Tony Khan Comments On Flight Issues Changing AEW Dynamite Plans, Lengthy Running Time
A three-hour combo special of "AEW Dynamite" and "AEW Collision" turned into a 3.5 hour broadcast filled with a number of changes this week. Nevertheless, AEW President Tony Khan attests that he made it all work, and moreover, something he's proud of.
On the AEW Full Gear media call, Khan explained how flight troubles connected to talents coming off the 2026 Jericho Cruise affected his creative plans for the back-to-back "Dynamite" and "Collision" tapings in Utah, which went 30 minutes longer than fans expected.
"I thought it was a great wrestling show," Khan said. "If you're sitting in my seat and you've got numerous flight issues and you're trying to put a great wrestling show together, imagine how I feel at the end of the show when I think it was a great show and everything came together great. It was a huge sense of relief and excitement going into Full Gear. I had announced some great things for the show. Then there were some people that had some issues getting out, which can happen. That's why it's good to have contingency plans. I love doing that. So, in this case, the network was great about pushing some things back."
Khan pointed to Hyan and Nick Wayne as two notable names that faced travel difficulties heading into Wednesday night's AEW programming. In her case, Hyan arrived to Utah's Maverik Center just as the show began, which meant her three-way TBS Championship match, also involving Queen Aminata and Skye Blue, had to be moved to the main event slot of "Collision." Nick Wayne, who also entered the venue later than anticipated, made an on-screen appearance near the end of "Collision," too.
Both Hyan and Wayne wrestled on the Chris Jericho Rock N' Wrestling Rager at Sea, which docked in Miami on November 11, the same day as AEW's dual-taping.
Khan Was Pleased With Last Week's Seaside Collison Too
Days before its combo TV special, All Elite Wrestling hosted "Collision" from the Jericho Cruise, with an AEW National Championship match between Andrade El Idolo and Tommaso Ciampa as the show's headliner. This wasn't the first time AEW had created a television product from aboard the cruise ship; it was the company's first try at going live with it, however.
"We did it live this time," Khan said. "Actually, we did it as a taped show on Tuesday [in 2020] last time. This was great. I love doing it as a live show. I much prefer it. I always love doing live wrestling. With a championship change, too, it made it very exciting and a big fight feel. The previous trip had a great championship match, but since it was a taped show, I felt like a lot of our fans already knew about the championship change before it happened. So it was great being able to do the show live this year. It was a very good viewership for 'Collision' on the Rock N' Rager also. So that was really great to see."
As Khan alluded to, fans saw the AEW National Championship change hands on the seaside "Collision" as Ciampa pinned Andrade to become the title's new holder. Elsewhere on the show, former TBS Champion Persephone bested Mina Shirakawa in singles competition; Nick Wayne did the same in a match against Marcus Mathers. Chris Jericho himself defeated Blake Christian with the Walls of Jericho, too.
If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit AEW with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.