AEW: Tony Khan Addresses Recent Criticism of His Booking

12/06/2022 09:48 am EST

AEW's Tony Khan was on the Battleground Podcast this week and addressed one of the more prevalent criticisms regarding his booking — how he introduces newly-signed stars to AEW programming. Sometimes a wrestler can be introduced with little to no fanfare, other times they'll make their surprise debut and win their first match only to be off TV with no clear storyline mere weeks later. While there are plenty of examples of new talent successfully making an impact upon arrival (Saraya comes to mind from the last few months), a few recent examples have drawn criticism from fans. 

The biggest was the sudden arrival of former Ring of Honor star Shane Taylor, who popped up in a backstage segment on AEW Rampage to confront Keith Lee over history that took place years before AEW was even a promotion. This set up a tag team match at Final Battle between Taylor and JD Griffey (who was mentioned but not shown in the promo) and a reunited Swerve in Our Glory. 

"There are fans who have never seen Shane Taylor before, and that's okay," Khan said on the podcast (h/t Fightful). "You get introduced to new faces all the time. When I was a young wrestling fan, that was one of the things I liked about WCW Nitro. I think it would be very ironic now that the same promoter [Eric Bischoff] would tell you, you don't want to see these faces or introduce new people on TV because they were the ones who did that. A lot of times these new faces or read in a magazine, I'd never seen before and they would just walk out and wrestle on Nitro like it was perfectly natural and I thought it was the coolest thing. I guess that's not acceptable anymore even though its much much easier to access information on the internet than it was in 1996. You saw wrestlers coming in from all promotions in the 90s on Nitro. Wrestlers coming to TBS or TNT is nothing new. People complaining about it ad nauseam on the internet is certainly new. At the end of the day, you want to listen to what the fans are saying. Overall, there has been a positive reception to a lot of international wrestlers coming to AEW."

Ring of Honor will wrap up its 2022 schedule with the Final Battle pay-per-view this Saturday in Garland, Texas. Check out the card for the show below:

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