Tony Khan recently appeared as a guest on Busted Open Radio for an in-depth interview covering all things pro wrestling.
During the discussion, the AEW and ROH President spoke about boxing legend “Iron” Mike Tyson’s recent appearance on special guest commentary on AEW Rampage last Friday night in Atlantic City, New Jersey, as well as how the Katsuyori Shibata vs. Orange Cassidy match for the AEW All-Atlantic Championship was set up.
Featured below are some of the highlights from the interview where he touches on these topics with his thoughts.
On Mike Tyson being a great commentator and how he hopes to have him back in AEW to do more in the future: “It was a great match, Orange Cassidy versus Shibata; Mike [Tyson] added a lot to the presentation of it, and I think we learned firsthand Mike is a great wrestling commentator. This was a great debut for Mike as an AEW announcer, and hopefully, we’ll get Mike back to do the commentary again because he definitely adds a lot to the show.”
On how the recent Katsuyori Shibata vs. Orange Cassidy match for the AEW All-Atlantic Championship was set up: “Well, Shibata is one of the best wrestlers in New Japan, In my opinion. He’s somebody I’ve been a fan of for over a decade. And for me to be able to have a match like that on AEW Rampage, it gets me really excited, and when New Japan said, ‘Hey, Shibata is a big fan of AEW, and in particular, he really loves Orange Cassidy. He wants to wrestle him. We think this would be a great match.’ I completely agree. I wanted to make it happen. And I think we found a great way to get the match on TNT, but also give the casual fan a great reason to want to come in and check it out. And then you have Mike Tyson, who’s one of the most knowledgeable fight historians out there, and he really appreciated the historical significance of this great comeback Shibata was making. The recovery from the brain injury, and really what a great champion Shibata has been, and what a great story it would be if he had been able to win the AEW All-Atlantic Championship last week on Rampage. So absolutely, It just was a lot of ideas that came together very well and really formed one of my personal favorite matches on Rampage. So it’s just one of those things that I thought came out perfect, and to hear you guys talk about it that you liked it so much, and Orange and Shibata were very happy with it. And Mike Tyson was very happy with the whole night on Rampage. It makes me feel like we did something pretty good in AEW last week.”
Check out the complete Tony Khan interview on Busted Open Radio by visiting Spotify.com. H/T to WrestleZone.com for transcribing the above quotes.
