AEW and ROH Chairman Tony Khan spoke about the ROH Women’s Division and the ROH Women’s Champion Deonna Purrazzo during the media scrum following last week’s ROH Supercard of Honor event.
You can check out some highlights from the scrum below:
Tony Khan on Maria Kanellis and the ROH women’s division: “I would be interested in talking to Maria. I think she’s a great wrestler and I’ve heard great things about what she did here. I do have staff and a direction in mind when I re-launch the show. I have a lot of talent in mind, including some people that have wrestled here before, and some people that haven’t wrestled here before. I was really excited to bring AQA in tonight. I was excited about bringing AQA in, in general. Ironically, I scouted AQA in a Toni Storm match. She wrestled Toni Storm on TV last year, and actually, I called Sonjay and I was looking for somebody to wrestle Jade. I called Sonjay and I said, ‘I really like this Toni Storm vs. AQA match, and I like this AQA. She did really well, and Toni was great, do you remember this match?’ He said, ‘yeah, I coached this match.’ I said, ‘okay, great. Tell me about AQA,’ because she’d recently got released. She’s been excellent working with her. She’s worked on Dynamite, also on Dark and Elevation, now she’s working here in ROH.”
Tony Khan on Deonna Purrazo being the lineal champion: “And there are more talents that have wrestled here in ROH before, and some that, like Willow is a great example, have recently been wrestling here in ROH. Mercedes is a legendary wrestler for ROH, and a legendary wrestler for the division, and now a great interim champion. Deonna is a little bit of an interesting situation because she is the lineal champion, but she also has other contractual obligations with other companies, so I don’t know when we will get to decide on the undisputed title. But there’s a lot of exciting stuff happening in the division.”
Khan on what Maria Kanellis could potentially offer behind the scenes: “I would be excited to talk to Maria, and depending on what she did backstage, I don’t know exactly. For example, during the matches, was she on the headset? I don’t know exactly, is she a note-taking producer? I am not sure, it’s stuff I will maybe learn from her. As far as the creative and stuff, I do have a plan which I think unfolded throughout the night, and played out pretty well. So, I had a lot of ideas, and I am always down to take ideas from other people.”
His thoughts on Trisha Adora: “I like Trisha. She was on a shortlist of people for that interim match that I would have considered. I do like her, and the women we used I think are great. I brought in AQA from AEW, and Alize has been in Ring Of Honor before. I think she’s great. Obviously, I know Willow, and Mercedes very well. But I like Trish, and yeah, she was one of the people I considered for one of the spots. I’ve seen her on Ring Of Honor, mostly on the empty arena shows, and it’s hard to sometimes tell. But a lot of people learned from that and became better wrestlers. I know that when the fans came back at 25% capacity, on a bad night it was 600-700 people. And a good night it was 1200 people. It felt like anywhere from 5,000 to 25,000, because we were so used to not having them. So, I watched her and I really like her. I thought she was impressive that she was doing it in matches with no fans, connecting through the camera, which is a really good sign. Because that’s what a lot of the people, to your point, connected like her on Dark. She was good on there. But I probably saw her more and saw her connect more this past year in Ring Of Honor in some of the TV matches that they did with her. That’s one of the reasons that I did consider her for a spot here.”
