Khan: “We’re fighting against an establishment”
Tony Khan on how AEW does things different than WWE: (via Cincy 360)
“We’re fighting against an establishment and we’ve built a huge fanbase in a pretty quick time. People love the fast paced exciting action, and the interviews. In AEW, people really feel a connection with the wrestlers. We don’t script the interviews here.
People go out, maybe they have bullet points and key pieces of information they are trying to get out, but it feels like you’re hearing a real person talk. Which isn’t always the way it feels in some of the competition’s interviews. That’s one major difference.
Our biggest strength is the quality of our athletes and the charisma of our biggest stars. Some of the biggest names in wrestling are in AEW and there is a reason why big free agents want to come to AEW.”
I don’t want to sound like I’m bashing AEW because there are a lot of things about it that I enjoy, but…you can’t claim to be a legitimate competitor to WWE and also talk like you’re a scrappy upstart indy doing the best you can against the big bad WWE. You either rage against the machine or you become successful enough to become part of it.
Khan is finding out money can’t buy good P.R. Being the owner and booker is not working for him. All you are doing is killing your own product.
@Joseph
I didn’t have the same takeaway as you did. I actually see it differently. It’s akin to back in the 1960’s when the American Football League took on the NFL. The NFL was the establishment, it had pretty much all the networks. Anything less than the NFL was looked down on. NFL didn’t want their players having personality. NFL had rules against long hair and facial hair had to conform to league mandates.
The AFL said screw that. Grow your hair long, grow your facial hair as you see hit. Be loud, talk trash. Spike the ball after a score. Let’s be anti-establishment.
@Disgruntled Jobber – Did I reply to this one?