While the depth of the All Elite Wrestling roster has often been criticized, Tony Khan has proven how valuable it was to the company throughout 2022.
All Elite Wrestling President Tony Khan recently sat down with Anthony Sulla-Heffinger of Yahoo Sports to discuss a wide variety of subjects. When asked about all the injuries the company has had to deal with as of late, Khan reflected on how availability was a great challenge for the young company over the last year.
“Looking back at a year with these wrestlers, it’s been the strangest thing because of the availability,” Tony Khan said. “We had the first three champions in the history of AEW — Chris Jericho, Jon Moxley and Kenny Omega — and then we added these three stars in the summer of last year. Within a couple of months, Omega, due to a variety of injuries, had to step away in November. Moxley, for his personal health, had to step away in November and right after that, Jericho had a blood clot. All of a sudden we went from having these six huge stars — on top of the talent up and down the card — to having our first three champions need to take time for their health.”
Khan once again got blindsided by the injury bug heading into their Forbidden Door pay-per-view with New Japan Pro-Wrestling when AEW World Champion CM Punk and Bryan Danielson went down with injuries causing a great deal of the card to be altered in the process.
“I think Forbidden Door was the most challenging pay-per-view we’ve ever put together,” Tony Khan said. “People don’t know half of the stories about the challenges. It was really pushing and pulling to get the wrestlers from New Japan sooner than they were originally scheduled to arrive. New Japan worked with me and we got Will Ospreay and Tanahashi in a little earlier than planned. Nobody will know the full plans, but I’ve publicly admitted there were some really cool matches that had to change in the build to Forbidden Door and that changed the rest of the summer.”
With AEW All Out on the horizon, Tony Khan is very excited about the fact that his insanely deep roster is once again approaching full strength.
“The goal is to strike a balance between having happy fans, good stories and a happy locker room,” Tony Khan said. “I think for the most part we do have that. I think the really exciting thing about All Out and this week for AEW is that we are approaching a full-strength roster again. It felt like last year we kicked off a season — it was a wild, tumultuous, one — but we had some of our greatest business heights. It has been challenging but I do believe this will wind up being one of our greatest pay-per-views.”
READ MORE: Tony Khan: The Fans Are Always Right, Their Opinions Are Always The Most Important Ones
What do you make of Tony Khan’s comments? Are you excited for AEW All Out on Sunday? Let us know your thoughts by sounding off in the comments section below.
