"I'm not going to say who it was" - Tony Khan claims AEW Dynamite segment wasn't his idea
Satnam Singh's AEW debut fell flat on Dynamite for a number of reasons. However, Tony Khan has now revealed that it wasn't originally his idea to execute the segment in the manner it happened.
One of the biggest issues fans had with the lights going out was that Satnam Singh was not too well known in the wrestling community, which made the debut more confusing than shocking.
Speaking about the incident on Busted Open Radio, Tony Khan claimed that a veteran with over 30 years of experience suggested that angle and he gave it the greenlight:
"To be honest, the person who brought off turning the lights off has over 30 years of experience in pro wrestling. When they brought it up to me, I was only looking at the pros and I should have thought about the cons, because that is my job as the person who decides what goes in and who filters out these ideas. We have all these people in the room and somehow, not one person brought up the negative. When we did it, all the negatives were very obvious. I'm not going to say who it was and I don't need to list all the credentials of all the great people around me in the production meeting, but it was a lot of veteran people." (H/T: Fightful)
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Singh debuted in the closing segment of this week's AEW Dynamite alongside Jay Lethal and Sonjay Dutt. The three laid out Samoa Joe following his victory over Minoru Suzuki for the ROH TV Championship.
Tony Khan says he agreed with AEW fans' criticism
Tony Khan has been known to listen to fans on numerous occasions and has stated that he agreed with the fans' point about Satnam Singh's AEW debut.
In the same interview with Busted Open Radio, the AEW President went into detail about the segment's planning and execution, stating that he hadn't thought about the negatives beforehand, but was on the same page with fans the moment it happened:
"Nobody said that and when it happened, I agreed with the fans completely," he said. "When it came up, I said, 'that could work, it's different.' I was looking for how to physically get him in there for that moment and somebody, like I said, with over 30 years of experience said, 'we could turn the lights out and do this' and I went, 'Okay.' I should have seen the negatives before we did it and I really didn't see them until it actually happened."
Despite the rocky start, it remains to be seen how the Indian star will perform in the coming weeks. If presented properly, he would be a unique addition to the AEW roster.