The Phantom Rant: For the good of AEW, Tony Khan must step down

Tony Khan must step down as booker of AEW. With the fifth year anniversary of All Elite Wrestling coming up in a few weeks some would honestly say they are surprised they have made it to this point. I am an AEW fan. I’ve ordered every PPV. I went to the first two Grand Slam’s here in NYC. Generally I’ve been very supportive of them. But I am not blind. I can see when there are problems and AEW has a lot and I mean A LOT of problems. The biggest problem is attendance. All one has to do is scroll Twitter (I’m not calling it X) and you can see plenty of pictures that are sent in during live events that show buildings half empty. Two years ago AEW drew 20,000 plus to Arthur Ashe Stadium in Queens. This year according @WrestleTix on twitter, they will barely have less than 5,000 in those same stands.

So what is going on? I mean star power is not the problem. AEW has some of the best wrestlers in the world on it’s roster. In fact they probably have too many wrestlers on their roster. If I had Tony Khan’s dad’s money, I would buy everyone I could for my company too. With the declining attendance they have another problem which are the ratings. Now I’m sure if you ask the folks at Warner Bros/Discovery, AEW does well enough. I mean if AEW wasn’t on they would only be showing another two hours of The Big Bang Theory. AEW Dynamite used to draw over 1 Million viewers a week according to Nielsen. Presently they are below seven hundred thousand a week. That means AEW lost three hundred thousand viewers. This wasn’t a sudden departure. They slowly disappeared over time.

Compared to AEW, The WWE is on fire. The WWE’s ratings, crowd attendance and every other statistic are up. Despite putting on good shows week after week AEW continues to bleed viewers. Like I said, star power is not the problem. The ending to this weeks Dynamite was probably the best one they have done in a long time. Just from a cinematic point of view it was beautiful. Hangman Adam Page and Swerve Strickland are having a blood feud that is a modern version of Magnum TA and Tully Blanchard. The ratings though don’t reflect how compelling the ending was because no one was watching. Wednesday night’s (9/4) episode of AEW Dynamite on TBS averaged 660,000 viewers which was down from the week before. Tony Khan says his shows are for the sickos. Well, those sickos are dwindling each week.

An easy solution to all of this to save AEW. Tony Khan has to step down as the booker. He wears too many hats for the company. One less won’t hurt him. Also while booking AEW, he’s running Ring of Honor. Ring of Honor is a pretty good show considering the shoestring budget of Ring of Honor. This isn’t me bashing him, AEW would not exist with out him. After a while you have to shake things up. Get a new set of eyes on the product as a whole. AEW must change before it’s too late. All the pieces are in place for AEW to bounce back. They just need that new Captain at the head of the ship. A lot of people used to compare WCW to the Titanic when they ran into the iceberg (okay, they ran into several icebergs but you get the point). I don’t want to see AEW run into it’s own metaphorical iceberg. I want to see AEW with sold out buildings and tv ratings back up to where they used to be. There’s no reason based on match quality alone that AEW can’t draw that magical million viewers again.

As a lifelong wrestling fan, it pains me when I see people bash AEW. Are they a perfect company? No. The WWE, TNA, New Japan, ect ect are not. No company is perfect. There are people out there that want to see AEW fail and fold up. What would that accomplish other than one less company out there and a ton of talented people out of work. The booking of AEW is where the problem lies. I would say the biggest bust of an angle is The Corporate Elite; Okada, The Young Bucks and even Jack Perry. From a wrestling standpoint there is nothing wrong with them. I can’t fault them for talent, but the problem is with writing and their characters. Well, Perry is pretty good in his role. The Elite of today are the polar opposite of The Elite that set the wrestling world on fire only a few short years ago. I don’t know what happened at some point The Bucks just stopped caring and have been phoning it in ever since. Okada probably does not care either way because he’s getting paid a ton of money to do his greatest hits. So what can AEW do to get people to care? For starters they need to get the tag titles off The Young Bucks asap.

Whoever takes over for Tony Khan should make these changes right away.

First things first. Get the tag belts off The Bucks. I would put them back on The Acclaimed and let them and FTR feud over it for the rest of the year. That really writes itself.

Secondly, get Okada out of the Continental Crown title division and get him back into the main event. He is being wasted in the midcard. The Continental Crown tournament is a poor man’s G1 anyway, so why it’s a title I don’t know. It’s better off as a King of the Ring type deal where the champion is guaranteed a title shot at an important show rather than being a singles title.

Third, separate Ring of Honor and AEW. Mark Briscoe should be an integral part of AEW. It was a great emotional moment when he won the ROH Championship. Tony Khan is squandering him as champion. Give it to someone who can be a flag-bearer for Ring of Honor if you plan to have it be more than a vanity project.

Finally, put the world championship on Hangman Adam Page. He’s been doing an amazing job since his return and I would love to see him as champion. Bryan Danielson is currently champion and when he eventually loses he says that will be it for him as an active wrestler. Page being the one to retire Bryan would be an amazing feather in his cap so to speak. I mean we just saw the man burn down Swerve’s childhood home. What wouldn’t he do to retire Bryan Danielson? Only small problem I see is Christian Cage won the Casino Gauntlet and he has a title match for anytime and anyplace. So in theory he could win the title in a rather cheap way. That would probably set up a great feud between Page and Christian if Page won the title and Christian stole it from him. Great feuds are what AEW needs the most right now.

So that’s just a sample of what needs to be done from whomever takes over AEW. It doesn’t need radical changes, just steer the ship away from the iceberg. AEW needs people to care about it once again. Ratings will come back up and so will the attendance. They have the star power. We shall see what happens with All Out that’s going to be a good indication of where things are headed. Tony Khan should step down as booker. Who can replace him? That is for another column. His booking for “The sickos” is all well and good, but those sickos only make up a small percentage of the total audience. We need compelling storylines to hook us in. Great matches only go so far on their own. I don’t want to see AEW fail. Make that change Tony before it’s too late.