AEW President Tony Khan recently spoke with Sports Illustrated’s Justin Barrasso on a number of topics including his early talks with Mariah May.
Khan said, “I reached out and said I had this idea for her in AEW, and that it was a long-term plan. She responded to me that night, and that’s how it all started.”
On talking about the storyline with Bryan Danielson last year:
“Bryan Danielson and I were flying home from Double or Nothing, and we were talking about wrestling and what stuck out to us, and Bryan asked, ‘Have you seen Mariah?’ I said I had, and that I was amazed at how, very quickly, she’d become one of the top stars in Stardom. We both agreed she was very polished and charismatic. That’s when I asked Bryan if he’d seen All About Eve and Sunset Boulevard.”
On what he saw in Mariah May:
“I saw something in her, and I asked her to do something very different when she came to AEW. There was even some backlash at the beginning when people were pushing back that she came into AEW as this big fan of Toni Storm, which was very different from what she was doing in Stardom. Now we’re going to learn how and why she did all this, and how she became one of the biggest stars in wrestling in less than a year in AEW.”
On Toni Storm taking on her Timeless Persona:
“I went to Toni Storm and suggested these movies–All About Eve and Sunset Boulevard–because she had that larger-than-life persona like Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard and Bette Davis in All About Eve. That is ‘Timeless’ Toni Storm. She’s that starlet, with that presence–backstage, in the ring, out of the ring–of one of those rare old Hollywood stars. This is the role Toni was born to play, and she is absolutely incredible at it.”
