CM Punk And Jon Moxley Praised By Tony Khan For “Tremendous” Ratings
Tony Khan has some high praise for two of his top AEW stars.
AEW President, Tony Khan took part in a media call ahead of this weekend’s All Out pay-per-view and when asked about the decision to have CM Punk and Jon Moxley’s title unification bout on the 8/24 episode of AEW Dynamite instead of this weekend’s All Out pay-per-view, Khan told InsideTheRopes’ Kenny McIntosh that he felt it was the right choice as he thought Punk and Moxley put together a great performance that’s brought many fans back in when it comes to the rematch between the two, this weekend.
“It’s a great question. A lot of people are asking it. I do think it’s been a big benefit. It’s different than what we’ve typically done and it’s funny, because it’s one extreme to the other because I’ve done go-home shows where all the hay is in the barn and sometimes it can be a challenge. You have everything really keyed up and you’re really just taking practice swings [laughs]. In this case, I knew it was going to be a fast and furious build-up, but I think the anticipation has been even stronger.”
“I wouldn’t say we should do it like this every time, but this is, I believe, the fifteenth pay-per-view for AEW, and we’ve never done anything like this. I think it made the build very exciting, it’s raised a lot of questions going into the match, there’s a lot of speculation about what the future holds for both men, what the future holds for the championship, and what’s going to happen in Jon Moxley vs. CM Punk part two based on what happened in that match on TV.”
Khan would continue the praise for two of his company’s top stars as he explained how both Punk and Moxley are major draws for the company, something he expects to show when it comes to the numbers for All Out.
“It also was undeniably a great ratings draw for us. We had a tremendous audience last week and I think most of the people, or a large percentage of the people on this call, hopefully will have seen the press release that Warner Bros. Discovery put out in support of the tremendous ratings we pulled last week. Again, we were the number one show on cable and had a big lift week-over-week, and the biggest thing of all that I thought was really, really cool was I thought we built even more interest and intrigue in the pay-per-view while doing the biggest total audience the show has done since February. So, I was really pleased with it.”
In this case, that was good. Now that we’re close to the pay-per-view and we had that amazing show last night and I feel like a lot of people’s wondering what the heck is going on here, the promos that Jon and Punk did reeled a lot of people back in and, in particular, hearing what Punk had to say in Chicago, I think people are up to see this great title fight on Sunday. I do feel very good about where we’re at with it now that we’ve had some great TV and there’s a lot of excitement going into Sunday’s pay-per-view.”
The updated card for AEW: All Out can be found below:
- Jon Moxley (C) vs. CM Punk — AEW World Championship
- Jade Cargill (C) vs. Athena — TBS Championship
- Toni Storm vs. Hikaru Shida vs. Jamie Hayter vs. Dr. Britt Baker D.M.D. — Interim AEW Women’s World Championship
- Swerve Strickland & Keith Lee (C) vs. The Acclaimed (Max Caster & Anthony Bowens — AEW World Tag Team Championship
- Wardlow & FTR (Dax Harwood & Cash Wheeler) vs. Jay Lethal & Motor City Machine Guns (Alex Shelley & Chris Sabin)
- Claudio Castagnoli vs. Dante Martin vs. Penta Oscuro vs. Rey Fenix vs. Andrade El Idolo vs. Rush vs. Wheeler Yuta vs. The Joker (TBA) — Casino Ladder Match
- Bryan Danielson vs. Chris Jericho
- Christian Cage vs. Jungle Boy
- Powerhouse Hobbs vs. Ricky Starks
- The Elite (Kenny Omega, Matt Jackson, and Nick Jackson) vs. Dark Order or Best Friends — AEW Trios World Championship
- House of Black vs. Sting, Darby Allin, and Miro
- HOOK (C) vs. Angelo Parker — FTW Championship — Zero Hour Pre-Show
- Eddie Kingston vs. Tomohiro Ishii — Zero Hour Pre-Show
For all of the latest on AEW All Out, you can click here.
AEW All Out takes place on Sunday, September 4, beginning with the ‘Zero Hour’ pre-show at 7:00 p.m. EDT/4:00 p.m. PDT and 1:00 a.m. BST on Monday, September 5 in the UK.
(h/t to InsideTheRopes for the transcriptions)