Tony Khan: I Never Pushed AEW As ‘An Essential Business’
Photo Credit: Bill Pritchard
All Elite head honcho Tony Khan was the guest on this week’s AEW Unrestricted, and he had lots to say about AEW’s run during the quarantine. While he and WWE’s Vince McMahon are the only two sports heads running shows during the nation’s massive lockdown, Khan was humble about the status of his upstart promotion.
States were starting to shut down and I never considered us or tried to force us to be ‘an essential business.’ I never tried to stay open against restrictions. When we heard Florida and Georgia were going to shut down, we would shut down too and we needed to tape as much content as we could before the shutdown.
AEW ended up taping weeks of shows in Georgia in the first days of April, so they didn’t need to travel to Florida to take advantage of the “essential” order in Florida even if they could have. Instead, Tony focused on keeping his company together during this time of hardship.
Something I put an emphasis on during the shutdown is that we haven’t let anybody go and we’ve tried to take care of everybody through this. It’s not the right time for re-organizing or re-structuring for us. I want to take care of everybody and make sure they’re comfortable.
With Florida lifting its stay-at-home order, AEW returns to live broadcasts tonight on TNT.
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Thanks to our friends at Fightful for the above transcription!