Tony Khan: AEW Will Give Women A Platform Like WCW Did For Cruiserweights

AEW President Tony Khan was today’s guest on the Talk Is Jericho podcast. Khan opened up about the inner workings of AEW and gave insight into what fans can expect from the new promotion. Highlights appear below.

(Transcription Credit: Michael McClead, WrestleZone)

Why Now Was The Right Time For AEW:

A number of factors. I think economic factors. I think wrestling for advertisers now have become attractive. Advertisers can see there’s a huge base of wrestling fans all over the world. They’re really passionate, and they’re good people, they’re educated people, and it’s a really diverse group. I think there’s a lot of really passionate fans around this group of wrestlers, the talent, yourself, The Elite, and a number of the competitors that are coming into this; Dr. Britt Baker, Kylie Rae, and Brandi. All the surprises we have planned for Double or Nothing. We’ve got a really really great engagement among the fans and, to me, that makes it the right time to strike. When you have all these great talents with their contracts coming up, and we’re in a market where there’s TV money to be had, and we’re in the right time to try and make a deal with a major network for a wrestling TV show. I think it’s the right climate for a number of reasons. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do and all of a sudden, it felt like the right time to strike.

What The Catalyst Was For AEW:

I just became more sure of it. For a long time it just started to make more sense to me, as I looked to the market, looked at the availability of performers in different windows, and saw, ‘Wow, in 2019 there’s gonna be a real opportunity here.’ It was public knowledge [that the contracts were coming up]. That stuff had been written in the Observer. That stuff had been put online about whose deals were coming up and who was or who wasn’t working with a deal. It was pretty public knowledge that you were out working other places and also my knowledge of the TV market and media rights told me that there was gonna be a really good climate for us to get involved with this. Really, all the details came together at the right time and there wasn’t one moment where I was 100% sure I was doing it. It went to being from 90, to 95, to 99.9%. I don’t know if I can pin it down. It was a lot of factors over time.

On AEW Being Good For Wrestling:

It’s just gonna be better for everybody. It will be better for the wrestlers, it will be much better for the wrestling fans, and it’s going to be better for the companies. It will be great for us getting started, but I think it will be great for everybody because it’s just going to be a much more interesting time to be a fan of wrestling.

Khan On AEW’s Women’s Division:

I think what we’re doing with women’s wrestling and what we’re going to do is going to be very exciting. It’s only going to get more diverse and more interesting as we go. I’m very excited about it. I think the athleticism and pace, the work-rate we’re going to bring to our women’s division, I think will be above and beyond anything that’s ever been done. It’s just going to be different from what other people are doing. I there are some amazing, amazing, amazing stuff being done in different places in women’s wrestling right now….I think there are enough athletic, enough talented, enough incredibly charismatic women to build a division, to me, that will be like the WCW Cruiserweight Division, a division populated with great athletes who haven’t had this kind of national exposure before, who are just gonna shine under the spotlight, and deliver really athletic, really fast paced matches. The work-rate of this division is gonna be off the charts. When you have the kind of discerning eyes for talent that you guys have involved and we’re putting on these kind of shows with the production value we’re talking about, I think we’re going to do some really exciting things for women’s wrestling too.

Khan also talks about growing up as a tape trading wrestling fan, seeing Chris Jericho perform his last ever match in ECW, and scoring a ring worn Brian Pillman tee shirt. Readers may listen to all that and more below: