During Sunday’s AEW All In 2024 pay-per-view event at Wembley Stadium in London, Daniel Garcia returned to AEW programming.
During the post-show media scrum, AEW President Tony Khan expressed his opinions on Garcia making a comeback on television and the positive response Big Bill received from the live crowd.
Garcia returned during the AEW American Championship match to stop MJF from cheating, and help Will Ospreay reclaim the title. On the other hand, Bill garnered a loud cheer when he made his entrance for Chris Jericho’s match against HOOK.
You can check out some highlights from the presser below:
On the crowd cheering Big Bill: “That’s a great question. I think it’s very consistent with what we’ve seen with Big Bill, that Big Bill has all the skills. He’s been a champion in AEW. And with Chris Jericho as a mentor, he’s facing another really popular star in HOOK. We saw we got great reactions with HOOK, what a great moment it was when HOOK won and had that celebration with Taz, and how the crowd came up when Taz got involved in the match and left the commentary table tonight.
“But Big Bill’s done fantastic stuff in AEW. I think you have to look at what’s happening in the Learning Tree. And I think with Big Bill, he’s got all the potential in the world. Chris Jericho’s one of the smartest wrestlers of all time. He definitely sees it in Big Bill also, and I think it’s something to watch where it goes. But I think it does definitely play into what we see on television that this is a super-talented guy that is with a wrestler that is not necessarily the most popular with the fans, but is really smart. He recruited Bryan Keith and Big Bill for a good reason. So I was excited to see that reaction to Big Bill. We really like Big Bill here, he’s someone we think really highly of. So I thought that was awesome, and definitely something you can lean into.”
On Daniel Garcia’s return to TV: “I don’t want to necessarily comment on everybody’s contract length or status. But Daniel is here, and he’s a great part of AEW. We’ve been having great success, and this is a great night to reflect back on what we’ve been doing here in AEW.
“For some reason we keep going back to the past three years. But at Revolution we talked about the three year run of Sting… Bryan Danielson, at All Out 2021 he debuted, and we’re coming up on three years of Bryan Danielson in AEW. And again, a really special moment in those three years. Well it’s been about three years with Daniel here. And Daniel Garcia started with us at Daily’s Place. And he was on that run of shows before we went back and started wrestling in front of crowds again. So he’s somebody who has been with us for a long time, somebody beloved by the fans and backstage. So we love having Daniel here. And without saying exactly what’s going on, it’s a good sign that he was here, I think. And really great to have him come and take that next step tonight after what happened with him and MJF… It was a great payoff to a lot of storytelling in the recent weeks on Dynamite.”
