When Miro joined AEW in September, many expected him to come hot out of the gate given the fanfare behind him following his WWE release.
Through three months, Miro's booking has been criticized by many as he's been paired with Kip Sabian and not regularly featured on AEW Dynamite.
Speaking on an AEW media call (transcript via Inside The Ropes) ahead of Dynamite, AEW President Tony Khan addressed the criticisms of Miro's booking.
"Miro’s going to be huge here. Miro’s going to be huge here. It’s very hard for somebody to come in… I’m really glad you asked. Miro’s going to be a big star here. It’s really hard for people to come into AEW when you have a ranking system unless they come in at the start of a new year cycle and I didn’t want to wait till January to bring Miro in," said Khan.
Khan said Brian Cage was an exception to being pushed out of the gate due to the Casino Ladder Match and having plans for Cage when he was signed in January before an injury sidelined him until May.
Khan continued, "I can’t do that for everybody and I wasn’t going to do it again, and so I couldn’t just put Miro in the main event with no record and no history here, so he’s got to build up and build story, but he’s working with some of the top people in AEW, some of the people I regard as the top people – with the Best Friends and now Orange Cassidy in story – and so, we have great stuff going on the top of the card and I just couldn’t cast everyone aside. Jon Moxley and Kenny Omega, Chris Jericho and MJF, Cody and Darby, Ricky Starks and Brian Cage. We have Will Hobbs moving up now. Hangman. There’s so many great things going on in AEW, and Miro is now going to be a huge part of AEW, too, but, just like everyone else, he has to win matches and get involved in story.”
Keeping on the subject of Miro, Khan said the character he is currently portraying all has a reason behind it.
He said, "Whether people know it or not, we are re-contextualising Miro. I don’t know what Miro was supposed to be before he came to AEW, I don’t understand what he represented and I think most of the great characters in wrestling have some element of their personality – there are exceptions to this – but where they bring themselves into it, and the Miro you’re seeing is the Miro I know – which is an awesome, awesome, interesting person who’s got an amazing sense of humour. I wanted to do that one-on-one thing with Miro and Trent because I did some of what people were saying because there’s a person that I was trying to show everybody that it’s him, it’s not anything we made up in AEW. It’s not some great invention of a character, this is him. I want people to get to know him better. So with the Miro and Trent one-on-one video with Excalibur, I’d like to do more stuff like that and just show people ahead of the match what they think of each other and what their relationship is with each other, because there’s a relationship between the two guys, that I think we will talk more about and much more on, but it goes back a long time and I think it helped the presentation of that match, I thought it help the enjoyment of the match. For me, I think it made it a better match for the story and you want to get to know more about Miro and, for me, as you get to know more of him, and see more of him, I think there is a bigger chance of Miro becoming a big crossover star in multimedia and this includes gaming – which is such a big interest of his – and I think it’s more likely it will happen but I’m just kind of rebuilding him, to be honest with you.”
Finally, Khan commented on Miro's WWE run and went after a Twitter user who brought up his WrestleMania 31 entrance where he came out in a tank.
"I thought he got beaten down so bad… I saw some jackass on Twitter was like, ‘This guy drove a tank at WrestleMania and now he’s doing this,’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, then he got kicked in the nuts and they treated him like shit for years.’ He drove a tank out five years ago, that’s not the guy I signed. The guy I signed has been abused for years and he’s being rebuilt, he’s going to be a huge star in wrestling and he is a huge star, he’s a huge name in wrestling but he wasn’t treated like it for a long time," he said.
Miro was released by WWE in April as part of the company-wide cutbacks due to COVID-19. He is set to compete in the Winter is Coming Battle Royale on Wednesday's AEW Dynamite.
Elsewhere during the media call, Khan discussed the possibility of AEW adding a Trios Championship. You can find his full comments by clicking here.
Fightful will have live coverage of AEW Dynamite beginning at 8 p.m. ET.
