During a new interview with AL.com, AEW President Tony Khan commented on AEW’s concussion protocol, talent developing their characters, and more. You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
On what the greatest contribution to wrestling was from the Southern region: “What a great, amazing question, as someone who loves Southern wrestling and is a true fan of it. Southern wrestling has represented a great alternative to what was often the most widely available national wrestling product. And Southern wrestling, and I’m speaking broadly about a bunch of different companies here, whether it be Continental in Alabama, while the UWF was running out of Houston and New Orleans and then you had the Lawler-Jarrett company in Memphis, you had a bunch of things happening at once. And then on of course Turner’s TBS that later became TNT also carried WCW, which was based in Atlanta. It was a nationally based show, but was kind of always associated with wrestling in the Southeast. There’s some minds, people like Dusty Rhodes and ‘Hot Stuff’ Eddie Gilbert, who were very influential creatively, and came up with ideas which to this day are the way people like to do and execute things behind the scenes. And really just the rapid-fire, fast paced style shows. There’s a famous thing that happened on Memphis television called the Tupelo concession stand brawl, and we did a concourse brawl and that was not totally dissimilar from that. And I think those are awesome concepts. Some of the coolest ideas ever came out of Southern wrestling. I love Southern wrestling.”
On the level of involvement AEW talents have in developing their characters and personas: “It depends. I think we’re really involved in the presentation of whoever it comes in, whether it’s a complete overhaul … I think we have a big say, like I have a big say, in what the presentation’s going to be. I think what’s great is when we work with people who have so much experience and knowledge, like Chris is brilliant. And I’ve sat with Chris and with Cody and people and we’ve had really interesting talks about how AEW can help develop a unique presentation for them. Like the Chris you see at AEW is a very different Chris than we’ve ever seen before. This super rock-star champion with the entourage he has, which is called the Inner Circle, which is a new thing that we’ve kind of developed here since we’ve started our TV show, ‘Dynamite.’ The Inner Circle’s gotten over pretty big. So yeah, it’s a different presentation. And Cody, since he had gone out on his own, and started wrestling on independents had tweaked his presentation and developed some amazing stuff. But I think since he’s gotten in AEW, Cody’s presentation is off the charts as well. And wrestlers like Kenny Omega and The Young Bucks, they also, like you said, had some fully formed wrestling skill sets and brilliant minds for wrestling, but when they came in their presentation at AEW’s a unique presentation too. We’ve developed a lot of new acts like the Jurassic Express, for example, is something new we created in AEW. They were individual wrestlers that we put together, and something that’s been really fun for the guys themselves, first and foremost, most also for the fans and families who come to the shows.”
On how TV moving toward streaming has impacted AEW: “It’s been very positive for us, because in an era when it’s really hard to draw people 18 to 49 to television, wrestling is one of the best ways to do that. TNT, to be consistently in the top three, top five, top 10 with us, I think they’re really happy with that, and we’ve done a good job for them.”
On how safety measures for concussions are changing in wrestling: “It’s changed a lot. There’s researcher out there named Chris Nowinski who’s actually a former pro wrestler and a former football player and had concussions end his career and has gone around educating pro wrestlers and football people and sports all over about the dangers of concussion. And I think through him and a bunch of other people’s work we know more about it, so we have concussion protocol in place and we have doctors at ringside for all the matches. If anybody couldn’t continue for any reason, we check for that and people have to be cleared to return, and I think things have come a long way. AEW, we’re a relatively new company. Our first show was ‘Double or Nothing,’ Memorial Day weekend in Las Vegas, last May, so I think people have been educated and by the time we started we knew we had to have doctors at ringside and a protocol for safety.”
