Yeah, but whose side are they on?
Tony Khan says he called back to one of professional wrestling’s most infamous moments when he was putting together Adam Cole’s AEW debut at All Out.
Khan recently spoke with DAZN and talked about how Adam Cole made his debut, noting that he wanted it to be similar to how Hulk Hogan shocked the world at WCW Bash At The Beach in 1996. That night, Hogan came to the ring and looked to be siding with WCW, but ultimately aligned with Kevin Nash and Scott Hall and formed the nWo. Khan says he aimed for that same feeling with Cole joining The Elite, but took it further by having Bryan Danielson’s debut on the same show.
“Do you remember Bash at the Beach 96?” asks Khan. “That’s what I wanted at All Out, but I also wanted to go one step further. You’ve already this great show with great action and then Adam Cole comes out and you think he’s there to take on The Elite. Instead, he joins the group the way Hogan turned heel. Is that the close to the show? No, but it would’ve been a good ending regardless.
“[Then] here comes Bryan Danielson. One of the best wrestlers there’s ever been and he’s here in AEW. Cole and Danielson in one segment. That was pretty cool,” Khan added.
Similar to how the nWo helped usher in a boom period for wrestling back then, Tony Khan feels like something similar is on the horizon.
“I think wrestling fans should strap in for a big ride. We’re not there yet but I feel it’s close. Things are happening and I don’t think it’s going to be too long before wrestling fans are going to feel what I felt in the late 1990s when WWE and WCW went at trying to provide the best entertainment possible. I feel like we’ve come so far in the brief time we’ve been around but there’s still a lot more to come and that’s what we are trying to work on all of the time. We arrived with some short-term goals relating to talent and TV deals, and now we can aim bigger because we still have a lot to achieve.”
Read More: Tony Khan: Our Goal Remains The Same, ‘I Want Wrestling Fans To Know They Can Count On Us’
