Tony Khan Says IMPACT Partnership Was Kenny Omega’s Idea, He Had Idea For Paid Ads

At AEW Winter Is Coming on December 2, 2020, Kenny Omega “stole” the IMPACT World Title by defeating Jon Moxley with help from IMPACT co-executive Vice President Don Callis.

Omega’s victory and alignment with Callis effectively kicked off a partnership between AEW and IMPACT as Omega began appearing on IMPACT programming, leading to IMPACT Tag Team Champions The Good Brothers appearing on AEW programming.

Speaking to Renee Paquette on Oral Sessions, AEW President Tony Khan detailed the partnership between AEW and IMPACT.

“It was Kenny’s idea. He asked me about it and I love good ideas. I don’t do every idea, I try not to do the bad ones and I don’t do every good one. Sometimes, I don’t realize they are good because I’m not perfect and make mistakes. Sometimes, there are good ones that don’t fit. This was something Kenny brought up and I thought it would be a great idea. He put a lot of time and thought into it and I give 100% of the credit to Kenny. Don Callis and Kenny have a great relationship and Kenny believed Don would be a powerful advocate for him and could fill the role of a strong heel manager. I went with Kenny to the taping, they had their pay-per-view, he wanted to help Don and he wanted to help us. I wanted to support the idea and greenlighted it,” said Khan.

While at the IMPACT tapings, Khan had the idea to run “paid ads” on IMPACT which would continue the storyline between the two companies and allow Khan to promote Wednesday’s episode of AEW Dynamite.

“I went with him and while I was there, Tony Schiavone said he would come hang out. I had the idea to buy ads on IMPACT and do promos. It’s great, it promotes our show and keeps the storyline with them going. When we first did it, I didn’t know people would enjoy them as much as they have and I didn’t plan to keep doing them for as long as we had, but they got a great reaction,” Khan said.

Khan appeared on Tuesday’s episode of IMPACT inside the IMPACT Zone, sitting ringside for the tag team main event that saw AEW tag team Private Party defeat Chris Sabin and James Storm to earn an IMPACT Tag Team Title bout.

Elsewhere during the interview, Khan detailed everything that went into planning the Brodie Lee tribute show. You can find his full comments by clicking here.

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