Tony Khan Says AEW EVP’s Are ‘Heavily’ Involved On The Business Side, He’s More Hands On With Creative
Photo Credit: Bill Pritchard
Tony Khan explains why he’s been taking on a larger role in the creative process day-by-day while certain EVPs are taking on more duties in the business aspect of the company.
Tony Khan recently spoke with Wade Keller of PWTorch and discussed the hierarchy in the company as it stands currently. Khan has previously addressed taking a more hands-on approach with creative, previously explaining that he felt the need to take over at the end of 2019 because of accountability. Now, Khan explained how (and why) he’s taken over most of the creative work while EVPs Cody Rhodes, Kenny Omega and Matt and Nick Jackson have dealt with more of the business side of things, pointing out how Omega has spearheaded the company’s video game team.
“They’re [EVPs] still very involved in a lot of aspects of the business and a lot of those things have been enhanced. The amount of development of huge resources that have been allocated towards building a great console video game, Kenny Omega has led a team and has really spearheaded this project with our staff and he’s been such a great leader and so Kenny Omega’s helped lead the company in a few different ways in the past couple years. Working with The Young Bucks, Cody, they’re great leaders backstage with the wrestlers.
“It’s not because of anybody except my own feelings that I’ve probably gotten a little bit more hands-on with the stuff I do than when we started, but that makes perfect sense because I have never worked in a wrestling company,” Khan said. “I’d only come in from the outside, so I was organizing a lot of things at the beginning and I was like the head of a committee and I think there are a lot of drawbacks of trying to book a wrestling show with a committee. Even if you’re at the forefront of it, it’s still a mind-bogglingly difficult process and I kind of around the start of 2020, the end of 2019, moved more to me writing the show and the show has been better for it. Not because everybody doesn’t have good ideas, they’re still contributing all their ideas and that part hasn’t changed. In general, I found it to be much easier and more productive if I just try and organize the show at home between shows and have a good idea arriving at TV with what I want to do next week.”
On a related note, Khan promised a creative update on the pending Owen Hart Cup tournament after Full Gear. Khan made the comments during Thursday’s media call to promote the pay-per-view and explained why he was waiting for some fun announcements related to the tournament. Check out his comments and the full media call at this link.