Mansoor reveals that they had to win over Tony Khan as he didn’t know MxM could wrestle.
Mansor and Mason Madden were released from their WWE contracts in September 2023. They signed for Ring of Honor in the summer of 2024 and quickly impressed Tony Khan. The duo made their debut in AEW soon after, despite Tony Khan having no idea they were good wrestlers at that point.
Mansoor and Mason Madden recently sat down with Chris Jericho on Talk is Jericho. The duo explained how they aimed to make it in AEW after their WWE release, but had to impress Tony Khan with their gimmick and wrestling ability.
“We thought for sure. ‘Well, the only other place we can make money in this business is AEW, let’s switch it up. Let’s be something we think AEW would like.’ We got new gear made,” Mason Madden explained (via Fightful). “We wanted to stick together because we felt like that was our appeal, our chemistry and the fact that we were the only tag team that stuck together post-release in that class. We were like, ‘Yeah, let’s stick together but let’s be a little bit more of ourselves.’ We’ll kind of tone it down, way down.”
“I think the intention was to prove to the audience that watches independent promotions that we can go,” Mansoor added. “I think there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that we could portray larger than life characters or cut promos, but as far as bell-to-bell, what can these guys do?”
Mansoor and Mason Madden On Winning Over Tony Khan
“We had never had a match on TV longer than four minutes [laughs],” Madden noted. “We definitely outpaced our WWE match time in like a month in AEW.”
“Honestly, we won over Tony because he didn’t know that we could wrestle. He had no clue,” Mansoor continued. “I think he brought us in as these guys, well, there’s a million great wrestlers in AEW. There’s no shortage of the best wrestlers. We have the best wrestlers in the world. But what can these guys do in terms of entertainment and bringing the live crowd on their feet with something crazy and something different.”
“But the fact that we were able to marry the two in our first couple of matches — I mean our first match on AEW television was FTR. To Tony’s testament, what a genius move, what a contrast of styles. No other team could have made us look as real to ourselves as possible as FTR. In that match, they were so serious and down to earth wrestlers. I was jumping into his arms like Scooby-Doo. Once we had that match and got the ball rolling, we were getting trusted to have these two segment matches where it was going at a pace where the crowds were really getting into it, as well as entertaining people with our antics, we were off to the races.”
