Want more wrestling news, rumors, and results? Be sure to visit PWInsider.com and PWInsiderXtra.com.
AEW President Tony Khan took part in a media call today to discuss Saturday's All Out PPV. Highlights:
What the next steps look like for Khan in terms of securing AEW's future once the Paramound-WBD merger is official: "I am very excited about it. I think it's tremendous for all of us in AEW, and it means a really bright future for the company. For Paramount and Warner Bros., it's a huge process. I'm thrilled that AEW is a big part of Warner Bros. TV, and we've been on TBS and TNT now for seven years. It's really been an awesome addition to have AEW on HBO Max as well these past couple of years, and our pay-per-view business now is celebrating one year on HBO Max. The first AEW pay-per-view on HBO Max was AEW All Out 2025. We've come so far in a year. All of our biggest pay-per-views have been in 2026. We've grown the business so much, and the biggest pay-per-view we've done yet was the most recent show, AEW All In London. Going into AEW All Out, the growth of the company on HBO Max has been tremendous. The viewership of AEW TV has been excellent; we've had some of the best Dynamite ratings, in particular, in years on TBS. That's in addition to the new viewers that we've added in that time on HBO Max since we went on that platform in 2025. We're seeing the best viewership on TBS in years, going back to before we added those HBO Max viewers additionally. As far as future steps, we've got a great commitment in place for a TV deal that has been fantastic for AEW, as I've been talking about, and that has expanded the viewership of the show to include streaming on HBO Max simulcast with the live shows on TBS and Collision on TNT. I think that going forward, hopefully, we'll have all this settled soon, and I'm really excited to work with the new Paramount Warner Bros. I think together the companies will be stronger to compete in what is an unprecedented media landscape right now. Together, I think they will be very competitive in what is a field of massive competitors. This, I think, is very, very good for AEW. AEW is a strong performer in the Warner Bros. family. The demographic that I get all the reports on, which is the very first line on every report I get from Warner Bros. Discovery, is 25-to-54 viewership, and we were the number one show on cable last week in that demographic. I think that certainly our performance and the excellent fanbase and support we get from our fans makes AEW a really attractive property, and I know that's the case. When Warner Bros. and Discovery merged and the Discovery executives came to Warner Bros. several years ago, that was a big unknown. These were executives that I had never worked with. The NFL and Discovery had very limited interactions and partnerships at that point in 2022 compared to now, and certainly for AEW, it was an exciting time. We were a young company, a hot company as we are now, though we were several years younger. Looking ahead to a future with a company that had changed a lot, what was very exciting about it is AEW grew, and as the new executives came in, AEW was one of the properties they were very interested in from the very beginning when Discovery joined with Warner Bros. in 2022. They created new opportunities for us that led to the creation of AEW Collision. We forged a new media partnership, and within that pact, as I've said, it increased the number of homes available for AEW massively by making AEW a presence on HBO Max. This acquisition, I think, for us is very exciting for different reasons. This is much less of an unknown to me. This is somebody I'm very familiar with and have a lot of respect for. Skydance has worked with NFL Films for years, and that's where I first met David Ellison, through the partnership of Skydance and NFL Films, and I was very impressed by him and stayed in touch. Then when Skydance and Paramount came together when David Ellison bought Paramount, it brought the NFL and Skydance even closer together, as CBS is a fantastic and very long-term and historic media partner for the National Football League. David Ellison running CBS has a fantastic relationship with the NFL, so he's somebody that I've worked with in the past in football and have had great experiences with. He's somebody who is the same age as me, is a wrestling fan and a big sports fan, and somebody that I believe is going to be a great leader when this closes. So for AEW, I think this is exciting because we grew in a situation where the new corporate leadership in 2022 at that time, over four years ago, was something of an unknown entity to us, and we really won them over immediately. It's something I take a lot of pride in. We've been through several different regimes here. When AEW launched, AT&T was still in charge, and then it's been a lot of change with Discovery coming in. There was a period of transition there during 2020 and 2021 where a lot of changes were made before Discovery took over in 2022, and they've made a lot of changes over the years. For AEW, they've been changes for the better, clearly, as we've grown the company and expanded. Now, we enter something that I consider more of a known quantity, and I'm very excited about it. I think we've proven that AEW is a feather in the cap of a media company, that we are a great partner, and for me, I'll work to make sure that AEW fits in any corporate structure. I'll work very hard. I think I've proven time after time that I am the ultimate corporate soldier, and that is why AEW continues to grow and expand as the media landscape changes. I think that's why Warner Bros., even as the company has evolved and changed, has always considered AEW a very important part of the portfolio for years and years, and I expect that's going to continue with AEW and Warner Bros. for many years to come. Thank you very much for asking."
Steven Borden: "Well, I first met Steven when he was playing college football. I don't know, did you know that? If you didn't, Steven played football at the University of Kentucky. He was a tight end and a very, very gifted athlete even then, and he still is a very gifted athlete. Several years ago, I actually brought Steven to Jacksonville and he tried out for the Jaguars. He's a great athlete and a great guy. That's the first time I met Steve's father, Sting. I really enjoyed connecting with the two of them, and as Steven's football career ended, Sting got back into wrestling. What a final chapter Sting wrote for his career. The final three years of Sting's wrestling career were in AEW, and from Revolution 2021 to Revolution 2024, Sting went undefeated and had this incredible run in AEW. Steven was right here for so much of it, and it invigorated his passion for pro wrestling in a way he had never experienced it. He saw his father having so much fun, and Steven connected with us in AEW and with his father's partner, Darby Allin. As we prepared for Sting's final match, Steven and Garrett became part of the story when Sting and Darby won the World Tag Team Championships in their penultimate match together going into Revolution. It was a celebration, and of course at the time, Steven and Garrett, Sting's sons, were celebrating with their father when they were attacked. It made things even more personal for Sting and for Darby to have Sting's family attacked that way. We saw Steven and Garrett come to Revolution dressed as Sting in different points of his incredible, iconic professional wrestling career. I also, when I saw Steven out there, saw a different side of Steven than the tight end I had watched play for Kentucky, and a different guy than I had seen backstage, who is a very, very nice person, a handsome guy, a very fun, engaging person. I saw him for something much more in that match than I'd ever seen as a wrestler. What an athlete. I saw Steven out there and I had chills. I was so excited that he wanted to train and get involved in wrestling, and Darby is such an incredible person. He is so authentic, and he's been a great mentor to Steven in and out of the ring. It was a great bond between Sting and Darby; they learned so much from each other. Two great wrestlers, two world champions from different eras coming together and forming what I thought was a perfect team for three years undefeated together. Now it's incredible to have Steven Borden come into AEW. Talk about two of the greatest young wrestlers in the world in Kyle Fletcher and Kevin Knight. Don Callis certainly knows how to recruit top talent, and as we do in AEW, we are where the best wrestle, and many of those great wrestlers are trained and managed by Don Callis. In the case of Kyle Fletcher, what a fantastic wrestler. He has been a tag team wrestler, he has been a top singles star, one of the top stars in AEW. Kevin Knight, the same now can be said for him: he's been part of a top tag team in AEW, he's broken out as a great singles star. Both of these men have been in pay-per-view main events, they've both competed for world championships, held singles championships, trios championships. Neither one of them has ever been a World Tag Team Champion, and it would complete quite a career arc to be a top champion in AEW, to be able to be a trios champion, tag champion, and singles champion. This is a World Championship match in the sense that you get a shot at the winner of the ladder match. So certainly when you have World Championship contention at stake, there's big stakes here. Knowing that Kevin Knight and Kyle Fletcher both have been at or near the very top of AEW at times, and Darby Allin has certainly been at the top of AEW, you have these three very experienced yet young professional wrestlers entering or in the peak of their careers. You have Steven Borden, who is a wrestler in the prime of his athletic life, who is not as experienced as the other three, but he has so many intangibles. He's got the support of the fans, he's got all this athleticism. There's so much to be interested in, and the winner of this match is going to get a shot at the World Tag Team Championship versus the winner of the three-way ladder match. So there are effectively World Championship stakes, a path to a title shot for the winner of this match, and I'm very excited about it. I'm excited for all four wrestlers, and I think it's going to be an awesome match on a really tremendous lineup for AEW All Out this Saturday. Steven Borden and Darby Allin versus Kevin Knight and Kyle Fletcher is one of the very, very interesting matches that I am excited about for Saturday. Thank you."
Will Ospreay's walk-out at All In: "I thought that was one of our greatest nights, and certainly the main event of Kenny Omega versus Will Ospreay for the World Title was the perfect culmination to what I believe is the best event we've ever done. That was something that meant a lot to Will, and I know having so many of his closest allies, biggest rivals, people who have been really important to his journey, it was very important to Will. Exactly how we were going to do it, there were a lot of different versions of it throughout the weeks leading into the pay-per-view. A lot of different ideas, a lot of people bounced around to be there, and like so many great things in wrestling, the final version that gets put out is the best version after a lot of brainstorming. Lots of versions of this, that was perfect. The people, the presentation, the idea of how it was going to be done, whether it would be live or the video—there were so many different ideas. This was the perfect way to do it: to have a video AND to have that walk, and put it all together and have one of the greatest video packages I've ever seen in wrestling followed by that walk and featuring those people live on Ospreay's walk to the ring. It was awesome, and it was a great brainstorm with a bunch of people. Most importantly, it was very authentic to Will and it was what he wanted, and it was a perfect way to do it and have your cake and eat it too. We had the perfect video package and a great live moment."
Mercedes Mone: "Mercedes Moné was originally scheduled to wrestle on AEW All Out, and that's the nature of wrestling. It's a hard-hitting sport, there are injuries, and just like in all sports, you have to have a deep roster and be able to think on your feet and be flexible. That's what's great about AEW: there are so many great wrestlers in this company, and in this case, multiple former world champions looking to step up and fight each other to get in line to fight the champ. In Mercedes' case, it's not a long, long-term injury; it's something where she'll be back. I think she'll be back next month, and I'm almost certain she'll be back next month. That's the plan, is for Mercedes to return in October. That's why we have this match on the pay-per-view to determine who will challenge for the World Title at our next pay-per-view, Wrestledream. So Mercedes' injury did affect plans. She was originally set to wrestle at AEW All Out, and I think she very much wants to wrestle on Saturday, but the doctors have not cleared her. So that's a great question by you. Yes, Mercedes' injury did change things, but Mercedes is a fighting champion. She's going to be, I think, a fighting champion, and she will be fighting next month."
World's End 2026 given the Jaguars have a Sunday game towards the end of December: " There will definitely be a World's End pay-per-view this year. That's a really great question and very good observation by you looking at the calendar. There will be a World's End pay-per-view, and we're looking ahead and planning the calendar for later in the year. Of course, World's End will be the culmination of the Continental Classic, which is always one of the highlights of AEW in recent years, and World's End is a tremendous pay-per-view, I believe. I really enjoyed the show last year, and as you said, speaking of the Jags, it was a great memory for me. I didn't get a lot of sleep that day or that night or the next day, but it was a great memory having that World's End pay-per-view, and then taking a red-eye to Indianapolis and arriving at the hotel as the coaches were getting on the bus to go to the stadium, and then going to the stadium and the Jaguars had a great win, and then going back home and watching World's End again! It was a great day, and I'm really looking forward to it, so stay tuned for the announcements about World's End. That is a very astute observation by you about the calendar."
Andy Williams and his passing: "Andy was very interested in working in the office, and he had really good ideas, so I had set up a meeting with Andy and the AEW officials last month to talk about his thoughts on ways he could contribute to promoting. Andy had ideas that he could do music shows in collaboration with AEW and build some events outside of the wrestling show that would get eyeballs on the wrestling show and maybe bring some people from the music community into wrestling. That is one of his ideas; he had a number of good ideas including that. I thought it was really compelling what Andy was saying, and I was interested in it, so that is why we set up a meeting and Andy came in last month to talk about it. It was something we were still actively working on, and unfortunately, at the time of his passing, it was still something that was in progress. Andy contributed in many different ways to AEW, and he really loved the company, loved the wrestling, and I wanted Andy to stay a part of it. I also really loved the ideas he had; I thought they would add value, and also he was the big contributor there—he was going to be somebody that would bridge the worlds of music and wrestling. To have him say he would play the shows and help bring in the fans and promote AEW that way, I thought it was really interesting and exciting. So that was one of the main points of Andy's ideas. He had several good ideas, and that one in particular really stood out to me. I thought it was a very strong concept. And when Andy passed, it was very hard on a lot of the people in AEW. I think a lot of people really, really liked Andy here; he was a very, very well-liked guy backstage for many, many reasons. A very talented person, very humble, very, very kind, big heart, just a really nice guy. I wanted to make sure we did a show in his memory that was befitting his stature and the way that everybody felt about him. I thought that a lot of that came across very accurately in the Andy Williams tribute show, and I was very, very proud of everyone in AEW coming together that day and putting that together for Andy. We'll miss him very much."
If you enjoy PWInsider.com you can check out the AD-FREE PWInsider Elite section, which features exclusive audio updates, news, our critically acclaimed podcasts, interviews and more by clicking here!
Bang On Casino
