AEW President Tony Khan has moved to explain why the huge champion vs champion match between Kenny Omega and Rich Swann hasn’t been promoted on AEW Dynamite.
At IMPACT Rebellion on April 25th, AEW World Champion Kenny Omega will meet IMPACT World Champion Rich Swann in a blockbuster main event.
However, the clash has seldom been mentioned on AEW Dynamite, despite the match featuring the company’s top title. Appearing on Busted Open Radio, Tony Khan has now offered an explanation as to why.
Skirting the line between storyline and reality, Khan said that it’s up to IMPACT to promote the bout which is appearing on one of their pay-per-views.
“I think people have asked me why I haven’t gone out and spent a lot of money, Tommy, on promoting it (Omega-Swann),” Khan said. “And I think it’s when I’ve gone to your guys shows (Impact) to promote cards, I’ve had to pay and buy ads. So that’s kind of on you guys.”
“But here’s a little free ad from me, that this weekend Kenny Omega is coming up to Impact Wrestling. And he’s going to be wrestling for the world title. It’s possible Rich Swann could be the AEW World Champion next week. It’s also quite possible Kenny Omega will be the Impact Champion, the AAA Champion and of course the AEW World Champion. But we’ll see next week.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPUJyg8bSZQ
During the appearance, Khan also revealed that he keeps in mind ratings trends when he is booking Dynamite. Answering a question to put to him by Tommy Dreamer, the AEW President opened up about the difficulty in trying to find space for so many quality matches on the card.
“Yeah, I do” Khan said. “This week with so many tough matches on the card it was really tough slotting the matches. But on the other hand, based on the way a lot of the stars are performing, you know the show rating was very consistent last week. So we’ve gotten to a point, on TV wrestling, I’m not really sure it really matters in the two hour card where you are as long as you get some good time. Because it’s all prime time. 8 to 10 Eastern, 7 to 9 Central, these are prime hours. Anything you get in there is good. So I think everybody’s really clamped onto that real estate and we were able to maintain a great audience throughout the show. There wasn’t a lot of flipping in and out.
“When I was putting it together [April 21st episode] yeah, you want big stars in those spots. And we have people who have delivered in those spots, consistently. Hangman has gone out, time and time again, and come out and opened the show with some great, great matches and started us out with some big ratings.
“Ricky Starks, same thing. Both guys have been in segments coming out of the gate that have done a million. That’s a huge, huge match for us.”
The first episode of Dynamite since NXT moved to Tuesday night, pulled in it’s second highest TV rating ever, with 1.219 million viewers. AEW followed this up on the most recent episode with a viewership of 1.104 million.
H/t to Wrestling Inc for the transcription.