony Khan said. “And the company could be that much stronger because I think probably in many ways coming out of All Out last summer was the strongest things have been. We had great ratings, and now we’re back to these great ratings since we moved to TBS course this past week. We had over a million viewers again, one of the top shows on cable again.
“There was a point where the roster was really healthy, and we just had CM Punk and Bryan Danielson and Adam Cole all arrived within a few weeks of each other and went the Grand Slam firing on all cylinders and then a bunch of stuff hit and now we’re coming out of it. When CM Punk Bryan Danielson and Adam Cole came in, I saw them as adding two great stars. We already had Chris Jericho, Kenny Omega, Jon Moxley. Well, very quickly. Chris Jericho had a blood clot and was out of the ring for months. And Jon Moxley was gone for months, and Kenny Omega has been out for months. So we had our first three champions. Jericho Moxley and Omega all go out within a very short time span.
“Thank goodness I signed CM Punk, Bryan Danielson, and Adam Cole, or we would have been in real trouble. We really got through the end of the year, and it was kind of surreal ending the year, and it was like coming into Daily’s Place to do the last show ever on TNT. Bryan was actually out that week ahead of the Hangman match. Ahead of the TBS debut with Omicron, I had Hangman and Danielson in like the ultimate quarantines. Then we ended the year and ended our era on TNT with The Undisputed Elite versus The Best Friends, and I thought it was really a surreal cool way to end our run on TNT because the Wednesday Night Wars was such a huge part of our run on TNT.
“I thought like if you can make a dream card, what would some of the matches be and I think O’Reilly, Fish, and Adam Cole against Orange Cassidy and the Best Friends would have been one of those matches people would have wanted to see and I thought it would be really cool way to end the run and also that symbolic fight that went on for so long, but now those guys are on our show, they invaded our show. And I thought you had to put them over. It was kind of the opposite of the thinking that went into beating Sting when they did it. I just really think that when those guys came in, it helped the roster a lot because we had no idea. Because we’re so lucky to have Jericho and Omega and Moxley all through the pandemic and through those six months or so before the pandemic when we launched Dynamite to get it off the ground. And then when we lost those guys, we had the ultimate reinforcements.”
Chris Jericho was hospitalized on December 9 overseas during his FOZZY UK tour and didn’t wrestle until the January 26 episode of AEW Dynamite. Before the illness, Jericho’s last match was at AEW Full Gear on November 13.
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What do you make of Tony Khan’s comments? Are you surprised to learn that Chris Jericho had a blood clot when he disappeared from AEW Dynamite? Let us know your thoughts by sounding off in the comments section below.
If you use any of the quotes above, please credit Strong Style / John Rocha with a link back to this article for the transcription.
