AEW President Tony Khan did an interview with Wade Keller for PWTorch.com to talk about a wide range of topics. Here are some of the highlights:
Who handles the script of AEW’s shows:
“I write the format and I send my notes to get to QT. And then he and I write up actually take my notes and put it into like a printable TV format, which we’ll distribute and different people who would be in the production meetings and the production calls see them so that would be the Young Bucks, Cody, Kenny, Chris Jericho, CM Punk and a variety of other people across the show. The announcers, you know, and other people that want to look at the format, the coaches, Jerry Lynn, Dean Malenko, Serena Deeb, and a number of others. And you know, at the end of the day, I put the format together, and if somebody wants to get something on the show, they have to get it by me. So, you know, I meet with a lot of different people and having hundreds of different conversations throughout the week. But I find it to be a good process because I like working with everyone. And there’s lots of good ideas. But at the end of the day when it comes to like moving segments around and who says this thing goes here and this goes there, it’s it’s generally me.”
AEW becoming a full-fledged wrestling company:
“Not just a full-fledged wrestling company, Wade, but really, there’s a lot of the top sports leagues right now that we outdraw. Yeah. And people talk about these big hot sports leagues, and right now AEW out draws a lot of major sporting events on a weekly basis. So to your point, you’re absolutely right. And I give TNT a ton of credit for this, because we clearly there was a very devoted hardcore fan base. And before I got directly involved, there were you know, I think about 50,000 people that bought All In, which is really, really strong and as good as any pay per view at that point [since] Impact, which had been probably the number two company for 18 years, 17 years at that point, they had never done a number that good. And if they’d done it, I think it was probably once for the Kurt Angle, Samoa Joe cage match, I think was pretty close. But, you know, our pay-per-view numbers are all double or more of that. And our TV numbers are amazing. And I think a lot of that came when TNT did that great campaign to help build awareness for us and then AEW, we had a lot of the great wrestlers that you saw in Ring of Honor [and] in New Japan and on that particular All In show that you were at and I was at, but also tried to build a deeper roster and bring in star power from the beginning with Chris Jericho announced and then on the first show Jon Moxley showing up as the big surprise. And from then on, just continue to add star power and build. And really, I look around in the company is in some ways, really all positive ways. Honestly, if you’re the owner of the company, and if you’re a fan of the company. It’s so unrecognizable compared to the company we started with it’s pretty unthinkable, looking around seeing CM Punk and Bryan Danielson, Adam Cole, Ruby Soho, Thunder Rosa, all these awesome people that weren’t with us when we started and Malakai Black and then Andrade El Idolo, and new faces and even the people that came in last year, you know, Sting and FTR, Matt Hardy, and so many people have joined us along the way from where we started. So pretty cool.”
