AEW President Tony Khan did an interview with Wade Keller for PWTorch.com to discuss a wide range of topics. Here are some of the highlights:
CM Punk’s impact on AEW’s business:
“Our numbers are so much better than they were, you know, going into the last few months and there’s been an unquestionable lift since CM Punk came in. For some reason I see people trying to discredit punk all the time that he hasn’t been a huge lift to our business. And he has been and he’s only scratching the surface. I have intentionally in working with him tried to hold back a lot of these marquee things biggest marquee matches and stories. Tonight. We are going to get into some of that Eddie Kingston is here in St. Louis and he is healthy he is ready to be here. And I want to see Punk and Eddie Kingston tonight face to face in that ring. And I am very excited going forward and maybe at Full Gear to see them lock up and I believe that is a match fans want to see and we’ve been getting Punk reintegrated building the winning streak. And I think it’s worked great. And again when you look at the rating we did for our first Wednesday back that was a really strong number last week and he was such a huge part of it kicking the show off and wrestling through the entire first segment in a great match. So he’s just lifted our business so much and I see people constantly really petty stuff trying to discredit him and it’s ridiculous because he’s done so much for us.”
How the EVP roles have changed:
“They’re still very involved in a lot of aspects of the business. A lot of those things have been enhanced. The amount of development of huge resources that we’ve allocated towards building a great console video game, Kenny Omega has led a team and has really spearheaded this project with our staff. And he’s been such a great leader. And so Kenny Omega has helped really lead the company in a few different ways in the past couple years. And working with the Young Bucks, Cody, they’re great leaders backstage with the wrestlers, I had been pretty open. It’s not, it’s not because of anybody except my own feel that I’ve probably gotten a little bit more hands on with the stuff I do, than when we started. But that makes perfect sense because I had never worked in a wrestling company, I’d only come in from the outside. So I was organizing a lot of things at the beginning. And I was like the head of a committee. And I think there are a lot of drawbacks of trying to book a wrestling show with a committee. And even if you’re at the forefront of it, it’s still a mind-bogglingly difficult process. And I kind of around the start of 2020, the end of 2019 moved more to me writing the show. And I think it helped and it’s the show’s been better for it not because everybody doesn’t have good ideas, because they’re still contributing all their ideas. And that part hasn’t changed. It’s the idea of everybody getting in a room together and trying to spitball ideas and then like three people get really into one idea. And then they get like 10 steps down on the road on it. And the other two people like wait, like, what is this? Oh, yeah, it’s just like – and that’s just an example. But in general, I found it to be much easier and more productive if I just tried to organize a show at home, like between shows, and have a good idea arriving for a TV what I want to do the next week, which is why generally until we get pretty close to the pay per view, we’re always announcing matches a week ahead. And then as we get closer, you know, to the pay per views, we’re building the pay per views, and I’m only announcing maybe a few things as opposed to the entire card for the next week…There’s they’re all still very involved in stories. And I talked to all four of them a ton about not just their programs, but what I’m doing with other people. Yeah, but I’ve just tried to be organized in a different way where I talk to talk to them all, and have a lot of compartmentalized conversations. I’ve compartmentalized a lot more things. And it’s helped me it’s helped me be better organized, I think, and especially to get through the pandemic, when there were no in person meetings, it ended up working out even better, because I had already kind of been going in that direction. And I remember talking to you in like the peak of the pandemic just to catch up, because really, I mean, it was just fun talk to people on the phone, because everybody was in quarantine, you know, nationwide. And I remember when we had shot all of the shows in QT’s gym that like I said, we were, you know, had all these great plans. And we were really on fire after Revolution. We have just crowned a new champion, Jon Moxley and the business had never been hotter. And we just come off this great pay per view Revolution. And we had this big tour planned, it all got canceled. And I’m there in Atlanta with 29% of my contracted wrestlers, in an era where the roster was so much thinner than it is now. Now, if I had 29% of the roster, I could still do a really great show, and really weeks of great shows, this was very different. And so I remember talking to you then, and the world was in a very different place than you know, a year and a half ago, and not just AEW [but] the entire world. And it’s really amazing to think about where the world is, and, you know, being able to go out and go to a wrestling show and go out to a movie again, but also where AEW is and being back on the road, back on tour with the fans. You know, from where I was talking to a year and a half ago. Wade, it’s pretty amazing how far things have come.”
H/T to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription
