Tony Khan: “To be AEW is to be under constant attack”
After last night’s ROH Final Battle 2023 PPV, AEW President Tony Khan said the following during the post-show media scrum:
“To be AEW is to be under constant attack. You do a great show and the next day somebody’s saying something negative, you do five great shows in a row, somebody says something negative.
You break the record for the most tickets ever sold for a wrestling show in the history of the world and somebody has something bad to say about it.
At this point, I don’t worry about it. We just need to go out and do great shows week after week like we did.
We were the number one show on cable this week on Wednesday, we beat every single show on TV on Wednesday out of hundreds and hundreds of shows across hundreds of networks. And if we continue doing it, everybody here’s going to be in a good position.”
Great show? You say everything is great.
To be a business, especially an entertainment business, is to be under constant attack. He’s talking like WWE never gets criticized. Some people will like what you do, some won’t, and unfortunately the negative voices are usually louder no matter who you are. I get that he’s trying to advance the narrative of AEW as the scrappy homegrown underdog promotion that made it big against all odds despite adversity on every side, but…no. It’s just part of being in the public eye. Deal.
to have this mindset that all the critical comments are coming from “haters” is harmful. it doesn’t help your product, it doesn’t help the talent in your locker room and it doesn’t grow your audience. as long as tony continues to view it this way and foster that environment in the company, it risks turning AEW stagnant and keeping them a niche company. compelling storylines, characters and matches will always be a winning formula, not catering to meltzer and his star system.
Welcome to the wrestling business Tony.