As most wrestling fans know AEW has been plagued by various backstage issues almost since its inception. Beyond The Elite clique versus The CM Punk clique, there has been personal issues between Sammy Guevara and Andrade El Idolo, Thunder Rosa and Britt Baker, the list goes on and on.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Tony Khan addressed those issues in a general statement.
“I want the best wrestlers here in AEW. I want the best roster. And there may be some of them that don’t get along with each other backstage or on TV. It’s not ideal, but it’s a reality, and I can’t make everyone get along. I’m not sure it’s necessarily even in the best interest of pro wrestling for everybody to get along. But ideally, everybody is going to be able to focus on their matches and putting on the best shows for the fans. So even though … wrestlers backstage hate each other and don’t want to be friends with each other, I think we all agree this is a really exciting time for the company. And it’s a really exciting time for the wrestling business and for the wrestling fans,” he told Georg Szalai, The Hollywood Reporter’s Global Business Editor.
Khan explained his approach to juggling those egos in AEW.
“What I’m trying to do is to create an environment where everybody can go out and prove it multiple times per week and create a platform where the fans can decide who the best wrestlers are, what the best rivalries are, what the best matches are. As long as I can keep the top talent in AEW, we will have the best matches and the best big events. The lineup of wrestlers competing on AEW All In is the strongest group of talent we’ve ever assembled on one show, it features some of the biggest matches in the history of this company, and I think it’s going to be one of the greatest days ever in pro wrestling this Sunday,” he said of their upcoming All In event.
Speaking of All In, Khan gave an update on ticket sales.
“We have got approximately 80,000 tickets distributed. We have had roughly $10 million in ticket sales and we have set every AEW business metric record for our own sales. We’ve hit our own box office record many times over, and certainly our own attendance record many times over. AEW All In at Wembley Stadium is surely going to be the biggest wrestling event in the history of Europe for ticket sales and box office receipts,” he said.
When asked about being a “challenger brand” to the powerhouse WWE, Khan had this analogy to offer.
“Pepsi is a challenger brand. Pepsi is a huge player in the industry and a major corporation, but nobody would claim that Pepsi is a worldwide leader in the industry. They’re a challenger brand and they’re competing with an established company that’s been around a very long time and they’re taking them on. And they built a huge market share in this space as the challenger brand in that space. Burger King is another great example of a challenger brand. A lot of their marketing is directed at referring to themselves as that challenger brand and taking on an established leader, and they’re not afraid to call out that leader when they think there’s something that they can do better. There are a lot of examples of these kinds of challenger brands. I think what AEW has established for ourselves is that we’re a challenger brand in a multibillion-dollar business, and we have a large market share carved out for ourselves. What’s very interesting in the U.K., which is a major media market and one of the best markets for the pro wrestling industry, AEW is carving out a legitimate claim as the industry leader now. It’s very exciting because as a challenger brand, your goal is to go into the different major markets and territories and win them over and try to turn places,” he said.
