AEW President Tony Khan addressed criticism of NJPW star Hiroshi Tanahashi’s performance at the 2023 Forbidden Door PPV during an appearance on Busted Open Radio.
“It’s a vocal minority on social media. I think the vast majority of fans who follow the sport closely know that (Hiroshi) Tanahashi’s a legend, that it’s amazing that he’s fighting through these injuries and doing the best he can and yeah, he’s got bad knees and every once in a while, he might have a slip as he tries high-flying moves. But in the end, he had an amazing fight on Collision, he had a great match, Tanahashi versus Swerve (Strickland) and he had a great match with MJF at the pay-per-view. Not everything Tanahashi does is the same as it was 10 years ago or 15 years ago. But, Tanahashi is one of the great legends of the sport and certainly over the years, he’s accomplished so much and I know that, really, for us in AEW, we have so much respect for him and I think what you said makes a lot of sense but, you can’t let the opinion of a couple people get in the way of a great career of somebody like Tanahashi.”
You can check out the complete show below:
