AEW President, CEO, General Manager & Head of Creative Tony Khan recently spoke with The Ringer’s Ian Douglass about his pro wrestling fandom and his childhood experience with e-wrestling/e-fed wrestling on the internet. Here are some highlights:
Khan’s entry into the world of e-wrestling in 1995, becoming instantly addicted to it, drafting fantasy wrestler rosters with his friends and scripting weekly wrestling shows, and how some of the hallmarks established then were only browsed by one other e-wrestling collaborator but were successfully carried over to AEW decades later:
“In 1995, I started doing an e-wrestling show called Saturday Night Dynamite, and then it moved around over the next many years. At one point in time it was on Monday night, but at one point it was also Wednesday Night Dynamite. Then I used that name Dynamite for many years, and it had always been a steady thing. I relaunched the promotion with a new territory, new wrestlers, and new stories every several years. I wanted to try something different. The one thing that was always the same was that the weekly show was always called Dynamite.”
The following year, Khan struck a deal with his parents that was slightly less consequential than the one he would strike with them more than two decades later to launch AEW and turn Dynamite into an authentic wrestling TV series:
“My parents had me take the Secondary School Admission Test as an admission exam to prove that I could get into the University of Illinois Laboratory High School, which was one of the most competitive public schools in the country,” said Khan. “My graduating class had the number one ACT test average in America. It was a smaller school; there were 56 kids in my graduating class, and I took the exam and did well enough to get in. Now my parents wanted me to go, which is not what they said when I took it. I felt like it was a real bait and switch, and I was pretty upset. I didn’t want to go, and I remember my mom crying about it in a McDonald’s parking lot. I can even remember which McDonald’s it was.”
“My parents basically told me that if I went to the school, they’d give me anything I wanted, so if I told them the one thing I really wanted, I would get it, and then I would go to the school, and it would be a win-win for everybody,” said Khan. “I ended up getting the one thing I really wanted, which was to go to Philadelphia for the ECW Arena show, and it was headlined by Sabu versus Rob Van Dam, and it was also Chris Jericho’s last weekend in ECW before departing for WCW. Jericho had a match Friday night at the spot show at the Lulu Temple versus Sabu, and Saturday night at the ECW Arena versus 2 Cold Scorpio, with the main event of Rob Van Dam versus Sabu in a stretcher match. For me, it was a really important night in my life because Chris Jericho became such a huge part of AEW, and that was an important weekend for Chris Jericho as he moved into the next step of the amazing career he’s had over 30 years in wrestling on top in some of the biggest promotions.”
When Khan went to school in 1996, he wore wrestling t-shirts:
“When I went to school in ’96, wrestling was such a huge part of my identity. I wore an orange Taz ECW shirt to school multiple times a week,” said Khan. “The other days, I was probably wearing my Antonio Inoki Peace Festival t-shirt that I had gotten from a tape trader. Probably three or four days a week, I’d either wear that Taz shirt, or that Inoki Peace Festival shirt, or a Darth Vader shirt and a Happy Gilmore shirt. That was like my entire wardrobe at that point when I was 13 as far as shirts went.”
While Khan was in high school, wrestling underwent a series of changes that catapulted it back to the forefront of pop culture, improving his social standing among his peers:
“In ’96, it wasn’t really cool to watch wrestling, but in ’98 and ’99, everybody started watching it, and all of a sudden it was a cool thing, and I’d gotten in on the ground floor,” explained Khan. “People started asking me questions during the Monday Night Wars and the Attitude Era about what was happening, and who these guys were. On Tuesday mornings, people would be asking me why something happened, or what was the deal with whatever was going on. I really enjoyed it, and as I went through puberty and matured, I think the wrestling business went through its own crazy growth spurt as I was going through mine.”
Khan continued his e-wrestling hobby as the 1990s gave way to the 2000s and then the 2010s, no matter where his life took him, whether it was the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign or the world of legitimate business, and how he continued to script, time out, and submit over 1,000 wrestling shows for his small audience of e-wrestling fans, while also adding more content that would one day receive a tangible form:
“It was probably around 2011 when I wanted to do more great wrestling matches every week, so in my fantasy wrestling league I created a second show,” said Khan. “Incredibly, that was Rampage. I actually had a third show that never came to fruition, but it was kind of fun, and it was called Tuesday Night Tag Team Fights. I had these different shows, but Dynamite and Rampage were always the primary shows. I have done Dynamite since 1995 and Rampage since 2011.”
Khan is quick to point out the differences between traditional fantasy sports and fantasy wrestling leagues, as well as the increased sense of connectedness and ownership that comes with the latter, while cautioning those who believe their e-wrestling experience is sufficient to prepare them to manage a real pro wrestling product, even if e-wrestling bookers have drafted more than 1,000 e-wrestling shows like he has:
“In e-wrestling, you get ideas and try stuff out. I was a really young kid; I’m not saying it was impactful, or that you can jump straight from that into the wrestling business, but it was definitely a fun way to get your reps in,” said Khan. “There are a lot of young coaches in the football business, and you’re not going to use fantasy football to make your decisions in the NFL, I can tell you that firsthand. But growing up, a lot of people in the NFL played fantasy football. There’s nothing wrong with it, but it’s honestly very different from fantasy wrestling. When you’re doing a wrestling show, there’s a lot more involved in putting stories and angles together week to week, and stringing things together versus setting a fantasy lineup. There’s actually a lot more involved in a fantasy wrestling league.”
Khan attributes his time in e-wrestling to conditioning him to write shows that speak to his sensibilities as a wrestling fan, even when the other fans he was writing for only filled seats in his imagination’s arenas:
“There was a guy who passed away years later who was in the fantasy wrestling league I was in with my regular e-wrestling friend, and I remember him saying this so well,” began Khan. “He said that we were writing for an audience of just each other, but in a way we were writing for 10,000 fans or 5,000 fans that were in the arenas of these imaginary shows. Somehow you can still tell when stuff is over or not over with the fans, which is funny because they’re not real! But he was right! My other friend and I had never articulated it like that before, but he was right. That spoke to me.”
Khan has been inundated with direct fan feedback on a daily basis since the fans became very real with the launch of AEW in 2019:
“That’s been the biggest difference: Connecting with real people and seeing what they like, and balancing that with what I want to do. But frankly, I want to do it because I want to have a great promotion that the fans want to see,” said Khan. “I’m a big wrestling fan, and I want the other wrestling fans to like it. I do think I share tastes with a lot of our fans because I enjoy the shows too. A lot of the stuff they like, I also like, and if some of the stuff we put on the air doesn’t go perfect, I would probably agree with them that it didn’t go perfect. I like staying on the pulse of the online wrestling community.”
Khan considers himself fortunate to have gained plenty of experience interacting with talent and personnel in other athletic endeavors (NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars, Fulham FC) to complement his booking skills in the world of e-wrestling. When he was fully immersed in the world of real pro wrestling, the combination of his two sets of experience served him well:
“My experiences in pro sports, working in the NFL, and particularly as director of football for Fulham, I have seen that the difference between being a fan and working in the industry is that you have to be a people person, and also that people are the key factor,” explained Khan. “Just the simple act of telling people what they’re going to do is very different in real life when you’re dealing with actual human people and trying to get them to do things in a way that they’re actually going to feel good about it, whether it’s football or wrestling. You also have all these people with great ideas, but there are a lot of ideas that you can’t do, either because they’re not possible logistically, or the people are already involved in something else, so it doesn’t fit the schedule. Other times they’re just things you wouldn’t want to do. A lot of it comes down to trusting your instincts.”
How e-wrestling prepared him for the reality that you cannot please everyone all of the time:
“You very quickly start getting the sense when you actually sit down and write shows that you can’t please everyone,” said Khan. “You can’t get everyone you want to use on the show every week unless you’re putting 37-hour shows together. Also, everyone isn’t going to win every week. That’s just not how it works.”
Khan will continue to produce wrestling content, even if some of his detractors argue that it is difficult to consume:
“In the end, I would say it’s really about connecting with your fans and finding different ways to serve them what they like,” said Khan. “There are people for whom it might not be their favorite thing, but if they were to see it in the right presentation, they might like it. I’m just trying to put our best foot forward, and trying to create a home for all of the best things in wrestling.”
