Tony Khan has been criticized for signing more talent despite already having a loaded roster, with some not being used very often. Television time was reduced for many stars after Khan purchased ROH and he started using talent for the company on AEW programming.
Last week on AEW Rampage, the company debuted Shane Taylor in a segment with Keith Lee to set up a tag team match at ROH Final Battle this Saturday.
While speaking on the Battleground podcast, Khan discussed Taylor’s debut.
“There are fans who have never seen Shane Taylor before, and that’s okay. You get introduced to new faces all the time. When I was a young wrestling fan, that was one of the things I liked about WCW Nitro. I think it would be very ironic now that the same promoter [Eric Bischoff] would tell you, you don’t want to see these faces or introduce new people on TV because they were the ones who did that.
Khan stated a lot of times there were new faces that he had never seen before just walk out and wrestle on Nitro. He thought this was a cool thing to do as a kid. He guesses it’s not acceptable anymore because fans know so much about wrestlers on the internet than it was in 1996.
“People complaining about it ad nauseam on the internet is certainly new. At the end of the day, you want to listen to what the fans are saying. Overall, there has been a positive reception to a lot of international wrestlers coming to AEW.”
