Tony Khan Explains His Dislike Of DQ and Count-Out Finishes, Admits He Could Utilize Them More

AEW President Tony Khan was a recent guest on the Wayne of the Blade podcast to discuss a number of different subjects, including how he feels about disqualification and count-out finishes, and why he prefers to give fans a true ending to a match. Highlights from the interview can be found below.

Why countouts and DQs feel so unsatisfying:

Count-out finishes aren’t always popular. For me as a promoter, you can count on one hand the number of count-out and disqualification finishes that I’ve done. I really like doing conclusive finishes, but I definitely think a count-out is a much more conclusive finish than a disqualification. Sometimes, there’s a storyline reason for both, but ultimately, it often feels unsatisfying.

Admits that he could utilize those types of finishes more for storyline purposes:

I will not let people off the hook for this could I feel like half the matches on the show are like a disqualification and it’s been that way my whole life (with) multiple promotions on television. Really, the competitive promotions on television. Such a large percentage of their matches ended in a disqualification. I found it very unsatisfying. Instead, you watch ECW or All-Japan, and there are a lot more finishes and maybe the happy medium is (something like) Smoky Mountain (Wrestling) was a very well booked promotion. I have no problem with doing it. Sometimes, I probably underdo them (to the point) where you never see them, but when we do them, they really do make sense.

(H/T and transcribed by Fightful)