AEW President and CEO Tony Khan participated in the AEW Full Gear 2025 media call. During the call, he discussed several topics, including the reasoning behind the matchup between Hiroshi Tanahashi and Kazuchika Okada at next year’s NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 20.
Khan said, “I think that the timing of the announcement was important because, as I understand, Tanahashi was involved in some big matches up to that point with major stakes, and his spot might have — he may have been in different matches, including championship matches in New Japan Pro-Wrestling, based on how some of his other bouts went. This is always what we’d talked about. It made sense on the AEW calendar for a number of reasons. But also, it made sense on New Japan’s calendar as I understood for a number of reasons, so we were all very happy about the huge, huge buzz around the announcement and the great ticket sales for New Japan Pro-Wrestling with the announcement of Okada versus Tanahashi at the Tokyo Dome.”
On how the plan was Always for Okada to face Tanahashi at Wrestle Kingdom 20:
“For us, Okada was always the plan — that he would travel — and it’s an honor that AEW and Kazuchika Okada are in a position to work with New Japan Pro-Wrestling and Hiroshi Tanahashi to promote Tanahashi’s final match and for Okada versus Tanahashi to be that match, and that’s always what we’d talked about and I had met with President of New Japan Pro-Wrestling, Tanahashi, and he and I had talked and we were really excited about this, and he had come to a number of AEW events this past year, and we’d had some really nice discussions, and he was at Double or Nothing and we had dinner and this was what we talked about, and he was very excited about the possibility and when I spoke with Kazuchika Okada, he was very excited about the possibility and everybody thought that this was the biggest possible opportunity to make this not only an incredible business success but also, most of all, a well-deserved tribute to Hiroshi Tanahashi who is one of the legends of worldwide pro wrestling and in particular, for New Japan Pro-Wrestling.”
(H/T to Fightful for transcribing the above quotes)
