Tony Khan opens up about his thoughts regarding disqualification and count out finishes being overutilized in wrestling and discusses whether or not he does the opposite.
In AEW, no matter how crazy things can get between the multiple participants and outside sources in any match, disqualification finishes are rarely utilized. There have been a couple of flat-out draws, but there is a drastic difference in the number of non-finishes used on other wrestling programs as compared to AEW.
Speaking about this on The Way of the Blade podcast, Khan admits that he may underutilize disqualifications and count-outs but does not want to let other promotions off the hook for their overutilization of non-finishes.
"Count-out finishes aren't always popular. For me as a promoter, you can count on one hand the number of count-out and disqualification finishes that I've done. I really like doing conclusive finishes, but I definitely think a count-out is a much more conclusive finish than a disqualification. Sometimes, there's a storyline reason for both, but ultimately, it often feels unsatisfying.”
He continued, “I will not let people off the hook for this could I feel like half the matches on the show are like a disqualification and it's been that way my whole life [with] multiple promotions on television. Really, the competitive promotions on television. Such a large percentage of their matches ended in a disqualification. I found it very unsatisfying. Instead, you watch ECW or All-Japan, and there are a lot more finishes and maybe the happy medium is [something like] Smoky Mountain [Wrestling] was a very well booked promotion.”
“I have no problem with doing it. Sometimes, I probably underdo them [to the point] where you never see them,” Tony admitted. “But when we do them, they really do make sense.”
Elsewhere on the same podcast, Tony opened up about how the territory era of wrestling inspires the way he books his champions. Read more here.
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