Tony Khan Believes AEW Double Or Nothing ‘Kicked The Crap Out Of WrestleMania’
Tony Khan prefaced it by saying it’d be the pull quote of the whole call, but he really feels like AEW Double Or Nothing delivered in a way that WrestleMania couldn’t.
Khan was on hand for today’s AEW All Out media call and was asked about the highs and lows in AEW so far and the lessons learned as a promoter and owner so far. Khan went over some milestone events in AEW’s year and said Double Or Nothing was definitely a high for the company, adding that he knows it will get called out but he felt like it “kicked the crap out of WrestleMania” this year.
“I’ve used this analogy privately and publicly, and I’m sorry to give such a long-winded answer but with the highs and lows there’s a lot of answers, but the pandemic has been an example of this. There have been such highs and lows in this pandemic trying to do great things. To try and do Double or Nothing and come back and do that, I thought it was the bastion of ingenuity. To be able sit back, and with what we had, ‘How can we do a great pay-per-view?’
“I thought—and I’m sorry, I’ll be honest, we [AEW and WWE] were both operating during the pandemic, I tested everybody coming in and this might be the pul-out quote of the press conference but I’m going to say it—I thought Double or Nothing kicked the crap out of WrestleMania. It was a much better pay-per-view. We were both operating under difficult circumstances. I think ours, we were fortunate it was a little bit later in the pandemic and we had implemented testing and we were doing testing at that time, but when we did Double or Nothing, we were still the only ones doing testing. It wasn’t like—we have good testing at that point. What we did at that point, to set up a bubble and do that pay-per-view, I was so proud of it. We’ve come a long way since Double or Nothing. If you want to see a wrestling show packed with fans in an arena, I can’t give that to you now right now. But what I can give you, and I’ve talked about it in the last week or two, is a drive-in movie theatre.”
Khan says he knows people want to go back to the cinema for a movie, but the drive-in movie is a way to still do the same thing in a safer way and that’s what AEW can offer right now.
“I can’t offer you the cinema but I can offer you the drive-in movie.”
Check out the complete media call at the top of this page.
Read More: Report: Second AEW Show To Begin Before The End Of 2020