Tony Khan Reveals Kenny Omega Came Up With Eliminator Tournament, Cody Pitched ‘The Waiting Room’

Many wrestlers in AEW talk about the collaborative effort that goes into the promotion. Though the buck stops with President Tony Khan, wrestlers and the Co-Executive Vice Presidents have consistently pitched different ideas that have made it onto television.

Speaking on the AEW media call, Tony Khan revealed who has come up with some recent ideas that fans have seen on television.

“It’s something we talked about re-introducing and something he definitely wanted to do. I love working with Kenny. This tournament, a lot of it was his ideas, and a lot of it I put into place and we worked on it together. That’s how a lot of stuff in AEW is. I work with a lot of people on a lot of ideas. I’ll even work with people far down the card on ideas. I was drinking White Claws in the middle of the night with Ricky Starks and he said, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if I came out painted as Darby?’ I said, ‘Oh, we’re going to do that. I have an idea for that.’ It became a memorable and great moment. There’s a lot of stuff like that. The great thing about our EVPs is they are working with people and have great ideas. Not just tag people, The Young Bucks have a lot of great ideas with singles people. Kenny has great ideas for other people. The Waiting Room was Cody’s idea for Britt [Baker] and I love it. It’s really fun. Kenny wanted to do [The Cleaner], we talked about it, talked about the Eliminator tournament. He wanted to do a tournament and I coined it The Eliminator because it’s a credible sports term. A lot of the presentation that he brought back were his ideas. There’s a lot we can’t do, but these are ideas I definitely wanted to do,” he said.

“The Waiting Room” has been a featured talk show segment on recent episodes of AEW Dark hosted by Dr. Britt Baker DMD.

Omega not only collaborated on the idea for the eliminator tournament, he ended up winning the tournament, defeating Hangman Page at AEW Full Gear to earn a AEW World Title match. Omega will challenge Jon Moxley for the AEW World Title on Wednesday’s episode of Dynamite.

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