During the post-AEW WrestleDream 2025 media scrum, Tony Khan commented on Sting’s return to AEW, Bryan Danielson’s absence from WrestleDream 2025, and more.
You can check out some highlights from the media scrum below:
On Sting’s return to AEW: “Sting is still part of AEW and a big part of the family. He’s been away from AEW on-screen, but we’ve seen Sting and he visited us in Philadelphia. We did something off-screen with Sting. It was very awesome for us to see Sting backstage and have him back appearing in the ring. I had talked to Sting about coming back for something special like this and he was always open to returning to AEW, especially if Darby ever needed anything. The connection between those two is really special. It’s a real thing. They built a bond that is really special inside the ring, but also outside the ring, they have a really close bond. Those two are really close. There is no show business at all to it. It’s a really authentic thing. If Darby ever needs anything, we know we can depend on Sting. For him, if there was ever a question Darby would be in trouble, he was not going to hesitate to step in.”
On Bryan Danielson missing AEW WrestleDream 2025: “He’ll be back. To be honest, there was a couple of things. I think it made sense, given what was happening with the main event. I think it would have been really, really hard for Bryan to restrain himself and now knowing what Jon (Moxley) had planned, I also think it would have been really hard for Bryan to sit there at the desk while Darby is in that position, and since Bryan had a family commitment, I told him, ‘Hey, if you have a family thing tonight, it’s probably the night to go to your family commitment. Because I don’t wanna put you in a position where you might be risking your job if you get up from the desk and interfere in this match.’ So it’s worked out for everybody because Bryan was able to be with his family as planned and we had, I think, one of our very best pay-per-views tonight and Bryan didn’t have to risk his job by being in that position at the desk where he’s in a no-man’s land, right?”
On Konosuke Takeshita winning the IWGP World Heavyweight Title: “Takeshita winning the championship is good for AEW and New Japan, even his original home promotion of DDT, where he first came to AEW from. He represents multiple promotions, but make no mistake, Takeshita is an AEW wrestler. He is an AEW guy. We’re all really proud of him. Takeshita is somebody that joined AEW at Daily’s Place. He’s been with us for a long time. Even though he wasn’t here at the very beginning of AEW, he came at a time where we were all spending time together at Daily’s Place and the bubble. Even though he wasn’t at the beginning of AEW, in America, he’s gotten all this TV experience in AEW. He feels like an AEW homegrown person, even though he had experience before he came here. To have somebody that came from our locker room and came up in Daily’s Place and worked his way up, somebody that I believe debuted on Elevation and worked his way into the shows and main event spots and has become the AEW International Champion and now IWGP World Heavyweight champion is a really cool thing. Gedo and the team, President (Hiroshi) Tanahashi, we’d all have to talk. I certainly have no control over what the IWGP World Champion does in New Japan. Takeshita is a big part of our roster and he’s definitely in our plans in a major way.”
On NJPW’s Wrestle Kingdom 20 week: “As it stands right now, because I think Wrestle Kingdom this year will be more focused on one event and there is such a huge thing happening there with President Tanahashi’s retirement, that I think people are all focused on the night of Wrestle Kingdom and the success they are happening, which I’m really happy to see and I’m excited about it. I think there is a lot of great momentum.”
On the streaming issues on Amazon Prime: “It’s something out of AEW’s control. It was a technical problem with the Amazon delivery. I think our other streams are unaffected. It was something with their systems internally there. It does remind me, to some extent, of what happened earlier this summer with Death Before Dishonor because to be honest, those are two of my favorite pay-per-views of the entire year. I also think it was, start to finish, a perfect show, and I remember walking into the scrum with the exact same feeling in the sense of I thought the show was perfect, I thought the wrestlers delivered, the crowd delivered and the whole team backstage and in the ring delivered, and I was so proud of everybody in AEW and it was just this technical thing completely out of our control with a streaming provider, and in this case, it was a similar thing. I thought the show was perfect, the wrestling was perfect and the replay’s gonna be available there for everybody through them and I think they’ll address that and hopefully Amazon will get that figured out but for AEW, everybody here did a fantastic job. I was really glad to hear that HBO Max delivered the pay-per-view without any issues. All of our other providers did really well. But that was an unusual thing and it did remind me because we had a problem with just certain web browsers that were affected for that Death Before Dishonor show and in that case, I was able to at least address it because it was a streaming service that I owned.”
(h/t – Fightful)
