Tony Khan Defends His Polarizing Booking Style

On Monday, Fightful's Grapsody podcast published a new interview with AEW President and CEO Tony Khan, which ran just under 90 minutes and covered numerous different topics. One such topic was Khan's booking style, specifically fans who feel that there needs to be a clear storyline for a given match that had been set up in talking segments. As you might expect, Khan defended himself, particularly laying out how this was nothing new so much as a departure from modern WWE booking.

"I think that it's something that I grew up with—and it went away for a long time—and [it's] something we brought back," Khan began, referring to matches that existed mainly as competitive vehicles. "But there's so many people in those two decades-plus that never saw it that weren't really familiar with the concept of wrestling matches where two people fighting for a win, fighting for a place in contention, potentially, because it's gonna set them up with a better situation in the company, more title opportunities, a better contract, the 'winner's share of the purse,' as the reason people wanna win matches. But [WCW Monday] Nitro was the number one show on cable and so much of it was two wrestlers going out—it wasn't even announced! It was just 'OK, Rick Martel's gonna come out and wrestle Prince Iaukea. OK! Cool!' Or two luchadores, or a luchador and a wrestler from Japan, or Eddy Guerrero against a wrestler from Japan, or Chris Jericho against a wrestler from Japan. And I loved it! It was fun! And the person who produced these shows has gone and worked other places, and it's like he forgot all the stuff he did! And then he's like 'WHY WOULD ANYBODY DO THIS? You don't see that on TBS and TNT!' You're the one who did it!"

Khan was referring to Eric Bischoff, whose criticism he had previously addressed in October. Bischoff largely doubled down on his take in response.

Khan further added that he felt one criticism was in particularly bad faith: That there are no storylines whatsoever in AEW.

"The worst criticism, the fakest criticism, was this criticism of—I don't want to say it, because people would make it a quote, they'll pull out the things you say as a portion of a quote within a quote—but people questioned if there were storylines [in AEW]," said Khan. "I'm like: 'Are you SH*TTING me?!?' There's so many! In every show! And out of five, six matches in a show, most of them WILL have those hooks. And I gotta say, on next week's show, looking at it, every match will have a story going into it on Dynamite. And there will be weeks where it's a match where two wrestlers are wrestling [each other] for the first time. But maybe it's gonna lead somewhere: For one of them? For both of them? Together? Separately? Watch it and find out! That's the thing: I think everyone trying to call stuff in advance is good, in terms of [how] it keeps people watching wrestling, which is great."

Khan then circled back to Bischoff's complaints. "Frankly, on Nitro, it was usually just two guys wrestling, and it didn't go anywhere," he added. "And that's NOT what I do, and that would be the greater sin, and the person who complains is actually the person who did this more than anybody. Which is the irony, and why are we dancing around his name? I don't know...Eric."