Tony Khan Says New Guidelines Won’t Change AEW Shows

Tony Khan is trying to assure AEW’s fans that the recently-leaked internal guidelines restricting certain actions and moves won’t have a major impact on the company’s overall product.

Over the past few days, there has been plenty of discussion over an internal document that serves as a rulebook for the company’s wrestlers going forward.

The guide was divided into two categories: prohibited items and items requiring coach/agent approval.

The former includes things like: unprotected chair shots to the head, bucklebombs, and any sort of physical interaction with the crowd (including taking their food/drinks, bleeding while crowd brawling, and a wrestler holding another wrestler in place so that a fan can chop them). This category also includes doing a seizure sell and spitting in all forms.

The second category is much longer and more extensive. It includes a wide variety of moves that could be done safely but carry significantly more risk. Moves in this category include: various piledriver variations, the poisoned Frankensteiner, the vertebreaker, 450/630 splashes, the double moonsault, and the shooting star press.

This isn’t the complete list; however, that can be found here, courtesy of the Wrestling Observer.

With so many things now being either forbidden or restricted, some have wondered if the company is being too heavy-handed with what its wrestlers can and cannot do going forward.

In response, Tony Khan has vowed that the overall quality of AEW’s regular programming will remain unchanged.

“Yes, I want to have a great pro wrestling company, a hard-hitting pro wrestling company. Those aren’t really crazy changes. It’s nothing that’s going to change the show. It’s really more guidelines for the referees than anything else, and it’s good stuff for the wrestlers to know.”

h/t Fightful for the transcription