Tony Khan Needs To Focus On AEW, Not WWE
Pro Wrestling has slowly started to another boom period with so many great promotions doing many great things, one such promotion is Tony Khan’s AEW even though the ratings may not reflect the good stuff AEW has been doing it’s been doing so many good shows. But it seems that Tony Khan can’t seem to quite enjoy AEW’s successes without hitting X (formerly Twitter) to bemoan the WWE.
Every time he gets on his X account, there’s a tweet about WWE a slight dig here, a bigger dig there and even on his broadcasts there’s sly digs, some more obvious, references galore.
It’s time for Tony to shut up about the WWE and focus on what AEW can and will achieve if he and others keep hitting home runs. Tony’s slowly starting to sound like a mid-1990s Eric Bischoff where he’d rather focus on bringing up the WWE and everything bad there and wanting to outdo them than creating a better wrestling product.
Despite the backstage issues, and the whole Punk drama that unfolded leading to Punk being fired AEW has shown that it’s a very good alternative to the WWE, if people aren’t keen on seeing the WWE style. But you must get past the myriad of WWE references that slowly creep in from time to time from not just Tony but his superstar roster as well.
There were times that WCW had many issues with referencing the competition, Eric Bischoff was on a mission to ‘kill’ the then WWF, but despite beating the WWE for a year the WWF comeback and WCW was no more. WCW had lost focus on creating new interesting content and started to be lazy.
There was a time as well the former TNA now known as IMPACT Wrestling tried to reinvent the Monday Night Wars, when Eric Bischoff and Hulk Hogan entered the company. Alas, their attempts failed miserably and almost bankrupted the company. It took a lot of budget cuts, a lot of time before IMPACT Wrestling was able to find some ground again, but they’re now far from where they’d obviously want to be, but they’re a solid company doing great things themselves. Now focused solely on their own product, IMPACT Wrestling is garnering some momentum.
Now All Elite Wrestling want to be the top dog in town, to be greater and bigger than the WWE but AEW is trying to run before they can walk and have the foundations of a great promotion. They have a lot of the tools there to be a great big alternative to WWE, but Tony Khan needs to leave out the WWE references. Focus solely on their product, getting their stars into top positions and get the ratings needle slowly moving forward.
It’s not a hard thing for the company to follow, we’ve seen previously that companies that tried to take on the WWE when they weren’t ready come and go without a whimper. Both the WWE and AEW can co-exist in the world, with other promotions lurking about without needing to try and be part of the demise of the other.
Khan as a wrestling fan needs to realise that his constant attacks on the WWE is just going to drive some fans away, especially if he’s not focused on making his current product better and trying to not make the mistakes that WCW, and IMPACT Wrestling did before him.
As a smart businessman, Tony Khan should put that knowledge and his fan of the business together and make a good product. He has all the tools and has an amazing backstage staff that can help drive AEW forward and make it a great product and a great alternative to the WWE.
All these cheap potshots at the WWE are doing is causing people to not want to watch the product, and taking valuable time away from creating and maintaining great storylines and making AEW the best it can be.
So Tony, it’s time to just shut up, forget that the WWE exists, and focus on AEW, you have a great product there with a lot of great talent it’s time to focus on making it a great alternative.
News Writer. Living in Tasmania Dave is a lifelong wrestling fan, formerly working for Mix It Up Radio’s Wrestling Asylum Radio program, and Wide Bay Pro Wrestling working backstage and writing articles. Podcaster with 15 years of journalism experience across different sports mostly AFL and professional wrestling, photographer for local footy in Tasmania.
