Tony Khan’s Excuse for Delaying AEW Women’s Tag Tournament Gets Slammed

Tony Khan recently claimed that AEW’s long-promised Women’s Tag Team Title Tournament is on hold due to injuries across the women’s division.

According to the AEW boss, too many sidelined talents have made it impossible to form a proper bracket. But wrestling journalists Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez aren’t buying it — and they didn’t hold back. On Wrestling Observer Radio, Meltzer took a hard look at Khan’s logic and broke it down by the numbers.

“He’s claiming that he cannot do these women’s tag team titles because there’s too many injuries. Yes. Okay. Well, I went through the entire roster… there’s 39 women listed on the roster page. I am excluding Mama Wayne, who it lists as a competitor. Five of those women are hurt. One we believe has a visa issue. And one of them is Britt Baker. Okay? That’s seven women out of 38. That leaves 31 women left. 31 women. You need 16 for a tournament.”

Bryan Alvarez chimed in with his signature sarcasm, mocking the idea that AEW couldn’t move forward with brackets.

“Who’s he waiting for? Jamie Hayter? Thunder Rosa? Riho?”

Meltzer agreed, pointing out that even with a few missing top stars, the company has more than enough names ready to go.

“Okay, that’s two… but we’ve still got 30 other women at least.”

Alvarez didn’t hold back on how absurd he thought the excuse was.

“He didn’t want to put brackets out until he had the whole thing finalized. But Dave — he’s done brackets before where he just puts in ‘TBA.’ That’s preposterous. Just put Bang Bang Gang or ‘TBA.’ That’s what every tournament does. You don’t hold off an entire tournament bracket because of one team. Ridiculous.”

Meltzer then hit the core issue — how this move looks to the rest of AEW’s female talent.

“If I were one of the other 30 women, I’d be pretty upset. Like, what — 16 of us aren’t good enough to be in the tournament?”

The conversation ended with the suggestion that Khan might be holding off for the return of top stars like Mercedes Moné, Toni Storm, Athena, or Jamie Hayter. But the glaring issue remains: AEW has a stacked roster of women ready to go — and fans are tired of waiting.