Tony Khan ‘100 Percent’ Thought Nick Wayne Would Be Back For ROH Final Battle, Says He Would’ve Crowned Interim Men’s TV Champion

A new update on the status of Nick Wayne.

The current ROH World Television Champion is Nick Wayne. He has not wrestled since August as he’s recovering from a broken foot injury.

Wayne’s name was brought up to AEW President Tony Khan during the ROH Final Battle media call. Khan said he 100 percent thought Wayne would be back for the pay-per-view on December 5th. He said Wayne’s injury changed some things.

Khan said if he knew Wayne would be out for this extended period of time, he would have crowned an Interim ROH men’s World Television Champion. Khan thinks they’re close to getting Wayne back.

He went on to speak highly of the 20-year-old and added that Christian Cage, Adam Copeland, and Darby Allin view Wayne as the future, and Khan sees that as well.

“Well, I’ll be honest, the timeline on this particular injury changed, which is the nature of injuries. You can expect when somebody recovers but when it’s a bad injury, it can take longer. We’ve had some of those happening in AEW… Nick Wayne got hurt in the ring. It’s not his fault, and we thought he would 100 percent be back for Final Battle. I would have bet money, and I’m not allowed to bet money, but if I was allowed to bet money, I would have bet money that Nick Wayne would be back for Final Battle, and he’s not but I would have to be honest, at Death Before Dishonor, I did not know that Nick Wayne would not be back by now. I didn’t know that a few months ago that was gonna be the case or we probably would have crowned an Interim TV Champion for when he is back. We’re at the point now where I think Nick is getting close hopefully to coming back, and he’s a great, young wrestler. This is one of the top young wrestlers in the world. Somebody I really like working with and I’m very, very fond of and somebody that has had the mentorship of one of the all-time greats in Christian Cage and that’s my opinion… Nick Wayne, to me, has such a bright future, and everybody who’s been around him sees — and these are people I really respect a lot, whether it’s Christian Cage, Adam Copeland, Darby Allin. People that I think the world of, they’ve all praised Nick Wayne to me. Again, Adam Copeland, who’s one of the most accomplished wrestlers ever and is somebody who came into AEW with a fresh pair of eyeballs and immediately took to Nick Wayne and said, ‘This is a brilliant kid, and some of the instincts he has at his age are remarkable,’ and I’ve heard that from these great minds… All of them have said to me that Nick is the future and I see it. I see it in Nick. He is a prodigy. He is legitimately the prodigy, and I would have, at this point, put an interim champion in position to have the title being defended if I had known that Nick would not be medically cleared by now but there was no way to predict that. Again, that’s not Nick’s fault.”

Wayne’s injury came on the heels of him turning on Christian Cage at AEW All In Texas. He wrestled in several matches before going down with the injury.

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