AEW President and CEO Tony Khan appeared on the Battleground podcast to discuss various topics, including whether any talent in the company possesses creative control.
Khan said, “There’s no creative control. Only I have it. No wrestler has that. And there’s a lot of freedom to work with the staff and the coaches and the wrestlers together and come up with ideas. I am one of the most collaborative people on the planet. And that’s how I’ve been able to succeed in multiple sports and build the greatest sports analytics engineering firm in the world, True Media. So we do great things. I love working with partners all over the world, media partners. In wrestling, I think we are really collaborative and when AEW’s at its best. That’s what it is, s the wrestlers coming in with ideas, I come in with ideas, we work together and uh that’s what I love.”
On dealing With creative pitches:
“A lot of times there’s ideas that are fantastic, and I say, ‘That’s a great idea.’ There’s other times where maybe it isn’t necessarily going to work. And there may be something to it, but the timing or the scheduling or something about it doesn’t work. A lot of times the wrestlers come up with great ideas. But I have to choose what we what we do and don’t do. And within the constraints of doing two-hour TV shows, there’s only so many things you can do. So I think we’ve been really great about pacing the TV shows and putting on great TV shows every Wednesday on TBS and every Saturday on TNT, and now with everything being on HBO Max. And I really love trying to find things, trying to find ways to work with and collaborate with the wrestlers and the staff and the great people in AEW. And I also come up with a lot of ideas myself and trying to find a way to take my own ideas and the ideas of other people and make it all work.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
