Tony Khan has opened up about the AEW Shockwave trademark and if he intends to move forward with the name.
All Elite Wrestling President Tony Khan was a recent guest on The Ariel Helwani Show. When asked about the status of AEW Shockwave and if it had any inspiration from the Pride FC Shockwave show, Khan said he’s probably not going to do it anymore after having a phone call with Billy Corgan of the NWA.
“I’m probably not going to do it,” Tony Khan admitted. “I had a really nice talk with Billy and Billy Corgan, who owns NWA. And I like Billy, and even before I became a wrestling promoter, I had met him. I think he’s just a great artist, and I like him.
“So when I talked to him on the phone, I said, if that’s a show that you might do again, because NWA had done a Shockwave — I guess Pride had done it before that, but then NWA had done a Shockwave, which I didn’t know at the time when we filed it. And then I talked to him and said, if that’s something you want to do and you did it first, then you can do that. That’s fine. And he said, Oh, that’s great. I appreciate that. So that was nice.”
The AEW National Championship is different from the NWA’s title
When asked if they discussed the upcoming AEW National Championship that will debut this weekend at Full Gear, Khan spoke on that as well.
“I did, yes. I had a great talk with him about that,” Tony Khan said. “And again, I have a lot of respect for him. I like the NWA, and I like Billy a lot personally. And what I told him is, this is going to be really for AEW, this will be an AEW Championship.
“It’s a new lineage. And I think it’s cool that Billy’s been able to keep the legacy of the NWA alive. And that’s an operating promotion, and this is an AEW championship. So a lot of wrestling organizations have been on TBS over the years, and AEW now, I’m really, like I said, very proud of Dynamite. We’re on for over six years now.
“And one of the companies that goes back and has a history also going back in the 1980s would be the NWA, and through the territories and the promotions who operated through Jim Crockett Promotions. And when Jim Crockett Promotions and Georgia came together, because Georgia Championship Wrestling, and then the companies that existed after that.
“It’s a different National Title. But there hasn’t been anybody that was a National Champion on TBS since 1986. This will be a new National Title, a new lineage, as Billy and I were talking about. But we had a really nice talk, and I enjoyed talking to him about it. And I told him, there are things we do that are tributes to the history in wrestling, but in this case, this is a new title with a new legacy, and he gave me his blessing for it, and it was a nice talk.
“And it’s good when the promoters can reach out and just connect about things. So the Shockwave, if they’re going to do a show called that. I said, if you’ve done it before me, that’s yours. But I also didn’t know that Pride had done it too. That’s cool.”
WrestleZone will have live coverage of AEW Full Gear later this weekend.
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What do you make of Tony Khan’s comments? Are you happy to hear that Khan is moving on from the Shockwave project in a show of good faith to Billy Corgan and the NWA? Let us know your overall thoughts by sounding off in the comments section below.
If you use any of these quotes, please credit The Ariel Helwani Show with a link to this article for the transcription.
