Tony Khan Addresses NWA Using The 'Shockwave' Name AEW Trademarked

Back in September 2024, AEW filed to trademark the term "AEW Shockwave," which was set to be a new show that would shopped around various media companies outside of the company's current deal with Warner Brothers Discovery. However, talks died down after the AEW-WBD media rights deal was announced, and in June 2025 there was even some legal problems about the "Shockwave" name as the NWA had filed a Notice of Opposition as they had used the name in 2020. Khan was asked about the future of "AEW Shockwave" during a recent interview on "The Ariel Helwani Show," revealing that the project will likely never happen as he does not want to step on the toes of the NWA.

"I'm probably not going to do it," Khan said. "I had a really nice talk with Billy Corgan who owns the NWA. I like Billy, and even before I became a wrestling promoter, I had met him and I think he's just a great artist and I like him. So when I talked to him on the phone, I said 'if that's a show that you might do again...' because NWA had done a Shockwave, and I guess PRIDE had done it before them, but then NWA had done a Shockwave which I didn't know at the time when we filed it. Then I had talked to him and said 'if that's something you want to do, and you did it first then you can do that, that's fine.' And he said 'oh that's great I appreciate that.' So that was nice."

Khan also noted how he and Corgan had recently spoken about the new AEW National Championship, which will be a new title that pays homage to the original NWA National Championship of the 1980s. Despite the NWA National Championship still existing in a new form to this day, Khan stated that Corgan gave him the blessing to go forward with the new title and create a new lineage.

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