• Tony Khan Comments On AEW’s Deal With Lio Rush
Former WWE wrestler Lio Rush made his AEW debut this past Sunday at the Double Or Nothing 2021 PPV, where he was a surprise entrant in the Casino Battle Royal match.
During the post-PPV media scrum, AEW President Tony Khan had the following to say about Lio’s deal with AEW:
“I don’t have a pen to paper [deal], but Lio and I have a handshake [deal] that he can work here and do New Japan both. I think we have something good on a handshake, and I think he’s doing that on a handshake with New Japan too, and that’s kind of what we’ve been doing and it’s been pretty good. I think that’s a good way to work.
I think he’s gonna come back. We’ll get to it. I’d like for Lio to come back. He’s also doing some stuff for New Japan, so he’s got some dates booked right now. He was free for this, and I’m going to respect the calendar, so I’m not gonna go out and ask him to cancel indie dates to do stuff for us. And he’s got a pretty solid calendar, but he was free for this, and I wanted him to come.
I had talked to Lio maybe about coming last year. We weren’t able to do. We did the Casino Battle Royale at All Out last year. We weren’t able to do it at Double or Nothing because I’ll be honest guys, when I got the roster back together, I didn’t have enough people to do a Casino Battle Royale.
I threw that show together really quick, and it was one of the best pay-per-views we had done even with 10% capacity. That’s when I had the idea to do the Casino Ladder Match. We did it at All Out last year.
I wanted Lio to come last year, but he wasn’t free. He was actually taping The Challenge and couldn’t take his phone to The Challenge, and I heard back from his wife who said, he would love to do it, but he’s doing The Challenge. He felt so sick that he wasn’t able to do it.
I thought, well, it would be great if he would still be able to do it, and it worked out. I think he’s going to come here, but he’s got New Japan and indies coming up too, so I think we’ll see Lio back.”
WATCH: AEW Wrestler Tay Conti’s Hot Workout:
• Old School ECW Veteran Celebrates His Birthday
Old School ECW Veteran Ian Rotten (Real name: John Williams) celebrates his 51st birthday today.
He made a name for himself, teaming with his kayfabe/storyline brother Axl Rotten as a Tag Team called “The Bad Breed”.
They first teamed up for the Dallas, Texas based “Global Wrestling Federation” promotion during the early 90s, before they moved on to Extreme Championship Wrestling, were they eventually broke up in 1995 and had quite a few memorable matches against each other.
In 1996, Ian Rotten founded his own Indy promotion “IWA Mid-South”, which is still around to this day and he’s still the promoter.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY IAN ROTTEN!
