Crowbar On AEW’s Tony Khan: “If He Wants To Talk Some Sh*t, So Be It.”
WWE, WCW and ECW veteran Crowbar was on a today's episode of The Wrestling Inc. Daily. Crowbar discussed his AEW debut at Dark: Elevation, and Wrestling Inc. Managing Editor Nick Hausman asked Crowbar about AEW's rise.
"I think what people don't realize, there's so many similarities but there's distinct differences between WCW acquiring all that talent and then building an empire and AEW acquiring all this talent and building an empire," Crowbar explained. "When WCW came to an end, Ted Turner had the answer to AOL, Time Warner. There were other people in that merger. As much as he wanted to hold onto WCW, if he did, there's no way that it was going to happen. There were too many other influences that could say, 'No, we can't have this, it's gone.' This is Tony Khan's product.
"He's a huge wrestling fan. He's spending his money. Nobody's going to tell him what he can or can't do. I have no idea what it's like to have that kind of budget, as a business person, but what I do know is being an independent business owner, you don't have to listen to other people, and you could do what you want. And he's creating a controversy. There's confidence there, and I like confidence. When I first opened up my physical therapy facility, to draw parallels here, there were a lot of big box physical therapy offices around us.
"Not going to say names but big, regional or country wide places, and they said, 'You'll never make it.' I had a great team of physical therapists that I had worked with for years. We know our stuff. We know not just physical therapy, but we know customer service. People come in and it's not that drab medical environment where it's very very blasé. We have a very homey environment, so we do physical therapy. We get you better.
"We don't treat you like a number, and year after year after year, big box physical therapy offices have come in, and they've gone, and we've only gotten stronger and we've grown more and more. If you know your product and Tony Khan has said he knows wrestling a whole lot more than Ted Turner does, and I think he's right. He's a huge fan, and if you have those funds, if you have that backing, you have the potential to up seat the top of the game, which was a WWE for years and years and years and years, and I think he's gonna do it. If he wants to talk some sh*t, so be it. I think it's great."
Hausman responded to Crowbar's claim at the end and asked if he thinks AEW could eventually overtake WWE as the top pro wrestling promotion.
"I think the potential is there. I think it will happen," Crowbar stated. "Me personally, I think at the very, very least, you're going to, once again, have two very, very big, well-known wrestling groups that are household names that are killing in merch, and I think you're gonna see people going back and forth and back and forth. And the dynamic that I'm waiting for, me personally, Chris Ford the wrestling fan, one of the things that made Monday night's fun was when WCW would lose somebody and they would go over to WWE. WWE would lose somebody.
"They would go to WCW. Right now, AEW is just signing guys and they're acquiring guys. They've yet to let somebody go that has gone away to the other side. It's going to have to happen eventually, and when it starts going back and forth, I think people's interest will be piqued even more and this thing is going to get even bigger.
"For me watching as a fan was not knowing who was going to show up on whose show and how they were going to be used once they got there. Were they going to throw the belt in the garbage can like Madusa did? There's so much stuff that you want to see. That's one aspect of the Monday Night Wars that I'm actually anxious to see how it plays out. There's been talent going one way right now. When it starts going like this (back and forth), I think things are gonna get really interesting."
AEW currently has many working relationships with other companies including NJPW, Impact and NWA. Crowbar explains how AEW could use those relationships for their talent.
"We're also forgetting this now, Tony Khan has done tremendous for Impact," Crowbar noted. "People are more aware of Impact Wrestling. They're more aware of the NWA, so it also creates scenarios. I have no idea if these are going on or not, but say maybe they have a talent that they maybe just don't have room for. Maybe we have room here or there. Can we split their their payout with Impact? Can we split it with the NWA? They don't have to go to WWE.
"Is that talent burnt out and says, 'I only want to work a once a month for the NWA or something like that.' There's the two, but now Tony Khan has put a spotlight on these other smaller groups that are now also options for talent to go to, so it creates a number of scenarios, in my opinion, being a business person, that say hypothetically, Luchasaurus, we have nothing for him creatively in a year from now. He's kind of burnt out. We don't want him to go to WWE, but maybe he'll go to Impact for a couple of months here. Then he'll go to the NWA, and maybe there'll be up for sharing the payroll, and it creates situations where it's not just AEW and WWE. Maybe he goes and he puts some time in Impact and the NWA. Maybe does some some indies. GCW is doing some great stuff. That's an option as well. There's Japan so it it makes for some really interesting situations."
Powered by RedCircle