Tony Khan on Kenny Omega bringing "The Cleaner" character to AEW
Before the "Winter is Coming" AEW Dynamite special tomorrow night, Tony Khan sat down to do a media call earlier this afternoon and covered a variety of topics.
Over the last several weeks on AEW Dynamite, it has become clear that Kenny Omega is once again turning into "The Cleaner" character he was famous for in New Japan. It's really not a surprise that the subject would come up on today's AEW media call.
Tony Khan credits Kenny Omega for wanting to bring "The Cleaner" character to AEW
Khan was asked about "The Cleaner" being used in AEW and whether it was his or Omega's idea. The owner of AEW offered the following response.
"Something we talked about reintroducing, but it's something he definitely wanted to do. You know, I love working with Kenny. And, you know, this tournament we worked together on and a lot of this stuff were his ideas. Then a lot of this stuff I put into place and we worked on it together and that's how a lot of stuff in AEW is, I collaborate with people. A lot of people have talked about it in the past, but I work with a lot of different people on a lot of different ideas. And I'll even work with people pretty far down the card on ideas. You know I was drinking White Claws in the middle of the night with Ricky Starks and he said something about wouldn't it be cool if I came out, painted as Darby once and I was like oh we're gonna do that, I have an idea for that, I know when we can do it. There's a lot of stuff like that.
"I love working with people up and down the card. The great thing about our EVPS is they are also working with people that have great ideas, not just tag people. The Young Bucks have also worked with a lot of singles people and come up with great ideas that we've done, and Kenny has great ideas and I love working with Kenny, but Kenny has great ideas for other people too. And Cody, the Waiting Room you know was Cody's idea for Britt, and I love it, it's really fun. I mean, you know, it's fun to work on it with them and he's come up with great ideas for it.
"And so, Kenny. He wanted to do this and we talked about it, we talked about this eliminator tournament, which he talked about doing a tournament. I love doing tournaments. I coined the eliminator, which I'd use for the way that we set up the championship in 2019. I also use the word eliminator because it's used in boxing and it's a credible sports term. It's how you explain a contender for a big fight getting set up and it's how somebody becomes a logical No. 1 contender. In Kenny's case, when he won. He was also just a logical No. 1 contender, not just because he won the eliminator, but also with his undefeated record and his stature in the world of wrestling. So it was something he wanted to do. I love the idea and it's why we're doing it."
AEW Dynamite "Winter is Coming" airs this Wednesday, December 2nd at 8 PM EST on TNT. It is headlined by the AEW World Championship match between Jon Moxley and Kenny Omega.
If you use any quotes from this article, please credit us with a h/t to Sportskeeda for the transcription.