When AEW was soundly beating NXT in the ratings and closing in on RAW and SmackDown, AEW President Tony Khan was riding high. Since Triple H has taken charge of WWE, though, it's been a very different story.
Interest in AEW has lessened and both its weekly shows and PPVs no longer receive the rave reviews they once did (hotshot booking has done little to help matters, of course, and neither has the fact it's constantly being compared to WWE).
Now, in a new interview, Khan has elaborated on previous comments about AEW being "under constant attack" by critics.
"I think that’s a legitimate thing I said, and it is a challenging thing to be the challenger brand, but it’s also a great opportunity. Bringing wrestling back to TBS and TNT every week means a lot; it’s a great American tradition. I’ve really communicated that very well—that it means a lot to me and to the American people to have wrestling on TBS and TNT every week. To be on TBS tonight, I don’t take it for granted. We’ve done over 250 episodes now on Wednesday nights, and doing this every week on TV is something that I’m very well aware of."
"It’s a great thing for everybody that we can do this for all the people who work here and for all the fans. Pro wrestling is a 52-week-a-year business. It’s a very, very challenging grind, and I love it. I think that it is difficult to be the challenger brand, and there are great examples of this. I think it will come under scrutiny for almost anything I say. I think AEW is a great company, and there are a lot of people out there who don’t want to see it succeed and spend a lot of time trying to stop it. But that’s the fight that basically every challenger wrestling promotion has fought for decades, and it’s great standing here right now."
Khan loves playing the victim and dodging a question by inundating an interview with endless fluff and hyperbole, but the gist here seems to be that he feels AEW is targeted for being an upstart company hoping to challenge WWE.
The AEW President is currently waiting to find out whether AEW will remain part of the WarnerMedia family; unfortunately for the company, we don't anticipate them securing a huge new deal thanks to the aforementioned decline in ratings.
However, with TruTV set to rebrand as TNT Sports, that may be where AEW lands when all is said and done (what that will mean for its viewership numbers remains to be seen).
Check out the full interview with Khan below.