AEW President Tony Khan Gives His Thoughts on Intergender Wrestling, Stipulation Matches, Violence on TNT Show

AEW is still months away from its weekly live wrestling show starting on TNT, and there are still plenty of questions regarding what that program will look like. After Saturday night's Fyter Fest event in Daytona Beach, Florida, AEW president Tony Khan spoke with the media on a wide variety of topics while giving a few insights on what he has planned for the yet-to-be-named TNT show.

One of the most hotly-debated topics in the current wrestling world is the concept of intergender wrestling. WWE dabbled with it in the past with wrestlers like Chyna, Beth Phoenix and Nia Jax but almost universally stay away from it, while other promotions like Impact Wrestling encourage it. When asked, Khan said those type of matches will not take place in AEW, specifically citing a moment from the All In pay-per-view back in September 2018 where Jordynne Grace (now with Impact Wrestling) was punched in the face during a battle royal by male wrestlers.

"You probably won't see it [intergender wrestling] in AEW," Khan said. "I'll just be super frank about this, if there was one thing... a bunch of you guys were at All In. [In] the battle royale does anybody remember when Jordynne Grace got hit in the face? That was probably the one thing I didn't like about All In.

"I didn't like when Jordynne Grace got hit in the face," Khan said. "And I don't think that's cool. I'm really against, you know, domestic abuse. And I'm not saying that it is. It's a really complex question, I knew it would come up sooner or later. It's probably not what we're going to do. And we're going to focus on a men's division, singles and tag, and a women's division, singles and tag, and have those divisions. Could there a mixed division somewhere later? I don't, I haven't thought that much about it. Mixed matches are probably not what we're going to focus on."

Saturday night's show featured two matches with particularly violent stipulations — a Hardcore match between Alex Jebailey and Michael Nakazawa (which was mostly played for laughs) and a Non-Sanctioned main event between Jon Moxley and Joey Janela. Khan said that going forward the stipulation matches will mostly be used on pay-per-view events, while the television show will focus primarily on straight-up matches will no gimmicks involved.

"It depends on the show," Khan said. "This is a special show. I think you'll see more stipulations on pay-per-views and streaming specials. And I think [with] the TV show, you'll probably see more straight wrestling matches and less stipulations. So this was the kind of format [we'll use] and at All Out we'll see some stipulation matches, for sure. We have some really exciting stuff planned for All Out. And I think in that element you'll probably see more that you will in our weekly two-hour television show.

Finally, Khan also spoke about the harcore violence, bloodshed and profanity that went on throughout the show. He strongly stated all of that would not be nearly as present on the television product.

"No, definitely not," Khan said. "This was not TV, this was a streaming show. It was effectively a pay-per-view in a lot of the world, in the US it was presented free, but it was a pay-per-view. So you can expect different rules for pay-per-view. And we said going in, these are non-sanctioned, hardcore matches. And I think that was the expectation going in, and we wouldn't have advertised that kind of violence. We wouldn't have offered that on TNT, 100% no."