The world of All Elite Wrestling continues to grow, but continues to have its fair share of competition outside of the ring.
Speaking to DAZN recently, All Elite Wrestling founder, co-owner, president, and CEO Tony Khan broke down his thoughts on the likes of WWE, which has been going through its own shakeup as of late.
“I wouldn’t compare that to the stuff we were going through in 2020 (with the pandemic and the passing of Brodie Lee),” Khan said. “That was horrible. But with the pandemic and shows being shut down, no live fans, having to figure out ways around that. Brody getting sick. So your original question was, what was the hardest year? Yeah, that was for a multitude of reasons. Like I was saying, I don’t think those are all necessarily bad things. The wrestling business is benefitting, I think in a lot of ways from changes. You asked about it with the injuries. Well, we’ve responded pretty well to those, and people that have been out for a variety of reasons are all starting to come back. There’s a lot of light at the end of the tunnel, and we’re getting close to the end of that tunnel in many ways.”
Tony Khan also touched on the fact that competition in the world of professional wrestling is more often than not a great thing for the fans. As for those at AEW, he still believes fans will look to the company for what they have been providing and those on their roster.
“Now the competition changing, I think that’s a good thing in some ways. If you like good wrestling, you’re just more likely to want to see it because our competitor has been doing better shows recently than they had been doing, I think. I watch them pretty often, and I think they’ve been better. It seems like that’s the consensus among people who watch them. I do think in general, if it’s gonna get more people watching wrestling, that’s probably not gonna hurt any wrestling company.
“And we stand to gain the most in many ways because if you’re a big wrestling fan, and if you’ve been away and you like good wrestling, you might be saying, ‘Where are Chris Jericho and Bryan Danielson? CM Punk’s back?’ So as we get to an exciting point of a lot of people coming back to the company, but a lot of new fans also, I think hopefully they want to embrace the new wrestlers in AEW and also a lot of the big names in AEW that you’ll be able to see on a regular basis, people that are on the show every week and have been going all summer like Chris Jericho and Jon Moxley. Then again, whenever CM Punk is back, there’s a big setup for an undisputed championship to be crowned.”
Tony Khan ended things by saying that even the competition does give him “good ideas,” but doesn’t exactly change anything about his already strict work ethic.
“I think I’ve been working as hard as I possibly can this whole time. It can give you good ideas for yourself. But overall, I just tried to follow what’s happening in wrestling, and I love wrestling and try to work as hard on it as I can every week.”
