Tony Khan details the challenges of booking ROH Death Before Dishonor due to Mark Briscoe‘s injury and other setbacks.
Briscoe was set to challenge ROH World Champion Claudio Castagnoli, but he was pulled due to a knee injury. As of this writing, Castagnoli’s replacement opponent has not been announced.
During the ROH Death Before Dishonor media call, WrestleZone’s Bill Pritchard asked about Castagnoli’s subsequent lack of a challenger. Khan then detailed the struggles of putting the match card together, which started when he let Eddie Kingston compete in the NJPW G1 Climax 33 tournament.
“It’s been a challenging process. I really appreciate you asking me and giving me the forum to talk a little about it,” Khan said. “I’m very excited about the Death Before Dishonor pay-per-view and the card I have slotted right now is very strong. We’ve announced a few matches and more in recent days because of injuries leading into the event. I’ve had to make changes upon changes, and it really started when I did something I felt very strongly about. It wasn’t my first choice, but it was the right thing to do. And that was when I let Eddie Kingston go over and participate in the G1, and I sat with Eddie and Rocky in my office in Orlando.
“To pull back the curtain a little bit, there’s people you have relationships in this business with, and then there’s people you have really, really strong relationships in this business with. Eddie is one of the latter for me, and he’s more then somebody that I just work with in wrestling. He’s a good friend, and I really care about him and his well-being.
“It’s one of those things that I know very well, and I feel like wrestling fans know, and everyone feels like even if you don’t know Eddie personally, you kind of know him. He’s just a very relatable person, in my opinion. It’s part of why he’s such a compelling wrestling personality. I really love Eddie, and he really wanted to go over and participate in the G1. So it involved a major pivot from some of the things we’ve been doing. Eddie had been a major focus and a major direction.”
After noting that Kingston’s rivalry with Castagnoli was far from over and he’d love to see a rematch at some point, Khan made it clear that he wanted to get the best possible opponent for the champion. He admitted that he hoped Kingston would be able to travel back from Japan for the show, but that wasn’t feasible, so he pivoted to Briscoe. Khan then noted that Briscoe had been dealing with injuries for some time, but he was fighting through them.
Mark Briscoe
“Mark Briscoe, I had slotted for something different in the card. Well, it turned out that that was also not viable for another reason I’ll get into, but there have been so many things that came up. It can be like a domino effect. It’s very challenging, and I get why people would say, ‘Just start announcing stuff,’ but there’s a reason why you don’t want to just start announcing stuff, especially when the dominoes start to fall like this and you start moving people from one match to another.
“Mark Briscoe’s injury was very challenging because Mark had been dealing with injuries for a while. I think some of us almost took it for granted because Mark is such a fighter. He’s such an amazing person and an amazing spirit. Mark is another person who so many people really feel like they can relate to. People really sympathize with Mark Briscoe, I think for many reasons. But also, I think he’s such a compelling wrestling character, and always has been. It’s why I enjoy working with him now so much. So I felt like Mark could be an emotional hook for their pay-per-view in a lot of ways, and it was a pivot.”
Khan described how he thought the on-screen moment with Kingston and Briscoe could lead to an even more special moment for Mark at ROH Death Before Dishonor, but he hadn’t realized how significant the injuries were. He then made it clear that he made many changes to the card and why he was willing to do it.
“I knew he was dealing with some injures, but honestly, he’d been dealing with them for a long time,” Khan said. “But I think the pain had become too much and I think it was getting very challenging for him. To be honest, he hadn’t really told a lot of people that, including our doctors. But the people who knew him really well knew he was hurting. I think Mark was no-selling. I know he was no-selling the doctors a little bit on how much pain he was in. That’s why they were a little surprised by how much this had become a lifestyle challenge to him, that he was really beat up and it was starting to affect his life.
“He came to me and he said, ‘Look, it’s worse than I’ve been letting on and I’m not sure I can do this.’ Well, that meant changing everything. We had shot a lot of stuff when we went to Mark. We had shot weeks of promos. Claudio went on a training sabbatical for Blood & Guts. He’s been in Switzerland. So we had shot weeks of promos and put all the pay-per-view materials together with Mark. If Mark Briscoe comes to me and says he needs something, I’m gonna do it, no matter what it is. If he needs time to heal up and needs me to pivot the pay-per-view, I’m gonna do that for him, without question. I’d do that for pretty much anybody, but I’ll do it with a smile for Mark Briscoe.”
The AEW CEO also described how an injury to Willow Nightingale impacted ROH Death Before Dishonor, as it hadn’t been clear whether she would be able to compete in the Owen Hart Foundation Women’s Tournament. Nightingale was ultimately announced as ROH Women’s World Champion Athena’s opponent for ROH Death Before Dishonor.
Khan compared the challenges of putting together the ROH card to that of 2022’s Forbidden Door. He also confirmed that the opponent for Castagnoli will be addressed this week.
WrestleZone will have coverage of ROH Death Before Dishonor 2023 as it airs on July 21.
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