In a Tuesday interview with Dan LeBatard to promote Wednesday’s Dynamite in Miami, AEW president Tony Khan said the company will do another exploding barbed wire deathmatch in the future despite the pyro failure that marred the ending of their first one.
He also discussed the failure for the first time and his displeasure for it: something he didn’t do at the post-Revolution press conference or in subsequent interviews.
At the conclusion of March’s Revolution, Eddie Kingston laid on Jon Moxley following Moxley’s loss to AEW Champion Kenny Omega, attempting to shield his enemy/friend from a giant explosion that was about to go off. Instead, sparklers went off on the ring posts with a few puffs of smoke in a visual that left fans disappointed as Kingston just laid on Moxley as the PPV went off the air.
Khan blamed the failure on using professional pyro personnel who didn’t understand wrestling, but he was trying to be “too safe.”
“They totally sh*t the bed,” Khan said, adding that he didn’t pay the unnamed company who refunded the $100,000 for “the expense of the match.” Khan didn’t clarify what the alternative was to using a professional company to handle such things in the future, but wants somebody that “knows wrestling.”
“They screwed up royally. All they had to do was set off the final explosion and again, it’s because we had to use professional pyrotechnic people,” Khan said.
Khan said they will do that type of match again because it drew.
“Everything Jon and Kenny did up until that point was outstanding. It wasn’t their fault the thing didn’t go off. Long story short, that was a long time ago and we’ve bounced back since then. That was three months ago and everything has been pretty perfect and really couldn’t have gone much better,” he said.
He added he was grateful that the next PPV (Double or Nothing) did a big buyrate and he didn’t want to make the pro wrestling mistake of having back-to-back failures and wanted Double or Nothing to be a great show from start to finish.
