All Elite Wrestling president Tony Khan has assured fans that the promotion's weekly TNT show won't be as violent as what viewers witnessed at Fyter Fest on Saturday night.
The PPV, which was free for US residents, was not for the faint of heart as Cody Rhodes suffered a nasty wound to the head resulting from an unprotected chair shot courtesy of Shawn Spears (formerly known as Tye Dillinger).
There was also that unsanctioned match between Jon Moxley and Joey Janela which must have left Mick Foley licking his lips, given that some of his choice weapons - barbed wire and thumbtacks - played a significant role.
It has since been confirmed that Rhodes received 12 staples but did not suffer a concussion as first feared. And Khan has also admitted that the shot did not go down exactly as planned, adding that the injury was regrettable.
Khan says AEW fans should not expect more of the same when their show starts airing on a weekly basis in the fall because the rules are a bit different for PPVs.
"No, no, no, definitely (don’t expect these things on TV)," he said, via Chris Van Vliet on YouTube. "This was not TV, this was a streaming show. It was effectively a pay-per-view in a lot of the world. In the U.S. it was presented free but this was a pay-per-view, and so you can expect different rules for pay-per-view.
"And we said going in these are unsanctioned hardcore matches, and I think that expectation was going in and we wouldn’t have advertised that kind of violence, you know? We wouldn’t have offered that on TNT, 100-percent no.”
Viewers must have suspected that something was off with that chair shot. There was just no way Cody would be willing to risk a concussion just to prove that AEW is more hardcore than WWE.
Given what we saw on Saturday, it's hard to imagine them not taking it a step up. But fans don't have to worry about things being that violent on a weekly basis.