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AEW President Tony Khan Comments on Tag Team Tournament to Crown Champions, TNT TV Deal and More

By John Canton • Published 18th June 2019
TJR Wrestling

The Steve Austin Show podcast returned after a hiatus earlier this year with a new episode where he talked about All Elite Wrestling’s CEO and President Tony Khan. They covered a lot of subjects with Austin talking about how he enjoyed the AEW “Double or Nothing” pay-per-view debut on May 25th. Austin said he was really impressed by it.

During the discussion, Tony revealed some details about AEW’s plans for championships in the company and more. Thanks to WrestlingInc for the transcript of these quotes.

Khan commented on plans for AEW’s Tag Team Championships:

“When we launch our weekly television show in the fall, we are going to be doing a tag team tournament that is going to have some of the greatest tag team wrestling matches ever on television. We are going to be starting that, which is going be one of the main focuses on our TV. There are going to be teams that are going to compete for a first-round bye in that tournament, which is a big deal, and we have got some of the best tag teams in all of pro wrestling competing for our Tag Team Championships coming up in the fall.”

Khan also revealed that they will also have a Women’s Champion and Women’s Tag Team Champions as well.

Khan talked about the tag team feud between The Young Bucks (Matt and Nick Jackson) and Lucha Bros (Pentagon and Fenix):

“What is exciting about the match between The Young Bucks and Lucha Bros is that we have been working on this issue for a long time. If you look back to when we first went to Las Vegas for the ticket on-sale party, when we announced the on-sale date for the pre-sale code for the Double or Nothing sale, we went to the MGM, which was right after the Super Bowl. The Young Bucks had said that they thought they were the best tag team in the world and the Lucha Bros showed up. They are the AAA Tag Team Champions – that’s cool to me because I am a huge fan of wrestling and I remember When World’s Collide PPV very fondly, with Eddie Guerrero and Art Barr kind of changing the game down in Mexico. I thought that this was more of a modern tag team classic [between Lucha Bros and The Young Bucks], and we have tried to establish this issue in so many ways.”

Khan discussed the AEW TV debut on TNT starting in October:

“[TNT was a good choice for AEW because] my friend, Kevin Reilly, is the president of TNT and TBS. It’s going to start in the Fall. There will be specific details on that very soon, and it’s going to be really exciting for pro wrestling to return to TNT in prime time, weeknights, for a 2-hour live wrestling show. I can’t tell you the day of the week, but I think it’s going to be the best pro wrestling show anyone has ever done. All Out is going to be our last pay per view going into it.”

Khan also commented on the two main singles matches at All Out on August 31 in Chicago.

“We have set up this issue with Chris Jericho and Hangman Page and we are going to continue setting up these huge issues; And now we have set up another big event with Kenny Omega and Jon Moxley.”

It’s a good podcast and I recommend checking it out if you want to learn more from Khan. He was thrilled that Austin loved the Double or Nothing PPV, so I’m sure everybody involved with AEW will be happy to know that Austin loved Double or Nothing.

Tony and Steve also commented on their discussion on Twitter.