After watching Paul “Triple H” Levesque perfectly orchestrate the return of CM Punk to the WWE Universe, with “The Game” hitting play on a 2023 remix of “Cult of Personality” after the legal advisory flashed across the screen, more than a few professional wrestling fans from around the internet came to a remarkably similar conclusion: Boy, it must really stink to be Tony Khan right now.
Suddenly, after spending literally years working the phone to coax the “Best in the World” out of retirement, Khan had to watch WWE reap the benefits of his hard work, all the while knowing that things could have ended up very differently had he kept Punk under contract instead of firing him on the spot or even just tried to work things out after a lengthy suspension.
So naturally, as Khan prepared to hit the media landscape hard for a full-court press to make sure no wrestling fans in the UK or otherwise didn't know about the All In 2024 ticket presale, the AEW CEO had to know that he'd receive at least a question or two about his former AEW World Champion, right? If not, Khan didn't have to wait long to find out, as he was asked about that very topic on a media hit with Steve Hermon of BBC West Midlands and (unsurprisingly), he let it be known that he couldn't talk about the question.
“Can't talk about that, nor do I think it's the time or the place,” Tony Khan said via Fightful. “I appreciate you asking and I'm very excited about AEW All In at Wembley Stadium. Not to dodge or duck your question, it's just something I can't legally talk about.”
Is Khan telling the truth? Can he really not talk about Punk due to some legal agreement, the same sort he seemingly agreed to with Cody Rhodes before his exit? Or is he simply embarrassed at how things went down and doesn't want to rehash arguably the lowest point of the biggest day in AEW history? It's safe to say fans will earn a pretty clear answer to that question when Punk makes his first appearance on RAW in almost a decade.
Tony Khan is more than happy to talk about Taylor Swift.
While Tony Khan wasn't particularly interested in talking about CM Punk during his media tour to promote All In, he was more than happy to discuss Taylor Swift and how he has personally changed the show's load-in to make sure her fans get two extra Eras shows at Wembley Stadium.
“The load-in is a very different schedule than what we had last year. If you look at the calendar of Wembley Stadium events for August of 2024, you'll see that scheduled ahead of us is Taylor Swift, and Taylor Swift being scheduled at Wembley Stadium ahead of AEW is a big deal. And I have some interesting stories about how all of this came to be and where we're at. It's very, very fun. So, when Wembley approached us about our load-in and about these Taylor Swift shows, there was an opportunity for them to add more shows, and we are going to do everything we can to abbreviate our load in time,” Tony Khan told the Daily Mail.
“So basically, they came to us and said it would help us out a lot if you could load in your show faster because we'd have the opportunity to have more Taylor Swift shows, and could you guys do that? And we said, well, it'll be costly and very challenging, and we really would like to help you out. And so yeah, I will. And I think there's so many great Taylor Swift fans and Wembley's been great to us. We have a great relationship and it's going to cost more, and we will double our efforts and hopefully score points with a lot of great fans and a great community of Taylor Swift fans. So, if we can make more Taylor Swift shows in London possible by speeding up our load-in, and I pay a little bit extra to do so, but we still have a great event at Wembley. Everybody wins. And I'm not going to get crushed or killed in the process, so I'm fine with that. And I think a little bit of extra money and a little bit of extra human power getting the show put on, it's worth it.”
Wait, you may be wondering, haven't you heard a remarkably similar answer before? No, this isn't deja vu, Khan actually told a very similar story during the AEW Full Gear media scrum, and it clearly went over well enough that he has made it part of his repertoire to promote the show. Whether it actually sells any more tickets or garners any more goodwill, however, remains to be seen.
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