AEW Rampage scored a big win over SmackDown on Friday night (at least for the 30 minutes they went head-to-head), and that's given AEW President Tony Khan some serious bragging rights.
He's been extremely vocal about WWE's attempts to hurt AEW in recent weeks, pointing out that he's richer than Vince McMahon and exclaiming that a recent episode of RAW "sucked." He's not wrong on either count. However, someone who has taken issue with that is WWE Hall of Famer Booker T.
Booker argues that overall numbers are more important than the key 18-49 demo (they're not) and had fighting words for Khan. "I’m of the sentiment that Tony Khan is doing a lot of talking about nothing. Go out and produce a good show," he said. "At the end of the day, we’ll know who won if that’s what we’re looking for, if that’s your goal post, if that’s where you’re trying to score in."
"But all of this talk about what you’re doing, this and that, back and forth, I swear man, it sounds like a little school girl saying how pretty she is over the other girls on the schoolyard."
"I could be wrong, but to me, that’s what it sounds like. It doesn’t sound like a boss. It doesn’t sound like a real boss move to be talking about something as small as that. I remember back in the day when WCW and WWE, it was head to head going down, that right there was a real war fighting for numbers," Booker continued. "At one point, WCW took that rating war and ran with it for 83 weeks. That’s a long, damn time to say, ‘We’re winning.’ What happened after 83 weeks? The ball shifted and we never got the momentum back."
"You know why? Because there was a lot of talking going on, and a lot of guys not working keeping their eyes on the prize," the former WCW and WWE Champion added. "My thing is, if Tony Khan is smart, and I really think the guy really is smart, he would definitely stop thinking about the fans on social media as opposed to how long can we run this thing? How big can we make this?"
There is plenty of sense to be found here, but no one can blame Khan for his recent comments as they have been in retaliation to some pretty petty moves on WWE's part. That doesn't necessarily make them "right," of course, but it does feel like Booker T is missing the point to some extent here.
What do you guys think?