12 Things You Didn't Know Tony Khan BANNED In AEW

Another entry from the July 2023 Fightful report, this one was wildly optimistic from the jump, was it not? 

Bleeding in the crowd carries with it a certain degree of risk, of course, even if testing protocols are followed very strictly. But this is AEW, which aspires, in part, to be an ECW successor. While AEW has wrapped a tourniquet around itself in recent years - Jon Moxley did in fact bleed in virtually every match he wrestled in 2022 - there's still a blade job on TV on at least a bi-monthly basis. Also, crowd brawling is an AEW staple. That happens at least once a fortnight. It's almost as if count-outs do not come into effect once the wrestlers hop over the barricade. It's a dumb loophole, and 99.9 times out of 10, the count is only started for dramatic effect, but the trade-off is an energising sense of chaos. AEW at least acknowledges the logic gap by having the commentators explicitly state that the referees are lenient because the fans should not be deprived of action. (There's more than enough action to go around in AEW, but that's an entry for another list.)

The Anarchy In The Arena gimmick match is an annual PPV staple that should be far more lame than it actually is. It's certainly contrived. Is it worth mangling so many top players into an endless stable war just to arrive at this one match? 10 minutes in, and the answer is "of course it is". 

Anyway, this apparent rule gets thrown through sugar glass every time the bodies hit the floor.