Dave Meltzer Advised Tony Khan During AEW Battle Of The Belts
Tony Khan dealt with a weather issue during AEW’s Battle of the Belts broadcast and Dave Meltzer apparently reached out to offer some advice.
On Saturday, AEW aired three consecutive hours of live content from Calgary, Alberta, Canada. They had a two-hour episode of Collision featuring a 58-minute AEW Tag Team Championship match with FTR beating Bullet Club Gold to retain their titles.
Immediately following Collision, Tony Khan’s AEW team produced and aired a one-hour live show (starting at 10 p.m. ET on TNT) called Battle of the Belts IV featuring three championship matches.
During the Battle of the Belts broadcast, there were technical difficulties during the AEW Women’s Championship match between champion Toni Storm and challenger Taya Valkyrie. Due to technical difficulties, there was a black screen for about ten seconds and then a commercial aired. They showed footage from last week’s Collision after a commercial. The ending of the match was not shown when it happened.
Announcer Ian Riccaboni, who called the action on Collision & Battle of the Belts this week, said on the broadcast that due to severe thunderstorms in Calgary, the satellite feed died.
The finish of the match was shown later in the broadcast. Ruby Soho (an ally of Toni Storm) did a cheap shot punch to Valkyrie, which the referee didn’t see. That led to Storm hitting Storm Zero for the pinfall win.
On Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer said that he contacted Tony Khan during the Battle of the Belts broadcast to say that AEW needed to let viewers know what happened in the Storm-Valkyrie match.
“They missed the finish of the Taya Valkyrie – Toni Storm match. I actually — I don’t know what they knew, I kinda presumed they knew everything.
[Bryan Alvarez questions how much AEW management and the announce team knew about the feed going down]
I don’t know if they knew when it went out is what I’m saying. They may have, I just know that sent a message to Tony Khan and I go ‘You’ve got to tell’ — because when they came back they didn’t tell people the finish, I think they thought people knew the finish — They came back and were doing the next thing and I said ‘You’ve got to tell people who won that match because we don’t know, and if you get a chance you should put the finish on.’
Which they did end up putting the finish on right at the end of the show.”
There is a 3:18 clip on AEW’s YouTube channel showing the conclusion of the Storm-Valkyrie match. It’s also available on the TNT App for anybody interested in whole match.