During the latest edition of Busted Open Radio, Tony Khan commented on wanting talent on the roster to get more exposure with the upcoming third hour of television on TNT, Jon Moxley vs. Eddie Kingston, and more. You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
On having a live crowd for Full Gear: “It feels awesome. We have such a great group of wrestlers. It’s tremendous and for me, I’m so happy that we were able to put this card together and that we’re going to have a great crowd. If people worry that it’s going to be an empty stadium show, it’s not. It won’t be packed irresponsibly, but we’re going to have close to a thousand people here at Full Gear and it’s only going to be a 20 percent stadium capacity because that’s all I feel comfortable doing at this point. But it will be the most tickets we released for a show and it’s going to be a hot crowd. I’m really excited and I’m glad that for all the people coming in live and for the huge audience we’re going to have Saturday on pay-per-view.”
On Eddie Kingston’s work in his feud against Jon Moxley: “What a great job he’s done since he’s been here and now, he’s delivered and he’s been a top TV performer on Dynamite and he was great at All Out. He got to the end of the battle royal and I really tried to push Eddie strong on TV. I always have liked Eddie. I think anybody that has followed independent wrestling loves Eddie Kingston. For the most part, I think anybody who loves independent wrestling certainly followed Eddie closely and he’s got a huge international fanbase. To me, Eddie would be a great champion and Mox has been a great champion. The personal history between the two guys is so strong. I think it’s going to be a great match.”
On Cody’s TNT Open Challenge: “When Cody and I were doing the TNT Open Challenge and planning it out, he came in with a list of people he’d like to wrestle and there were a lot of people on the list. The two names that really stand out to me were Ricky Starks and Eddie Kingston. Those are the two that got hired and ended up being successful and there were so many other ones. The first one with Jungle Boy. I did the battle royal with Jungle Boy and Orange Cassidy and that was really fun. The finish was designed to throw people off. That was a cool one because of the finish with Orange Cassidy where he came out of nowhere. Then, we got into it with outside people coming in. Ricky and Eddie were by far my favorites on that list. I had an idea for Ricky and he nailed the tryout match. Before the match was over, I knew what Ricky could do.”
On wanting to bring Eddie Kingston back after his Open Challenge match with Cody: “When Eddie left, he was great. I definitely wanted him to come back. After Eddie was gone, a couple of weeks later I realized what would be great for Eddie is what we built for Fyter Fest with The Lucha Bros. and Butcher and Blade and we put them strong with FTR and The Young Bucks. I thought we should follow up on it and everyone agreed and that’s when I thought I’d like to bring Eddie back with them as the leader. He did such a great job. I was laying out the battle royal again for All Out and had all the big heels not getting along where you had Team Taz and Jake “The Snake” Roberts and Lance Archer and you had Eddie Kingston and his family. It was bringing in outside people for the TNT Open Challenge where who else we could have, but haven’t brought in? That’s when Cody and I sat down and looked at people he could wrestle. Eddie was definitely one of my top two people.”
On his thoughts on what AEW could do better: “I would like to make sure our great roster and all of our great stars get as much exposure as possible. We have such a loaded roster of big stars and I can’t wait until we get to our third hour of television on TNT and expand our programming and there’s another platform we can expand to. I just want to make sure we get more exposure for all the great women and men we have here because we have a great roster of people. I think once we build more platforms beyond Dynamite, Dark and our four big pay-per-views, I think there are a lot more chances to showcase to everyone.”
