Tony Khan Doesn’t Care What You Think
Whether you watch or you don’t, the truth is inescapable. All Elite Wrestling is a credible juggernaut in professional wrestling. They continue to accomplish things no pro wrestling company outside of the WWE has any business accomplishing. Haters gonna hate, but you don’t sell 60,000 plus tickets to a show at Wembley Stadium if you aren’t doing more than just a few things right. AEW caters to their base of hardcore fans to a level never before seen before in professional wrestling. Twitter and the wrasslin’ media will tell you that this is to the detriment of AEW’s future and its ability to draw the casual audience. They will tell you that booking banger after banger on weekly cable television will water down your product and lower your PPV buys. They might say that booking matches for the sake of booking a great match isn’t as well received by an audience as a match booked with a long term story attached. But let’s be real here. None of that matters to Tony Khan and AEW.
This company isn’t for a casual audience, and that’s just the way Tony wants it to be. AEW doesn’t need it’s audience to grow to the size and scope of the “WWE Universe” to be successful. I’m not sure if people understand this. Tony Khan has access to an unfathomable amount of money. With that kind of capital, you can literally accomplish anything on this planet. Above all else, Tony absolutely loves pro wrestling. As long as he wants AEW to thrive, it will continue to do so.
In a couple of weeks, yet another AEW weekly television show will debut. “Collision” brings pro wrestling back to Saturday nights, a welcome sight in my humble opinion. As expected, the naysayers have already begun to voice their displeasure. They say that nobody watches TV on Saturday nights, and that going up against college football/WWE PLE’s, etc is a foolish decision at best. I’ve heard some say that AEW doesn’t deserve another two hours of weekly television. It’s important to note that none of these people saying this actually work for the network. You know, the people giving AEW the two more hours of weekly television. As my favorite NBA player, Rasheed Wallace once said, “the ball don’t lie.”
Every single week, more than a million wrestling fans watch AEW programming domestically. They keep coming back every week, and why? Because, those are the people Tony is booking for. That niche audience of an already niche audience. That’s AEW! That’s Tony Khan! Love it or hate it, for a billion reasons, this company isn’t going away anytime soon. I’m just going to sit back and enjoy the ride.
Wrestling is so back.