Tony Khan On Whether He Plans On Stepping Foot In A Wrestling Ring Again

AEW President and CEO Tony Khan recently spoke with Yahoo! Finance about various topics, including the possibility of stepping back into a wrestling ring. This follows an angle from over a year ago, where he was attacked by The Elite during AEW Dynamite in April 2024.

Khan said, โ€œI really donโ€™t want to get into the ring and I like to think of myself as the commissioner is more of a device. One time I was attacked and I am very lucky to be sitting here with you right now Brian. One year ago, I survived the deadliest move in pro wrestling, the spike piledriver โ€ฆ I donโ€™t want to necessarily get into the ring, my one time I got tricked and attacked in the ring is enough to keep me out for life.โ€

On AEWโ€™s audience across TBS, TNT, and Max:

โ€œWe have a huge audience. Weโ€™ve got a great partnership with Warner Brothers Discovery โ€ฆ this is the first year of the simulcast, so now the show every Wednesday night itโ€™s simulcast TBS and Max, every Saturday night, TNT and Max, so the company keeps growing, expanding, we have a huge audience. AEWโ€™s on in over 150 countries worldwide, millions of people watch the show every week all over the planet.โ€

On realizing there was an opportunity to launch a challenger brand in 2018:

โ€œIn 2018, I was looking at the pro wrestling landscape and I realized there was a real opportunity to launch a challenger brand in this business โ€ฆ weโ€™re having a really great year, it feels like 2025 is in a lot of ways the best year weโ€™ve had.โ€

On growing AEWโ€™s business with their programming being simulcast on Max:

โ€œWe grew the business so much with the simulcast, we brought in new audience with Max and streaming but also weโ€™ve been able to grow our cable audience year-over-year โ€ฆ a lot of people thought when you start simulcasting AEW on Wednesday nights and Saturday nights, oh okay well a lot of people theyโ€™re still going to watch the show, but people are going to migrate to streaming. Well actually, our cable audience when we started simulcasting went up and we have a great audience on Max streaming every week too.โ€

You can check out Khan’s comments in the video below.