Tony Khan Talks State Of The Wrestling Business, Managing Tension In The AEW Locker Room
To promote Sunday’s AEW All In 2023 pay-per-view event, AEW President Tony Khan spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about a wide range of topics.
You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
On managing tension in the AEW locker room: “The most important thing to me as the CEO is the wrestling fans. I’m a huge wrestling fan, and I try to think like a wrestling fan. I want the best wrestlers here in AEW. I want the best roster. And there may be some of them that don’t get along with each other backstage or on TV. It’s not ideal, but it’s a reality, and I can’t make everyone get along. I’m not sure it’s necessarily even in the best interest of pro wrestling for everybody t get along. But ideally, everybody is going to be able to focus on their matches and putting on the best shows for the fans. And I think that’s what we’ve been doing. We’ve had really strong ratings. So even though … wrestlers backstage hate each other and don’t want to be friends with each other, I think we all agree this is a really exciting time for the company. And it’s a really exciting time for the wrestling business and for the wrestling fans. There are a lot of people around here who think they’re the best. And I think a lot of them have a valid claim that they’re the best. And what I’m trying to do is to create an environment where everybody can go out and prove it multiple times per week and create a platform where the fans can decide who the best wrestlers are, what the best rivalries are, what the best matches are. As long as I can keep the top talent in AEW, we will have the best matches and the best big events. The lineup of wrestlers competing on AEW All In is the strongest group of talent we’ve ever assembled on one show, it features some of the biggest matches in the history of this company, and I think it’s going to be one of the greatest days ever in pro wrestling this Sunday.”
On today’s wrestling business: “This is why I wanted to get into the pro wrestling business. I believe that, as we stand here today, this is the strongest the pro wrestling industry has been in many years. We stand in a really strong position as wrestling fans right now. Clearly, the voice of wrestling fans is being heard all over the world. This is the most weekly wrestling content that’s been available on television every week in over 20 years. There used to be so much wrestling on TV every week. I grew up when there was wrestling almost every day across different promotions, and there were multiple hot promotions that would have sellout crowds and run events all over the country. That went away, and there was only one company really running international pro wrestling and putting on multiple events per week on television. Then we launched AEW in 2019 officially, I started working on it in 2018. And after working on this for over five years, I am very happy that the wrestling business is in such a strong position right now. It’s great for the wrestlers, it’s great for the wrestling fans and for wrestling promoters, and the industry leaders, of which AEW is now one.”
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