Tony Khan is exactly what he says he is.
Usually, with a pro wrestling promoter, regardless of if it’s a national businessman trying to retain the intellectual property of a character that he pushed on his television show when the talent portraying the in-ring persona leaves the organization, or a nickel-and-dime carny local yokel trying to make a few extra bucks selling misspelled 8X10s, you have to take almost everything they say with a grain of salt.
However, Tony Khan, for both the positive and the negative, is often exactly who he claims to be.
He’s more or less unanimously praised as a genuinely great guy that legitimately cares about his roster, which is extremely rare for the often cut-throat pro wrestling business, where the strike of the pencil could theoretically give an opportunity to make or break at career. While a narcissistic yo-yo like Elon Musk pads his bank account through the government awarded to him by his equally narcissistic orange villain of a buddy, Tony Khan often goes above and beyond to do what the general consensus would suggest is the right thing to do, even when he doesn’t have to. He doesn’t bring it up in any of those marathon post-PPV press conferences where he enjoys the chance to sit next to his favorite wrestlers, but there are numerous examples of when Tony helped talent and their families. It’s very common that any time there are fundraising efforts for legends of the industry with medical emergencies that Tony will make a donation. Chris Jericho often does the same thing as well. When Jay Briscoe tragically passed away a few years ago, it was reported that Khan quietly took care of the families medical expenses, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Jay Briscoe’s contract is still being paid today as a way to help his family. Plus, and this is probably something considered more of a smaller detail compared to when Khan has helped during tragedies, but it’s also known that Khan offers fair, and sometimes even overpays talent to sign with his organization, proving them a level of financial stability through their work for his company.
Granted, none of that automatically makes him a successful booker or promoter, and the slip in AEW ratings over the past few years proves that, but it undoubtedly makes his a noble human being.
That being said, Tony is still exactly who he said he was when he infamously claimed that he, “books for the sickos.” After this week’s edition of Dynamite, there’s very little doubt about that notion.
When I saw that the Adam Copeland/Jon Moxley rematch for the AEW World championship was placed on the line-up before the main event segment of Kris Statlander/Megan Bayne contest, it was an immediate giveaway that the title wasn’t going to change hands. You simply don’t have the world title switch in a street fight in the middle of the show, and that placement is often done to avoid souring the crowd with a wonky finish to end the night. Instead, after Bayne beat Statlander, who unfortunately, is getting saddled with the “good hand” label so she’s often put in a position to make others look good as opposed to getting a chance to shine herself, the crowd was sent home happy when fan favorite, Toni Storm made a challenge for the Dynasty pay-per-view in two weeks.
Of course, this meant that the street fight would be marred with interference from the Moxley stable, which is reaching an NWO-level of match interference, and we all know how well that scenarios worked after the fans knew there would inevitably be weekly run-ins to dilute the importance of a match.
Up until a point, the match was rather tame by All Elite standards, considering that tables and chairs are often used without rhyme or reason even if the segment isn’t a gimmick match. Why exactly are the rules in place if there’s no reason to follow them? Furthermore, if there’s not an explanation about why the rules can be ignored, why should the audience care when a gimmick match is announced?
The point that the Moxley/Copeland bout either jumped the shark or hit a new low, depending on your perspective, was when the spiked 2X4 was introduced into the match. It’s a weapon that Copeland has used to attempt to even up the odds against the Moxley faction before so its appearance wasn’t the surprising part, but rather when he put it on the canvas to suplex Moxley onto the spiked weapon. In a grotesque display, the nails in the 2X4 were legitimately stuck in Moxley’s back. After Wheeler Yuta ran in, he and the referee attempted to dislodge the nails from the champion’s back, but you could see the skin being pulled as the nailed remained stuck in his flesh, prompting the production crew to cut to a wide shot. Eventually, the nails were taken out of his back and he was bleeding from the puncture wounds when he choked Copeland out to retain the belt.
This was definitely a match for the sickos, and the fact that Tony Khan continues to book this type of stuff after the argument could be made that the company already went too far at the Revolution pay-per-view, it speaks volumes to how truly misguided his vision of pro wrestling is for a national organization.
Granted, they probably weren’t expecting Moxley to be impaled by the nails, but these type of scenarios should at least be considered before they’re allowed to be a part of a segment on TBS. That’s the biggest faux pas of this whole situation, the segment had very little, if any, upside and numerous pitfalls as far as the television show. First and most importantly, this is national TV, not an independent show in front of 200 fans in a parking lot where an old K-Mart used to be. If the counter argument to this was that there’s an audience for this type of stuff somewhere, it’s the most niche demographic of the most diehard group of fans. Quite frankly, someone getting literally impaled by nails is a good way to sour TBS executives and even more of the viewing audience. This might be a shocking revelation to the “sickos” that Tony books for, but the vast majority of pro wrestling fans, even the diehard audience that follows the sport internationally, don’t want to see the over-the-top gory. It’s not compelling or dramatic, it’s just gross.
Moxley legitimately getting nails stuck in his back risks souring the network, potential sponsors, and companies that might not want to buy ad time during the Dynamite broadcasts. The reasons that independent groups can get away with doing the gory stunts are very simple, they don’t have to work within the parameters of a television network, most of the time they don’t have sponsors to sour on the product, and even with the modern technology to have live streams of events, organizations don’t buy commercial time on independent shows.
It’s gotten to the point where All Elite Wrestling is literally doing independent death match wrestling on TBS, and there’s just not a way to even suggest that it’s compatible. Will the arenas suddenly be sold out because of this match? Considering that AEW has done more of this type of stuff within the past two and and a half years, the same time span when their attendance and ratings declined, what exactly was the upside of the Copeland/Moxley match? Game Changer Wrestling is the biggest independent group in the United States, but there’s a reason that they don’t run arenas or have a TV deal.
It sounds trivial, but it should still be noted that pro wrestling is supposed to be a work, with at least the originally intended goal, to be that nobody actually gets hurt during a match. The reason being, if a performer gets injured and is on the sidelines, they can’t draw money in the ring for the company. Maybe that’s why this was allowed to happen, because as we know, money is no object to Tony Khan so the ability to draw money is completely secondary, which is why AEW is probably always going to be a vanity project.
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Until next week
-Jim LaMotta
E mail [email protected] | You can follow me on Instagram, Facebook, & Threads @jimlamotta89
