Tony Khan reveals AEW's plans for Miro in 2021
Before the "Winter is Coming" AEW Dynamite special tomorrow night, Tony Khan sat down to do a media call earlier this afternoon that covered a variety of topics.
When the subject of Miro's booking since joining AEW came up, Khan didn't hold back on his feelings at all when it came to the Bulgarian Brute's bright future with AEW. The AEW CEO also hit out at WWE for their treatment of Miro, formerly known as Rusev, over the years.
Tony Khan says WWE abused Miro for years, will be a top star in AEW in 2021
When Tony Khan was asked why Miro hasn't been portrayed as a "top guy" yet with AEW, he had a lot to say on the subject:
Miro's gonna be huge here, it's very hard for somebody to come in. I'm really glad you asked that. Miro is gonna be a big star here it's really hard for people to come into AEW when you have a ranking system unless they come in at the beginning of a new year cycle and I didn't want to wait till January to bring Miro in it. Brian Cage, was the exception to this because Brian Cage. I signed Brian in January and had the plan that I was going to do the Casino Ladder Match and Brian would be a surprise and we would build to Brian getting the shot, but then build up a record for Brian before we did Moxley versus Brian Cage. But I can't do that for everybody and I wasn't going to do that again.
And so I couldn't just put Miro in the main event, with no record and no history here so he's got to build up and build story, but he's working with some of the top people in AEW some of the people I regard as the top people with the Best Friends and now Orange Cassidy and stories. And so, you know, have great stuff going on on top of the card and I just couldn't cast everybody aside, you know, Jon Moxley and Kenny Omega. Chris Jericho and MJF, Cody and Darby, Ricky Starks and Brian Cage, we have wil Hobbs moving up now. You know, Hangman there's so many great things going on in AEW, and Miro is now going to be a huge part of AEW too, but just like everyone else he had to win matches and get involved in stories, and whether people know it or not, like, we're recontextualizing Miro.
I don't know what Miro was supposed to be before he came to AEW. I don't understand what he represented, I think most of the great characters in wrestling have some element of their personality, there are exceptions to this, but where they bring themselves into it, and the Miro you're seeing is the MIro I know, which is an awesome, awesome interesting person who's got an amazing sense of humor. I wanted to do that one on one thing with Miro and Trent because I did see some of what people were saying because there's like a person in there that I was trying to show everybody it him, you know it's not anything we made up at AEW, because we're not like, you know, not some great invention of a character. This is him, and I want people to get to know him better.
And so with the Miro and Trent one on one video with Excalibur, I'd like to do more stuff like that and you show people ahead of a match like what they think of each other and what their relationship is with each other because there's a relationship between the two guys that I think we'll talk more about and touch more on, but it goes back a long time, and I think it helped the presentation of that match I thought it helped the enjoyment of the match for me I thought it made it a better match and I think for the story you want to get to know more about Miro and for me, as you get to know more of them and see more of them I think there's a bigger chance of Miro becoming a big crossover star in multimedia and this includes gaming which is such a big interest of his.
And I think it's more likely it'll happen but I'm just kind of rebuilding him, to be honest with you. I thought he got beaten up so bad I saw some jacka** on Twitter was like this guy drove a tank at WrestleMania, and now he's doing this and I was like yeah and then he got kicked in the nuts and they treated him like s*** for years, and now you got you drove a tank on five years ago, that's not the guy I signed.
And the guy signed had been abused for years. And he's being rebuilt, he's going to be a huge star in wrestling and he is a huge star, he's a huge name in wrestling now, but he wasn't treated like it for a long time. And you're gonna get to know him better. And it's a marathon not a sprint and until, when 2021 resets I think he's going to be somebody that will have a chance to build a record over the course of the year and be a big star here but I wasn't just going to put a guy in with a zero and zero record and say he's the number one contender that's not how it works."
AEW Dynamite "Winter is Coming" will air Wednesday, December 2 at 8 PM EST on TNT and will be 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.