Tony Khan Reveals When He Became Aware Of Ilja Dragunov’s Availability for AEW WrestleDream

AEW President Tony Khan revealed exactly when he knew Ilja Dragunov would be available for WrestleDream.

As noted, Ilja made his All Elite Wrestling debut at Saturday’s PPV in Orlando, Florida. However, it wasn’t the original plan. At the post-show, Tony Khan revealed that he didn’t know that Ilja would be available to appear at WrestleDream till this past Wednesday night.

In fact, Tony revealed that he only got to know about Ilja’s visa issues being sorted during the live broadcast of Dynamite & Collision on October 14. Tony said that the vignette that aired on Wednesday was filmed to build Dragunov’s eventual arrival. Here’s what he said:

“Thanks to the process, it can be an unpredictable process of acquiring a visa. It’s something that I wasn’t sure until this Wednesday night, during a live broadcast, that I would be able to bring you. It’s a great surprise, and it’s something that I was so pleased that we were able to do tonight. Some people asked about the timing of the vignette that suggested your arrival at WrestleDream on Wednesday and then having a second vignette on Friday.

“There is a lot of unpredictability in wrestling, and a beautiful thing that happened for us is, on Wednesday night, in the middle of the show, at two in the morning your time, we got the message that Ilja was going to be able to pick up the visa the next day. We found that out during the live broadcast. We filmed the vignette just in case you weren’t going to be able to come to the PPV, we would start the build for when you were here. Maybe it was going to take another week or two, but it happened ahead of schedule, thankfully!”

Listen to his comments below:

Elsewhere at the post-show, Ilja commented on his decision to join AEW. Check his comments HERE.

Please credit AEW’s YouTube channel and give an H/T to 411Mania for the transcription if you take quotes from this article.