In an interview with Jim Varsallone of The Miami Herald, AEW President Tony Khan discussed the growth of AEW Dark this year.
Here is what he had to say:
“It started early in the pandemic, I didn’t have any fans and I wanted to bring in lots of people to, first of all, to be able to develop more wrestlers, but also, we had fans at ringside and I’m bringing these people in and it’s like, well I’d like to take a look at these people and get them in matches and really build up a developmental system where we’re taking a look at all these indie wrestlers and also giving them a chance to work in a pandemic, which is something I felt really good about, because you know, through March, April, May, June, it’s like the pandemic just slapped everybody in the face and independent wrestling had become a non-entity, so for a lot of people, their best chance of working in the wrestling business if they weren’t signed anywhere was to come work on AEW Dark, which was great and we found some really valuable people in AEW through this program and so, it’s our developmental system and we continue to develop wrestler and we’ll have more new talent in this Wednesday and I’m sure we’ll find some more people that we have interest in and it’s really fun and I think it’s great for the fans to see the next generation of big wrestlers, but also to see some of the top stars in AEW getting a chance to develop their move-set, getting a chance to tell their stories and we got great commentary with Excalibur and Taz and we have guest hosts. Ricky Starks is kind of the permanent guest host and then, we have other people who have come in and done a great job like Veda Scott, Anthony Ogogo and others.”
