Tony Khan Addresses Rash Of AEW Injuries Heading Into Forbidden Door
Tony Khan was riding a wave of positive emotion after AEW Double or Nothing.
Coming off a pay-per-view that Khan described as "as good of a third act" as one could hope for, Khan received the schedule of NJPW talent that would be available for the highly anticipated AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door show. "It was already challenging," Khan said on Friday's pre-Forbidden Door media call, "because not all the wrestlers that I wanted to use from New Japan were going to be available, and some of them weren't going to be available until much later."
Those challenges were then compounded by a series of injuries and political spats that made the road to Forbidden Door long and convoluted for the AEW President. "I think we're fortunate that we have a lot of great stars in AEW and New Japan Pro-Wrestling to accommodate a lot of this," Khan said of the numerous changes.
Khan's main plan for CM Punk facing Hiroshi Tanahashi was thrown out the window when the AEW Champion broke his foot. Establishing Tanahashi and Will Ospreay was Khan's first priority in the weeks leading to Forbidden Door, calling them "huge stars that are in very prominent positions on this card."
Learning that stars like Jay White, Kazuchika Okada, and Zack Sabre Jr. wouldn't be available until the weeks before the show didn't help things, but ultimately the stress became secondary to the excitement. "I was really excited knowing that Tanahashi's gonna be here," Khan said. He laid out his plans to QT Marshall, Sonjay Dutt, Pat Buck, and CM Punk, and everyone was "loving it."
"It was very different, and it could've been really cool," Khan said of the scrapped plans, but he ultimately feels AEW and NJPW were really lucky to have Tanahashi vs. Moxley in reserve when Punk got hurt. According to Khan, "Mox really wanted to wrestle Tanahashi."