Tony Khan Announces Major Last-Minute Matchcard Changes Ahead of AEW Worlds End PPV

AEW’s final pay-per-view for 2023, Worlds End is just moments away. While fans were gearing up for the PPV, Tony Khan shuffled his cards at the last minute to invoke a late change for a match just moments before the show was about to start. The news came in the doctors had not medically cleared one star to perform at the PPV.

Tony Khan changes Swerve Strickland’s opponent

Taking to X (formerly Twitter) Khan announced that Swerve Strickland’s new opponent for the night will be Dustin Rhodes. The decision came in after Keith Lee was deemed medically unfit to perform at tonight’s event. As stated by Khan, “Due to injury, AEW doctors can’t clear Keith Lee for his match tonight at Worlds End. His Naturally Limitless partner Dustin Rhodes has asked to step in to face Swerve TONIGHT”

The news came hours after Keith Lee had tweeted sharing that his injuries had gotten worse. He also added that although he will try, he cannot promise a match tonight. So, Dustin Rhodes had been called in to represent his friend and tag team partner Keith Lee for the bout.

The match was said to be a dark match, or what AEW likes to call a ‘Zero Hour’ match. It won’t be televised. However, it will serve the purpose of warming up the audience before the main event for the night.

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While the match might be something out of the blue, this is not the first time the two will be facing each other.

Is this Dustin Rhodes vs Swereve Strickland 2.0?

The rivalry between the two started when Strickland was bad-mouthing the Rhodes family. This had instinctively made the former WWE star angry. A match was set for AEW Rampage Slam Dunk. With the announcement, Rhodes said that hell was coming for Strcikland and Rhodes was coming along with it. However, Strcikland’s bodyguards are notorious for interrupting his matches to help him out.

During their February fight, Strickland’s affiliate and bodyguard Parker interrupted the match. Due to this, the fight was disqualified and Rhodes was not able to settle his score. However, according to reports, the duo Parker and Trench, known as The Mogul Affiliates have been sidelined due to an injury. While this does mean that there won’t be any interruptions this time, there might still be some possibility that The Realest might use some cheap shots to secure the win. Do you think Dustin Rhodes will be able to settle his score this time?

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