During the media call for ROH Final Battle 2023, AEW President Tony Khan discussed Ethan Page facing Tony Nese in an “I Quit” match at tomorrow’s pay-per-view event.
Khan also shared his opinion on Samoa Joe’s dominant ROH World Television Title reign.
You can check out some highlights from the media call below:
On booking Ethan Page in ROH: “He said, ‘Please put me in ROH anytime, I wanna do it, and he’s had some great matches and become a staple of the program and then his involvement with Tony Nese. I think has been great for the both of them and shows the value they add to any wrestling program.”
On Nese and Page’s I Quit Match: “I think it’s been two great wrestlers getting an opportunity to showcase themselves.”
On Samoa Joe’s title run: “The TV Title has been such a consistent focus on the TV show and Samoa Joe has defended it many times. Given the nature of a TV Title, it will be good to have a champion who will participate consistently on ROH TV and be a fighting champion. Samoa Joe has been such an incredible champion, was the longest-reigning champion of all time, and made such an incredible list of defenses. If you look back at all the great wrestlers Samoa Joe fought for the ROH TV Title in the over one-year reign, it was incredible. I also think now, with AEW, Samoa Joe has become a huge focus of AEW promotional consideration, and definitely for Samoa Joe, I do think it made a lot of sense for him to be a focus because he’s such a huge star for AEW, there are a lot of commercial benefits to have a huge star of Samoa Joe’s stature on AEW television every week. It felt like as big as Samoa Joe’s presence on AEW has become, it had become challenging for him to defend the championship. Relinquishing it, at that point, did make some sense. To him, personally, it made sense, because he had accomplished everything he had set out to. He became the longest-reigning, most dominant champion and set his sights on a new goal, which is for AEW Worlds End.“
