Tony Khan: “It’s gonna be a huge year for us”

Jan 10, 2022 - by James Walsh

In a recent interview on Rasslin’ with Brandon Walker, Tony Khan discussed putting the former Undisputed Era members back together in AEW, having huge plans for AEW in 2022, and much more. You can read his comments below.

Tony Khan on adding the Battle of the Belts specials moving forward: “They will be Saturday night quarterly specials. Saturday night fight nights in prime time. They will all be an hour at 8 PM. It’s a lot of fun. It was something that along with the move to TBS, I was talking to TNT, and we had something really great going with TNT, in addition to TBS. They love Rampage. Rampage has been such a hit and it’s exceeded all our expectations. We had a great lift in ratings towards the end of the year too thanks to some great wrestlers and some great wrestling. Now Rampage is still on TNT on Friday nights and Battle of the Belts is quarterly on TNT.”

On putting the former Undisputed Era members back together in AEW: “They still have issues. So like, when [Kyle O’Reilly] came in, obviously, it’s a proven act. We have done great numbers. The only time in the demo in the ‘Wednesday Night War,’ which somebody told me, and it’s good advice, maybe we should make our own documentary of the Wednesday Night War [laughs]. I feel like it’s a really good idea. Not any revisions, be like, we could call it like, whatever it was, 76-1 or 75-1. The ‘1’ in 75, 76 to 1 involved Adam Cole in a huge match. Most of the good quarters and good numbers, I thought he was such an important part of it, but also you can’t overlook like you said, Kyle O’Reilly and Bobby Fish. When Bobby Fish came in, again it made total sense. What, are we not going to put Bobby Fish and Adam Cole back together? Adam Cole is with the Young Bucks, so how does that work? And they had a great match, an eight-man tag that was tremendous against the Best Friends with Orange Cassidy, and it really helped give a surge for Rampage. Because if you study the numbers and look, they had the biggest match we’ve had there in a long time and we did a big number and we were up like 29 percent week over week. And then the next week, we came back on Christmas, and we were up another nine percent with the Cody winning the TNT Title from Sammy.”

On having huge plans for AEW in 2022: “It’s gonna be a huge year for us. We’ve expanded the roster so much, and it’s a more competitive and diverse roster than it has ever been. I have some huge plans for 2022 that have been a long time in the making. Then I have some huge plans for 2022 to build a stronger, more diverse representation across the board. Nobody knows what it is yet, but I have a couple of really cool, exciting things that are going to be coming up in the next month or six weeks. It’s going to be really good. It’s been stuff that’s been a long time planned. It’s going to be awesome, but there’s also going to be stuff that just kind of came up to be honest with you that’s going to be pretty dope.”

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