Tony Khan on Mox’s tournament replacement, ex-WWE wrestler debuting against FTR

While obviously not nearly as important as Jon Moxley’s path to sobriety... pro wrestling is show business, and the show goes on.

Mox was scheduled to face Orange Cassidy in the semi-finals of the World Title Eliminator Tournament on Dynamite tonight (Nov. 3), with a Full Gear match with Bryan Danielson on the line, and a championship shot going to the PPV winner. With a number of different storylines in play, AEW head honcho Tony Khan will need to execute a back-up plan now that Moxley is out.

While appearing on Wrestling Observer Live this afternoon, Khan told Bryan Alvarez he has one - but we won’t learn what it is until tonight. Any clues? TK would only say, “There is a very logical way to resolve this.”

Speculation has focused on two options: Miro, and CM Punk. Punk himself fueled some of that...

But that seems unlikely to me, since AEW would either be faced with handing Punk his first loss on short notice, or running Danielson vs. Punk at their Nov. 13 event in Minneapolis... which seems like something they’d want to save for later. We’ll see who Khan’s “logical replacement” is this evening.

UPDATE: It was Miro. See how that played out here.

TK did have actual news to break with Alvarez & co-host Mike Sempervive:

• Challenging FTR for the AAA Tag titles tonight will be luchador legend Aerostar, and Samuray del Sol, who WWE fans knew as Kalisto prior to his release this past spring.
• Kenny Omega will face Dark Order’s Alan Angels. They faced off in April of 2020, igniting much Twitter debate when Angels lasted six minutes against Omega, kicking out of a V-Trigger in the process. The match helped Angels secure an AEW contract. Kenny doesn’t seem worried, and plans to use the match to send a message to his Full Gear challenger, Hangman Page.

• While he’s open to working with Impact again in the future and says he has a good relationship with Scott D’Amore, AEW has nothing planned with Impact at the moment. This would seem to confirm rumors their initial partnership wrapped up with Christian Cage dropping the Impact World title at Bound For Glory.

Place your bets on who O.C. will face in the tourney, and join us in our live blog to see how all this plays out tonight!