AEW President and CEO Tony Khan appeared on the Battleground podcast to discuss various topics, including what he considers to be an excessive number of titles for a wrestling company.
Khan said, “Well, it’s a great question. I think that right now we do AEW Wednesday Night Dynamite. We’ve got Saturday Night Collision, four hours of peak prime time programming. Certainly, I’m not talking about adding any more championships, but it’s been great to add this AEW Women’s World Tag Team Championship. I think that’s going to be very important, and we got so many great women in AEW right now. So, I was really pumped to add that championship. And then uh we’ve got a new National Champion, Ricochet, who will be defending that title all over the world. and somebody that not only AEW fans uh respect, I believe as a great great wrestler, but somebody that is a huge name in wrestling and a great person to represent AEW here on our TV shows, but also traveling to other promotions in America, companies like Ring of Honor, but also New Japan Strong and traveling to Mexico with CMLL and lots of other promotions want to bring in Ricochet. He’s a hot booking right now as the national champion. So, that’s a great thing for us, and those are really the only championships we’ve looked to add in recent years, and it’s really with the expanded AEW programming that we’ve got.”
On the motivation behind introducing the National Championship:
“Well, we’ve never had any champion from AEW go to Ring of Honor and defend a title. There’s never been that. So, that was something interesting. But also knowing that CMLL and New Japan are very interested in booking an AEW champion, and all of them have asked about Ricochet specifically. So, that worked out very well. Ricochet’s gone and represented AEW and New Japan. He’s represented AW and CMLL, and he’s also a great TV star on our shows. He’s somebody that I would love to have in any kind of championship match in AEW at any time. So, uh, I think a great winner for that first National Championship. And whoever wins the Women’s World Tag Team Championship is going to be a very deserving winner. We’re down to the final few teams, and we’re going to find out who’s going to the finals tomorrow night in that holiday hardcore death match.”
On if the new Women’s World Tag Team Titles can be defended outside of AEW:
“Absolutely. We would defend those women’s tag team titles from AEW in any promotion, and whoever wins this tournament. They’re going to be great representatives. We’re down to the final few teams in the AEW Women’s World Tag Team Title Tournament, and they’re all great teams. We’ve got six great competitors left, and we find out who’s going to be going to the finals tonight on Wednesday Night Dynamite.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
