
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, โI really donโt 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 โฆ I donโt 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 AEWโs audience across TBS, TNT, and Max:
โWe have a huge audience. Weโve got a great partnership with Warner Brothers Discovery โฆ this is the first year of the simulcast, so now the show every Wednesday night itโs simulcast TBS and Max, every Saturday night, TNT and Max, so the company keeps growing, expanding, we have a huge audience. AEWโs 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:
โIn 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 โฆ weโre having a really great year, it feels like 2025 is in a lot of ways the best year weโve had.โ
On growing AEWโs business with their programming being simulcast on Max:
โWe grew the business so much with the simulcast, we brought in new audience with Max and streaming but also weโve been able to grow our cable audience year-over-year โฆ a lot of people thought when you start simulcasting AEW on Wednesday nights and Saturday nights, oh okay well a lot of people theyโre 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.