Tony Khan Clarifies If Swerve In Our Glory's AEW Tag Title Win Is Legit

By Matthew Carlins

AEW President Tony Khan is defending the legitimacy of Swerve In Our Glory's AEW World Tag Team Championship victory on this past Wednesday night's "Dynamite". Khan responded directly to a Wrestling Inc. article that analyzed the final minutes of the three-way title match between the defending champions The Young Bucks, Swerve In Our Glory (Keith Lee and Swerve Strickland), and Team Taz (Ricky Starks and Powerhouse Hobbs).

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Our analysis of the video of the match published to AEW's YouTube channel revealed referee Rick Knox had recognized Swerve Strickland and Matt Jackson as the legal men in the match for several minutes. Around the 8:15 mark, Hobbs goes out of his way to drag Jackson toward his own corner and then tags in Starks, despite the fact that neither Hobbs nor Starks were legally in the match before that moment. Strickland later pinned Starks to win the titles.

Khan made it clear Thursday night that, despite growing scrutiny and speculation, the title change will not be overturned.

"That speculation's BS!" Khan wrote on Twitter when he retweeted the link to the Wrestling Inc. article. "As always in AEW+ per generally accepted pro wrestling practices: the referee's decision is FINAL!"

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Strickland later retweeted Khan's tweet along with a gif of Michael Jordan shrugging his shoulders. Strickland also posted a link to another outlet's video on the matter and wrote, "Here come the 'goal post' Moving".

For Strickland, this is the first major team championship he's held in professional wrestling since he won the Lucha Underground Trios Championship in 2016. For Lee, this is the first time he has held tag team gold since he was one-half of the VIP Tag Team Champions alongside Shane Taylor as The Pretty Boy Killers.

Wednesday night's match ended The Young Bucks' second reign as AEW World Tag Team Champions. They won the titles from Jungle Boy and Luchasaurus in a ladder match on the June 15 episode of "Dynamite". This past Wednesday's match was the first and only defense of the Bucks' reign, which lasted less than a month — their first reign lasted more than 300 days.

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