Tony Khan is the chairman of All Elite Wrestling but isn’t an on-air authority figure for his company.
Khan recently sat down with Renee Young for her Oral Sessions podcast and spoke about a variety of things such as becoming an on screen character and if AEW Dynamite will extend an extra hour.
Tony Khan discussed if he has any urge to be an on screen authority figure for AEW:
“No it’s not [something I’m interested in] and I came as close to doing it as I will, I made a big exception coming out [for the Brodie Lee Tribute Show] and I thought it was the right thing to do to be there on behalf of the company and everybody for how much Brody meant to us, and I wanted to pay the highest respect to him that I could, and Amanda and Brody and be there for them. But other than that I’ve never come out and done that in that role. Occasionally, because of the story with IMPACT and times where I think it makes sense, but I don’t want to do that. We have a limited amount of TV time and we have a great roster and a lot of other people are going to be featured and frankly the character of the General Manager doesn’t need to be featured on TV a lot. I am the General Manger of a Premier League team, you don’t see me on NBC very much. The job of the General Manager is not to be on TV a lot. There’s a time and a place, if there’s a statement that needs to be made, or you got to say something then you do, and in the case of AEW it’s announcing matches and Fulham can be announcing players or someone is coming in on loan or once every few years saying, ‘guys you need to do a better job’, but for me, the role of the General Manager, there isn’t a need for that person to be on TV consistently. It’s a device that you need and I think of myself more as a device.”
Khan is taking a different approach unlike most wrestling companies that has their authority figure consistently present on their programming.
Renee Young also asked Tony Khan if the third hour of AEW Programming will be meshed together with Dynamite on Wednesdays:
“Yes, it will not be a third hour of Dynamite and it will not be on Wednesday but it will be a third hour with Warner Media, it will be a third TV hour and it will be great exposure for us. We got Dark, which has been a great platform for our up and comers on YouTube and I think there are other streaming options and other shows we can do with YouTube or other streaming platforms. So there’s going to be more opportunities, there’s going to be more real estate for our wrestlers without over-saturating. I definitely don’t want to do three hours of Dynamite, I feel really strongly about keeping our big four pay-per-views, the core, big four, we may develop other shows, we’ve got other streaming specials and things and big episodes of Dynamite but I think just expanding our calendar will be a big thing in 2021.”
You can check out Renee Young’s Oral Sessions Podcast below
Also a H/T to Inside the Ropes for the transcription of the interview
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