Originally published at Tony Khan discusses Ring of Honor, Owen Hart tournament, Blood & Guts
AEW president Tony Khan recently spoke to ESPN about the ongoing plans for Ring of Honor, the return of Blood & Guts, and the Owen Hart Foundation tournament.
Khan spoke with reporter Marc Raimondi on a wide range of subjects including his proposed idea for utilizing ROH as a weekly series:
I’ve been having more conversations with WarnerMedia about what we can do together to grow Ring of Honor. I think it would make sense for Ring of Honor to continue as a weekly series and major events, like we just had with Supercard. I think the success of Supercard, critically and commercially, will bode very well for WarnerMedia really taking an interest in Ring of Honor, as well as AEW. I think there’s great potential to have a complementary wrestling brand.
Khan just produced his first show for the recently purchased company with Supercard of Honor drawing over 2,000 people at the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland, Texas. In a poll we conducted, it was voted the show of the weekend along with the best match of the weekend going to FTR against The Briscoes.
The final pay-per-view figures will not be known this early but Khan has stated in several places that they did over 15,000 buys on FITE TV alone. The show also aired on cable and satellite pay-per-view outlets, as well as Honor Club.
Khan confirmed in the interview that Martha Hart will be in attendance at Double or Nothing in Las Vegas on May 29th when the finals of the men’s and women’s Owen Hart Foundation tournament take place:
She is involved. She signed off on this. We’ve been talking to her for two years now. We talked to her throughout the pandemic and we agreed that when people could return for live events and Martha Hart herself could attend it, we would do it. So, Martha herself will definitely be at the finals in Las Vegas.
In the women’s bracket, Jamie Hayter and Toni Storm have qualified for the tournament while Samoa Joe has qualified on the men’s side. The tournament will continue throughout April and May.
Khan also stated that Blood & Guts will return this summer after the successful launch of the concept in May 2021. The match, which is AEW’s version of War Games (a name they cannot use), was originally set for the company’s debut at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey in March 2020 but the pandemic forced the show to be postponed.
The match took place last year at Daily’s Place on May 5th with The Inner Circle taking on The Pinnacle and averaged 1,090,000 viewers and 0.42 in 18-49.
Regarding another Stadium Stampede event, Khan was non-committal:
That I’ll have to get back to you on. I’ve thought about it. It’s a very different wrestling world now than it was during the pandemic. I think it’s a great match, a signature match for us that people really enjoyed. But some of the reasons we presented that match were because of the challenges that existed in the world because of the pandemic, as far as presenting sporting events with live fans. That doesn’t really exist in this live-event pandemic.
The full interview is available on the ESPN website.