Tony Khan Discusses Being AEW's 'Filter'

All Elite Wrestling is currently enjoying the most fanfare and critical acclaim its had for some time. The company has been gaining new fans, producing some of 2025's most well received shows, and is on a run of form that some would put against AEW's first boom period in the COVID-19 pandemic through to late 2021. AEW President Tony Khan is to thank for this, and part of the reason why AEW is doing so well right now is because Khan has once again managed to filter people's ideas, while focusing on his own.

"I was just trying to incorporate people's ideas. People get involved, there's some great people backstage that contribute ideas, but I need to be the filter of those ideas," Khan said during a recent interview with Q101. "Instead of trying to take the best ideas from everyone and incorporate them and have it be a mix of everyone's ideas, I just come in with...I basically started writing, went back to writing my own outlines, and then I'll solicit some ideas from people and maybe I'll incorporate them."

Khan explained that at the end of 2019, while happy with the company at the time, it wasn't where he wanted it to be, and decided to organize the booking himself heading into the new year, and not be as accommodating to everyone's advice. That led the company to go on a streak that many fans still look back on fondly today, and that's exactly what Khan did heading into 2025.

"I had that same realization that I need to do what I did five years ago and just block out everything and just focus on AEW, and not listen to everybody's advice, and maybe just make the show what I think it should be." Khan rounded out by saying that the company is the most "him" its been since 2020, and that he is always trying to bring the spirit of Daily's Place during the COVID-19 pandemic to every city AEW goes to.

Please credit "Q101" when using quotes from this article, and give a H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.