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PWInsider.com sat down this past Wednesday with AEW President Tony Khan to discuss a number of topics related to AEW's big broadcast weekend with AEW Rampage and AEW Dynamite emanating from Miami, Florida on TNT. Here are highlights from the Dynamite discussion:
Malakai Black vs. Dante Martin:
"It's one of the very important matches of the weekend and I think you'll see Friday night, we'll advertise it a lot and we have a big card Friday, but there'll be a lot of build for Saturday as well. And that's a very important match on the card. And you just named two very exciting young wrestlers in AEW that have both built up great records in a short time with the company and both I think have great futures. So Dante Martin, and talk about, again, two very different paths. Dante Martin, I never expected this is where we would be with Dante in so many ways. He's done so incredibly well. I love Dante and his brother Darius very, very much.
They came to us during the pandemic in The Young Bucks. Did such a great job on this finding them. Matt told me he got in contact with them I think on Instagram, I want to say, during the pandemic. But The Young Bucks a hundred percent found Top Flight and brought them in and they aced the tryouts. And I went out into Daily's Place after one of their AEW Dark matches to stop them in the entrance way and told them, 'I have to sign you. I think what you're doing is great.' In the past year, I've really grown very close to Dante and Darius and I have to say, I just think the sky's the limit and Dante has worked so hard.
It sucks that Darius is out with the injury. It just sucks, but the silver lining and hopefully this will all work out great, is that he's going to come back at a hundred percent. He's so young, Darius. And so talented. And when he comes back, people are going to see how great he is too. And it's given Dante time to shine. And Dante is one of, if not the most, improved wrestler in the world in that time. He's come so far and built a singles reputation for himself and I referenced earlier, the matches he's had with Matt Sydal. He's had two matches with Matt Sydal that have been some of the best matches we've had on television or period streaming anywhere in AEW and we've seen, they've also teamed together and had a great match with The Elite and great matches recently with FTR and other teams, Cody Rhodes and Lee Johnson and I just think Dante has explosive potential.
Then to talk about a different path altogether, Malakai Black came here as somebody I was frankly shocked was available to AEW because he'd built a big following on television for our competition, and they have a great audience, a big audience. I coined a phrase this week that I've been saying a lot, watch your wrestling and I know a lot of fans like his stuff and they watched him and I know he's a person people want to watch. So I was shocked that he was a person that was available and I really have a lot of appreciation for Malakai Black and what he's brought to AEW already in a very short time with us. He's brought new fans, I believe and he continues to win matches. So I think it's going to be a great one. I think they have the chance of, I totally agree with you, to put something really special together for Saturday, which I'm really excited about."
The Lucha Brothers:
"The Lucha Brothers to me are the best tag team in all the world. They proved it in the cage match at All Out. And then I think as tag team champions continue to prove it. I really enjoyed the eight man tag with Santana Ortiz at the Grand Slam Rampage and it was a great win for them against The Acclaimed this week. It was a great reminder, I think, to the fans too, because I think we've become conditioned. We've had so many great long TV matches, which is maybe the opposite of what the convention for TV wrestling had been before AEW Dynamite came and we've done over a hundred episodes of it now.
So it was, I think, good to see on Rampage, The Acclaimed versus Lucha Brothers. A very good match, but also not every championship match has to be 20 minutes. It was a decisive one for the Lucha Brothers and a very good match, but probably only went maybe six minutes. And that was a showcase win and showed the Lucha Brothers can win a decisive match, but they don't need a 20, 25 minutes to put every opponent away because that's how good they are. So they'd been already great champions, but also in our two plus years as a company and on TV, I think they've just been MVPs of the company. They've had some great matches as individuals too. Fenix had some great matches early on with Nick Jackson and early this year with Kenny Omega at one of the best matches we've ever had on TV. And some of their tag matches too, together and separately. They're very important to us, Rey Fenix and Penta El Zero Miedo."
The importance of making tag team matches main events in AEW:
"Hugely important. I mean, when we started this company, we had some great tag teams right away. You have The Young Bucks who are prominent figures in the company. They're behind the scenes, executive vice-presidents, they're a central part of this company, but also a lot of other great tag teams were on the roster from the very first year. And you had The Best Friends and Santana Ortiz and The Lucha Brothers of course from the beginning and the team that formed of Jungle Boy and Luchasaurus and The Dark Order coming in, and a lot of really great teams early on. But we've grown the roster so much and added teams...FTR and The Butcher and The Blade and other teams have come in and been established really in that time. And we've seen new teams form, like The Men of the Year and The Acclaimed and The Varsity Blondes.
So it's been a great year for tag team wrestling. Just really 2021, I think, we've had some of our best matches with The Young Bucks title reign, great main events with some of the teams I just named And we mentioned The Lucha Brothers cage match, what a great, great match on All Out. It was a great pay-per-view. I really loved the cage match that The Young Bucks and The Lucha Brothers had, but I also thought it was a fitting end to The Young Bucks' reign, because it was a great match and a reign with so many great matches. And that was a big part of our success in the last year, I think."
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