Cody Addresses AEW/NJPW Relationship

AEW Executive Vice President and current two-time TNT Champion Cody has commented on the potential working relationship between the promotion and NJPW.

There a lot of rumours as of late that an agreement could be made soon between the two companies to work together following the departure of Harold Meij from New Japan and several stars making cameos on last week’s Dynamite.

Speaking with App.com, Cody said:

“I think you’ll never see a full-scale, like, joint-promoted show [between AEW and another promotion]. We have too much pride in our individual brand. But in terms of the relationships, we’re never closing the doors and we’re never going to pull up the bridges.

“I laughed when I heard people talking about a working relationship with New Japan because clearly it already exists. Jon Moxley has been on New Japan, Chris Jericho has been on New Japan. It already exists, the working relationship. The NWA [owner] Billy [Corgan] and Tony Khan are in contact, Thunder Rosa’s the prime example of that. I loved seeing Tanahashi on TV last week. He’s somebody I really wanted to get in the ring with one time as far as singles and never got the opportunity — and who knows? That might be something that can happen in the future. But our doors are open, our bridges are down.”

Tonight on the one-year AEW Dynamite anniversary show, Cody defends the TNT Title against Orange Cassidy a week after regaining it from Brodie Lee.

Speaking about some of the more quirky characters we see on Dynamite who rose to prominence on the indies (Cassidy, Joey Janela, etc.), Cody said:

“[It] would be insulting if we took someone who was playing in these VFWs, bingo halls, PAL centers, even some of the larger-scale independents — because the independent business pre-COVID was doing fairly well at a lot of the more mom-and-pop large scale independents. It would be doing a disservice to the fandom they’ve already built.”

• NJPW
• Cody
• tony khan
• AEW

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