Tony Khan recently spoke with Gavin Bridge at the Monaco Streaming Film Festival for an in-depth interview.
During the discussion, the AEW President spoke about not being a fan of WWE Backstage, being pitched the concept for AEW Rampage and more.
Featured below are some of the highlights from the interview.
On why he wasn’t a fan of WWE Backstage: “I didn’t agree with [WWE] Backstage at all. I didn’t think it was a good format. I had actually been pitched to do a format like that with AEW and I refused because I don’t think wrestling fans want to see that format. Wrestling fans when they tune in to watch their wrestling show, they want to watch wrestlers wrestle and Backstage, to me, should be like a lower-budget streaming type show. I don’t know if it had the legs to carry as a TV show, even though the people involved with it were awesome and a lot of them work for me now and are huge stars. I want to watch CM Punk wrestle. I want to watch Christian Cage wrestle. To me, that is the bread and butter. I love watching those guys talk about wrestling, don’t get me wrong, I think it would be a kick-ass streaming show, I don’t know if I would build one of my TV franchises around guys talking about wrestling. At least not in the context of analyzing it and breaking it down.”
On being pitched the idea for Rampage and turning it down: “For Rampage, it was part of the format that I turned down and refused to do. They said, ‘Would you do this as part of the third hour?’ And I said, ‘No, it’s going to be wrestling.’ I have a different format for it and that’s where Mark Henry (does interviews). There is that talk show competent where they talk before they wrestle. That is a little bit of a twist on the format, but it’s not, ‘Let’s look back on the week in wrestling’ and have a cup of coffee together, which I think is not a good format for a TV show.”
Check out the complete interview at StreamingFF.com. H/T to Fightful for transcribing the above quotes.
