AEW President Tony Khan recently spoke with WJXT-4: The Local Station out of Jacksonville, FL. for an in-depth interview covering all things pro wrestling.
During the discussion, the boss-man of All Elite Wrestling spoke about WWE’s counterprogramming attempts as of late, the big year in 2025 for AEW, the company’s success on pay-per-view and their recent increase in television ratings.
The following are some of the highlights from the interview, as well as a complete video archive of the discussion.
On AEW using “stick-and-move” approach with WWE’s counterprogramming attempts: “Well, we’re having a great year. We’ve been able to stick and move and make [WWE’s counterprogramming attempts] work really well for us. There’s always going to be tough competition, and in this sport, it’s very tough competition, a kind of competition that makes you work really hard 52 weeks a year.”
On AEW having a great year in 2025: “For AEW, we’re having a great year. We’ve been putting on great shows. The TV shows have gotten great ratings. We’ve got great support from our audience. And we’ve really grown the audience in 2025. Not only have we added HBO Max and put new viewers on streaming, we’ve got more people watching the shows on cable than we did last year. For Dynamite and Collision, the audience has gone up. If you look where we ended up in Q4 of 2024, each quarter we’ve been going up, building our audience on TBS and TNT, while there’s also people watching on HBO Max. It’s kind of the opposite of what the analysts had predicted when we started simulcasting.”
On being one of the last entities still regularly successful on pay-per-view: “So we’re still seeing great returns, great audiences on cable, and I’m really excited about it because I think that 2025, right now, this year, has been maybe the best year of AEW ever. The pay-per-views, you mentioned pay-per-views, we’re doing our best pay-per-views we’ve ever done. If you say… from the past six years, what are the top 10 AEW pay-per-views? I think there’s a good chance five out of the 10, six out of the 10 would be from this year. So it’s definitely a great year for the product of AEW and we’re very focused on how we can make AEW the best wrestling company it can be.”
Check out the complete interview via the YouTube player embedded below. H/T to Fightful.com for transcribing the above quotes.
