Tony Khan Reveals Who Came Up With Waiting Room, Eliminator Tournament Ideas

Even though Tony Khan is the man in charge of creative for All Elite Wrestling, that doesn’t mean he is the only one who comes up with ideas. Such was the case for the recent Eliminator Tournament and Britt Baker’s The Waiting Room.

During the recent AEW Media Call, Tony Khan revealed that Cody Rhodes came up with the idea for The Waiting Room while Kenny Omega thought of the Eliminator Tournament. Here is the quote, courtesy of Fightful:

“It’s something we talked about re-introducing and something he definitely wanted to do. I love working with Kenny. This tournament, a lot of it was his ideas, and a lot of it I put into place and we worked on it together. That’s how a lot of stuff in AEW is. I work with a lot of people on a lot of ideas. I’ll even work with people far down the card on ideas. I was drinking White Claws in the middle of the night with Ricky Starks and he said, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if I came out painted as Darby?’ I said, ‘Oh, we’re going to do that. I have an idea for that.’ It became a memorable and great moment.

There’s a lot of stuff like that. The great thing about our EVPs is they are working with people and have great ideas. Not just tag people, The Young Bucks have a lot of great ideas with singles people. Kenny has great ideas for other people. The Waiting Room was Cody’s idea for Britt [Baker] and I love it. It’s really fun. Kenny wanted to do [The Cleaner], we talked about it, talked about the Eliminator tournament. He wanted to do a tournament and I coined it The Eliminator because it’s a credible sports term. A lot of the presentation that he brought back were his ideas. There’s a lot we can’t do, but these are ideas I definitely wanted to do.”

The Waiting Room has been Britt Baker’s backstage segment, usually appearing on AEW Dark. As Baker has been out of action for a good portion of 2020 with a knee injury, this has been a way for her to continue to develop her character.

The Eliminator Tournament was AEW’s recent number one contender’s tournament, won by Kenny Omega at Full Gear. The tournament featured an eight-man bracket and saw Omega and former partner Hangman Page reach the final.

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• waiting room
• Cody Rhodea
• Kenny Omega
• tony khan

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