Tony Khan On Why His Friends Now Like Pro Wrestling

In his latest appearance on Busted Open Radio, AEW President Tony Khan talked about his recent profile with Forbes. Arguably the most noteworthy piece of the article was Khan's father, Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shad Khan, revealing his doubts over AEW when it first started. Khan talked about how he successfully won his father over to the idea.

"It's a great relationship, he's the best," Khan said. "In the end that was kind of where he left it. And it took a lot of fighting, a lot of business plans and a lot of presentations. He definitely didn't just roll over and fund this project. I made a lot of cases, and after I saw I'd done the work that is where he left it. He still didn't really believe it was going to work but he could see I put in the time and had a business plan, and had some ideas and made some connections. Definitely had made some progress.

"In the end he still didn't really believe in it, but he did take a leap of faith and I'm so glad he did. And that was my dad. He really stole the show in that article. I thought that was really the highlight quote of the whole thing. It's very fitting I think. I really enjoyed it."

While Khan is a lifelong wrestling fan, the rest of his family has been slower to warm up to it. That makes the fact that they enjoy AEW one of his proudest accomplishments since starting the promotion.

"I always want to make my dad proud and my parents proud," Khan said. "And they are. They love AEW. That makes me as proud as anything, because honestly, everybody listening to this show for the most part knows I love wrestling so much. And I'm sure so many of you have family members who have no patience for wrestling. If you're listening to Busted Open, it probably means a lot to you. And you can't get your family to stick around, stay in the room when you want to put wrestling on.

"One of the great things about AEW, for me, so many of my friends who never embraced wrestling have given AEW a chance and they like it. Because AEW hasn't insulted their intelligence in some of the same ways, and they've found a lot of wrestlers in the company they're compelled by. For my parents, I always joke around that they couldn't sit through wrestling for five minutes. And now they know every little character on AEW. They know who Marko Stunt is. They wouldn't sit through five minutes of wrestling until AEW. So I'm so proud it's been successful and that I haven't let them down."

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Busted Open Radio and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription