Tony Khan, AEW President and CEO recently sat for an interview with Renée Paquette on Oral Sessions podcast. He went on to reveal that his father, Shahid Khan who is a huge businessman was not interested with his son’s idea of starting a new promotion, AEW which gained a lot of popularity.
Tony Khan reveals his father’s opinion on the proposal
All Elite Wrestling (AEW) has gained a lot of praise and popularity since its formation and it competes with the other promotions in the pro-wrestling scene, most notably WWE.
During the interview, Tony Khan discussed the time three years back when The Elite(comprising of Kenny Omega and The Young Bucks), who serve as the EVP of AEW and Tony were strategizing their plans to create AEW.
Tony recaled that his father did not whole-heartedly involve.However, his father Shahid Khan financially backed his son but did not fully commit to the idea.
Tony Khan said: “No, he did not support this at all. I put the business plan together, and I was pretty much ready to commit to it. But again, he had cold feet. We had some very uncomfortable conversations where I told him that this was going to be great.
He added: “He’s been so cool about it. He’s the smartest person I’ve ever known. He knew nothing about wrestling, and now, he’s learning a lot about wrestling and paying attention to it. AEW is his thing, but he’s never watched wrestling before.”
Tony said that he was surprised when his father had publicly addressed that he was wrong about not trusting his son with the idea of AEW. He said that his father doesn’t praise often but he publicly addressed the success of the promotion.
He said: “I don’t hear it from him often, but in public, he admitted that he was very wrong about AEW. He went to multiple big publications and said in print that it was a good lesson [for him] in parenting to learn to trust your kids…Hearing him say good job on AEW each week is very nice.”
Tony Khan to add another weekly show
He spoke about adding another show to their programming as they already have Dynamite and Dark. As there are plethora of talents on the roster, he wants to add another show to provide opportunity to them to showcase their talents.
The pandemic had been a challenging situation but they fought well and still continued holding the weekly shows with limited amount of fans. He also said that they were able to maintain the audience better than any other show in the country.