During a recent appearance on the “Tuesday Wrestling Tuesday” podcast, AEW President Tony Khan commented on AEW fans caring about wins and losses, when he thinks wrestling is at its best, and more. You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On when he thinks wrestling is at its best: “I don’t think there’s one perfect wrestling show, and I watch all different kinds of wrestling products. Through the ’80s, wrestling looked different all over the country. In the territory, through the ’70s and ’80s, they’re all different versions of wrestling, and they were good stuff, different places. Whether it was the Crockett’s in the Carolina’s, Georgia Championship Wrestling, Championship Wrestling from Florida, Mid South Wrestling, World Class Championship Wrestling in Texas, there’s all these great shows, and I’m a huge fan of Memphis wrestling as well. And then a lot of the Memphis wrestling influence spread to the Mid South area when Jim Cornette, the Midnight Express, The Rock ‘n’ Roll Express, Bill Dundee and a bunch of others from Memphis migrated to the Mid South area working for Bill Watts, and that really strengthen that show. You see companies change and transform their identity, and I think AEW now is a very different company from when we started. Wrestling, it ebbs and flows. It’s at its best when the fans are really excited about it, and the so-called Attitude Era, the Monday Night Wars, that’s maybe the all-time peak for business revenues.”
On the current business opportunities for AEW and fans caring about wins and losses: “And now we live in a world where business is more efficient, and the TV business and streaming is much more efficient. There are new revenue streams, there are new ways to capture fans, and even though that linear TV audiences isn’t as big as what it was, there are all kinds of business opportunities that didn’t exist 20 years ago, where we can really heat the business up. But the most important thing is perception and the fans caring about the show, caring about who wins and losses and caring about the matches and the wrestlers. We have that right now, and so what it looks like, I think, is fairly subjective. As long as the people really believe in it, care about it and we have that happening right now.”
(h/t – Wrestling Inc)
