Tony Khan Teases A Change To The Format Of AEW PPVs
Tony Khan has been known to make his AEW PPVs run long in time, and on the media call before tonight's Forbidden Door, the AEW President made light of the much-debated length. Khan was asked about potentially having a Forbidden Door 2 following this Sunday's inaugural event, and Khan mentioned how the landscape of wrestling today really does lend itself to two-day events.
"There's so many stars in pro wrestling right now between the two companies and it's fascinating," Khan said to ComicBook.com's Connor Casey. "WWE had an interesting approach to it, to be honest. I don't think it's something anybody in AEW besides me has ever entertained, but I see it's not only lucrative business-wise but there are so many stars in AEW, and frankly, [NJPW] thought they had enough people to do two nights of a show, and now, Wrestle Kingdom has gone to two nights. We have never done anything like that, but you all told me that I try to pack a lot into four hours. And plus, it's a PPV, so I get that there are so many people it's hard to [fit] all the stars in."
Khan is referring back to the AEW Double Or Nothing media scrum in which Wrestling Inc. Managing Editor Nick Hausman asked about the length of the show, which ran over five hours. Throughout the rest of the evening, plenty of references were made regarding the Double or Nothing's extended runtime as Khan and Hausman went back and forth on the subject, but Khan expressed how it made sense commercially to have the show run longer.
"I will listen to the feedback of the fans," Khan also added during that scrum. "Revolution had pretty good response and commercially, the show was really successful and had similar length bell-to-bell [to other AEW shows]... But like I said, I'll listen to the feedback. This was a unique circumstance."
During a media call for back in November 2021 for Full Gear, Khan expressed what he thought about the four-hour PPV blueprint AEW has created for itself.
"I really like the format and length of the shows, the four-hour main card, plus the Buy-In with a pre-show match or two," he said. "It's a good length of the card and we found something that works for us really well."
Fans watching tonight's Forbidden Door may also be in store for a long evening as the post-show media scrum is scheduled for 12:30 AM ET, well over five hours after the Forbidden Door pre-show starts.
If you use any of the Forbidden Door media call quotes in this article, please credit "Wrestling Inc." and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription