Vince Russo Believes Tony Khan Paid WBD For AEW Collision, Thinks He'll Buy Network

After months of build-up and speculation, "AEW Collision" is finally debuting on June 17 with a star-studded trios main event featuring CM Punk and FTR vs. Samoa Joe and Bullet Club Gold. Speaking of speculation, some people are still wondering how AEW owner Tony Khan managed to convince David Zaslav and Warner Bros Discovery, a company that has been making ruthless cuts wherever they can these days, to add another two hours of wrestling programming on TNT. Well, Vince Russo has a theory.

On the latest edition of "The Wrestling Outlaws," Russo declared his opinion to cohosts EC3 and Dr. Chris: that Khan is independently financing this new endeavor on Saturday nights. The controversial pundit shared his belief that there's no other way that Khan could have pulled this off.

"Tony Khan is buying the television time. Period. End of story," Russo said. "This is a billionaire, 'money is not an object' [thing] and he is paying TBS and TNT more money than they could make in advertising for those shows ... I worked with television executives. I was working with freaking USA Network a year ago. A year ago, I was having conversations with those running USA Network. You're not going to reward a franchise when you have a history of ratings that continue to go down."

Though his co-hosts seemed respectfully skeptical about the theory, Russo continued to hypothesize that Khan will likely purchase the network itself so he can air as much AEW programming as he wants, including "AEW All Access." By the veteran writer's logic, with the company looking to WCW for inspiration, it's only a matter of time before Khan goes full Ted Turner and opens his checkbook to become the owner of TNT. 

Sorry, Turner Network Television. If Vince Russo is right, it'll be Tony Network Television before we know it.

If you use any quotes from this article, please credit "The Wrestling Outlaws" with a H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.