Brandon Cutler Says No Ideas Go Forward In AEW Without Tony Khan's Approval
While AEW may have expanded its creative and production team, Brandon Cutler made it clear that all ideas must be presented to and approved by AEW President Tony Khan.
Speaking with "Comedy Store Wrestling," Cutler, who serves as an on-screen talent and AEW's Executive Producer of Content, explained how the company's creative process is ultimately routed toward Khan. Though Khan does have the final say on what elements will and won't make it on-screen, Cutler emphasized that it is still a collaborative process.
"It absolutely all still does funnel through him, but he does have some people that help him with that or something like that," Cutler said. "Usually, the coaches will help [talent] individually with their matches and stuff, and then still, the coach will go to Tony to get final approval for anything and whatnot. Depending on the match, it is a lot of – like Christopher Daniels coaches a lot of the Young Bucks' matches, so he has a lot of input usually or ideas that he'll like spitball while they're playing the match and say like, 'Hey guys, what if you guys did something like this or this?' It usually ends up in the match kind of thing."
A Collaborative Effort
"Some stuff that you might see out there is somebody's idea from the back or something that you'll never know," Cutler continued, "but it gets in there and then that's just kind of part of the match or part of the angle. It ends up being like, they'll go to Tony and be like, 'Hey, I know this was the original idea,' how that whole idea of, 'how can we beat up Nick and Brandon?' That was like five different ways of kind of doing it, and everyone had an idea or a pitch or something."
"It was just like a collaboration of like ten [or] 12 people all like saying, 'Oh, I like that idea. What if we did this? What if we did this?' Then it kind of is like, 'All right, well what are we going to take to Tony' and be like, 'Okay, this is what we landed on. We'll do a match with them then.'"
Earlier this week, a new report pinpointed AEW International Champion Orange Cassidy as the newest backstage producer. Notable responsibilities of his role included relaying information over a headset to the production team at ringside and running through matches with talent before they walk through the curtain.
If you use any quotes from this article, please credit "Comedy Store Wrestling" with a H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.