Tony Khan addresses recent criticism of his booking

AEW’s Tony Khan was on Battleground Podcast This week he touched on one of the most common criticisms of his booking – how he introduces newly signed stars to AEW programming. Sometimes a wrestler can be introduced with little or no fanfare, other times he’ll make a surprise debut and win his first match only to be off television with no apparent storyline mere weeks later. While there are plenty of examples of new talent making an impact upon arrival (Saraya comes to mind from the past few months), a few more recent examples have drawn criticism from fans.

The biggest was the surprise arrival of former Ring of Honor star Shane Taylor, who appeared in a behind-the-scenes segment at the AEW Rampage To face Keith Lee through history that took place years before AEW was even a promotion. This set up a tag team match at The last fight Between Taylor, JD Griffey (who was mentioned but not shown in the promo) and Swerve reunited in Our Glory.

“There are fans out there who haven’t seen Shane Taylor before, and that’s okay,” Khan said on the podcast (h / t fight). “You get to see new faces all the time. When I was a young wrestling fan, that was one of the things I loved about WCW Nitro. I think it would be ironic now that the same promoter [Eric Bischoff] She’ll tell you, you don’t want to see these faces or introduce new people on TV because they’re the ones who did it. Often, I hadn’t seen or read these new faces in a magazine before, and they’d come out and grapple on Nitro like it was completely normal and I thought it was the coolest thing. I think this is not acceptable anymore even though information is much easier to access on the internet than it was in 1996. I’ve seen wrestlers come from all promotions in the 90’s on Nitro. Wrestlers coming to TBS or TNT is nothing new. People complaining about it ad nauseam on the internet is definitely new. At the end of the day, you want to hear what the fans have to say. Overall, there has been a positive reception for the many international wrestlers coming to AEW.”

Ring of Honor will conclude its 2022 schedule with The last fight Pay-per-view on Saturday in Garland, Texas. Check out the offer card below:

  • ROH World Championship: Chris Jericho vs. Claudio Castagnoli
  • ROH World Television Championship: Samoa Joe vs. Juice Robinson
  • ROH Pure Championship: Daniel Garcia vs Wheeler Utah
  • ROH Women’s World Championship: Mercedes Martinez vs Athena
  • He swerved at Our Glory against Shane Taylor and JD Griffey

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