During the media scrum following ROH’s Supercard of Honor, AEW and ROH Chairman Tony Khan talked about “The Machine” Brian Cage making his debut for ROH and aligning himself with Tully Blanchard.
You can check out Tony Khan’s comments from the media scrum below:
Tony Khan on Brian Cage returning at ROH Supercard of Honor and pairing him with Tully Blanchard: “I really like Brian Cage, I’ve always really liked Brian Cage. It was funny because when I first started thinking this might be a possibility [purchasing ROH], I hadn’t worked Brian Cage back into my plans yet. I couldn’t tell Brian Cage [about ROH], especially when it’s confidential. Based on where we were going with him I thought Team Taz are in a really strong position right now and with Swerve and Keith Lee coming in, it didn’t make any sense having Brian fighting with Ricky and Will because right now Swerve had a great main event with Ricky and this week Will had a great main event with Keith [on Rampage]. It was a kick ass match and a kick ass situation after.”
“For Brian, I didn’t think it made sense for him around Taz and those guys anymore. I also thought him and Tully here could be a good situation, especially when FTR and Tully were done. It’s funny because with the situation of confidentiality and stuff, I couldn’t tell Brian I wanted to buy ROH and debut you and repackage you here until about a month ago. It’s funny because Brian, gotta love Brian, he told the media I picked up his contract. I was like, ‘Jesus Brian, why did you tell people that’? I never told him not to, but I also couldn’t tell him what I was doing with it but I should’ve told him not to. That being said, I think it was good because people wanted to see him come back and it made it that much better.”
On his decision to lend talent to ROH at Final Battle and ultimately purchasing the company: “I didn’t know I was going to buy ROH and if someone else had bought it, they would’ve gotten the benefit of the stuff we did for Final Battle and I was fine with that. I knew that I might not end up with the company and it didn’t really look like I was going to end up with the company. My gut was that I probably wouldn’t but I still felt like the right thing to do in December was to, at first, send all videos and tributes from all the great ROH wrestlers in AEW who used to be in ROH. I was happy to do that for them and when Bandido got COVID, I was very happy to send Jay Lethal. Did I know that was going to pay off in a great angle later on? No, I didn’t but sometimes these things work out very well. I did a lot of stuff, sent FTR, Jay Lethal and sent a lot of videos from a lot of stars. Then this thing really came together and paid off.”
