Tony Khan Says AEW Women’s Tag Team Title Plans On Hold After Multiple Injuries In Casino Gauntlet
Tony Khan speaks on the future launch of the AEW Women’s Tag Team Titles and shares the unfortunate news of the number of injuries that were suffered in the AEW Women’s Casino Gauntlet at AEW All In Texas.
The AEW women’s division is stacked with talent, many of whom are in dedicated tag teams. Tony Khan has shared in the past that there are plans to create AEW Women’s Tag Team Championships, even revealing that the belts are already made.
Now, he explains that he would love to host a tournament to crown inaugural champions. However, a quarter of the division suffered injuries following the Casino Gauntlet at AEW All In: Texas. Speaking to Fightful’s Iridian Fierro for WGN Radio, Khan provided an update on his plans for a women’s tag team division.
“Well, I will say this: I have a bunch of people I would like to get involved in a women’s tag team tournament, potentially. There has been so much injury in the women’s division, and as the person who put together the Women’s Casino Gauntlet, I wish that we had come out of it healthier. A quarter of the people in the match got knocked out of the match and out of action indefinitely. So we had one match where I lost 25% of the roster in one match. So that was pretty hard, because you had great people. People were very excited about Syuri. People were very excited about what Thunder Rosa had been doing. You mentioned Athena. They had a great match for the Ring of Honor Women’s Championship, and a rivalry that’s been going on for months between Athena and Thunder Rosa that even we saw more of it in that Casino Gauntlet Match and then the New Ring of Honor interim Women’s World Television Champion Mina Shirakawa also was injured in that match, taking the old face from Athena. Athena is doing a lot of damage, taking a lot of people out, and in this match in particular, she did a lot of damage. Also, I would really like to have just mentioning people on the women’s roster, not all necessarily for the tag team tournament, but to have a full roster competing for the Women’s World Championship, the TBS Championship, and potentially Tag Team Championships, because I would like to do AEW Women’s World Tag Team Championships. To have that, I really think that we do need to have a healthy division that can maintain these championships, because we haven’t been able to sustain it.”
Tony Khan confirmed that among the women injured is Mina Shirakawa. She was just crowned the interim ROH World TV Champion. Tony says he will focus more on creating new champions. Once everyone is healthy and the current title disputes are settled.
“This year, that Casino Gauntlet match was fantastic with the women. I loved working with them on it as the coach and producer of the match, and it was 12 great women, but like I said, I was frustrated after that with all the stories and ideas that I put into the match, working with them, and all the great ideas that women had coming back to me for things we could do in the match, to lose a quarter of them in one night, that’s really hard, and it makes it hard for the storytelling, but we’re doing a great job with the shows and the stories to have that tournament and still have all the stories. I’m going to need some of those women back, and also some of the other people I mentioned, and some other injured people on top of that. You know, we didn’t even get into it, but another great woman who’s on the shelf right now is the Ring of Honor Women’s World TV champion. We crowned an interim champion who’s fantastic with Mina Shirakawa; she’s injured right now, too, and the champion, Red Velvet, was out for Supercard. I wanted to make sure we had a great Supercard event, a great match. We did have a great event, a great TV title match, to crown an interim champion, and soon will crown an undisputed TV Champion when they’re both cleared, Red Velvet and Mina Shirakawa. But again, having multiple situations with some of these injuries is part of why it has not made sense with the state of the roster to do that, but it is something I am interested in doing. I have the belts. I’ve made the belts. They exist, but I will put them into play when we are able to put the very best full roster forward to have great action with competition for all the championships, including new championships, which you know, there are still some championship issues to be settled in AEW and ROH right now with the great women we have down.”
Fightful will continue to monitor the story and report any updates.
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