Tony Khan Was Mad AEW Match Didn’t Get 5 Stars
Tony Khan was left mad after one AEW match didn’t achieve five star status.
Dave Meltzer’s star-rating system has become a lightning rod of debate in the pro wrestling world with fans and wrestlers alike either putting great stock into it or not.
AEW boss Tony Khan seems to be someone who cares about the stars however as Chris Jericho explained on his Talk Is Jericho podcast that Khan was left upset after Jericho’s match with Jon Moxley in August 2022 fell just short of five stars:
“August 10, 2022, it was Jericho vs Moxley for the title. Punk was hurt at this point in time and we had a blast. It was in Minneapolis and this is where Mox had the idea for me to come back as Lionheart which I thought was a really cool concept and a cool thought. I came out to the White Zombie music and I had the old-school Lionheart-inspired tights.
“They weren’t the original Lionheart tights, I went to look for them in my storage unit, and I couldn’t find the exact ones. So I thought, well if KISS was going to do a replica of their 1977 costumes, they wouldn’t wear the same ones. They would get new ones made. So I got new tights made that look like the Lionheart.
“Tony was so impressed because I had lost so much weight from my pulmonary embolism. He’s like, You look like you did you know when you were actually the Lionheart in 96. And actually, I did look kind of similar in a lot of ways.
“We had just a hard-hitting match, I love working with Mox. He’s such a great performer, such a great wrestler, and I legit hit my head on the steel ring post, I took the turnbuckle pad off and I hit the ring post, and I legit got hit, I still have a nasty scar in the middle of my forehead from that cut, and very jagged.
“That’s why it’s nasty because it was really from the turnbuckle pad. And so it was just covered in blood and it was actually the only time anybody’s ever kicked out of the Judas Effect, you know, because I figured this is the time to do it. And it was such a great match. I really, really loved it.
“I remember Tony was mad that Meltzer didn’t give us five stars, he gave us four and three-quarters like it was pretty much the same thing. But it was a five-star match in my book, one of my favourites, and I’ve always had great chemistry with Mox because we’d like beating the sh*t out of each other. It’s that simple. We really have no boundaries when it comes to working together. Just the same thing I used to say to Benoit, don’t break my nose and don’t snap my teeth, other than hit me as hard as you can. So just a great match with great chemistry.”
How many five star matches have there been in Tony Khan’s AEW?
In the four years that AEW has been running shows, the promotion has attained 23 five star (or above) matches with the latest of those coming on the 15th of July edition of Collision when FTR defeated Jay White and Juice Robinson to retain their AEW Tag Team Championship.
In comparison, WWE has only had 18 five star matches since Meltzer first handed out the honour in 1982. WrestleMania 39 had two of those with both Kevin Owens & Sami Zayn taking on The Usos and GUNTHER defending his Intercontinental Title against Sheamus and Drew McIntyre both achieving the benchmark.
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