Tony Khan Expected Injured AEW Star Back By Now
Tony Khan is still without an exciting young star.
At Forbidden Door, Nick Wayne was scheduled to team with Kip Sabian to face Adam Copeland and Christian Cage. However, just days before the show, Wayne was pulled from the match and replaced by Killswitch, who was wrestling his first match in several months.
It was subsequently reported that Wayne had suffered a broken foot and would be out for around eight to ten weeks. However, he remains out of action.
Tony Khan Expected Nick Wayne Back
During the pre-ROH Final Battle media call, Tony Khan revealed that he originally hoped that Wayne would be back in action by showtime; however, that hasn’t proven to be the case. He added that if he had known Wayne would be injured this long, he would have crowned an Interim ROH World TV Champion.
Khan went on to heap praise on Wayne, citing stars such as Adam Copeland, Christian Cage, and Darby Allin, who are also high on the star.
“Well, I’ll be honest, the timeline on this particular injury changed, which is the nature of injuries. You can expect when somebody recovers but when it’s a bad injury, it can take longer. We’ve had some of those happening in AEW…
Nick Wayne got hurt in the ring. It’s not his fault, and we thought he would 100 percent be back for Final Battle. I would have bet money, and I’m not allowed to bet money, but if I was allowed to bet money, I would have bet money that Nick Wayne would be back for Final Battle, and he’s not but I would have to be honest, at Death Before Dishonor, I did not know that Nick Wayne would not be back by now.
I didn’t know that a few months ago that was gonna be the case or we probably would have crowned an Interim TV Champion for when he is back. We’re at the point now where I think Nick is getting close hopefully to coming back, and he’s a great, young wrestler.
This is one of the top young wrestlers in the world. Somebody I really like working with and I’m very, very fond of and somebody that has had the mentorship of one of the all-time greats in Christian Cage and that’s my opinion… Nick Wayne, to me, has such a bright future, and everybody who’s been around him sees — and these are people I really respect a lot, whether it’s Christian Cage, Adam Copeland, Darby Allin.
People that I think the world of, they’ve all praised Nick Wayne to me. Again, Adam Copeland, who’s one of the most accomplished wrestlers ever and is somebody who came into AEW with a fresh pair of eyeballs and immediately took to Nick Wayne and said, ‘This is a brilliant kid, and some of the instincts he has at his age are remarkable,’ and I’ve heard that from these great minds…
All of them have said to me that Nick is the future and I see it. I see it in Nick. He is a prodigy. He is legitimately the prodigy, and I would have, at this point, put an interim champion in position to have the title being defended if I had known that Nick would not be medically cleared by now but there was no way to predict that. Again, that’s not Nick’s fault.”
AEW is currently without the likes of Will Ospreay, Jay White, Wardlow, Buddy Matthews, and Kota Ibushi through injury, while Andrade remains out of action thanks to his complicated legal status.
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H/t to Fightful