Tony Khan Laughs Off AEW Comparisons To WCW

AEW will celebrate its third birthday on New Year's Day, and there's no denying the role Tony Khan has played in the company's success. Yet every once in a while, fans and pundits compare the company to WCW, which ran from 1988 to 2001 and is mostly remembered for the "Monday Night Wars" of the mid-to-late '90s.

Eventually, WCW met its downfall, and to some, AEW is on a similar path. However, Khan addressed those murmurs and more on Fightful's "Grapsody" podcast. "It wasn't even one thing with WCW," he said. "It was so many things," comparing the situation to "death by a thousand cuts." 

One of the most infamous WCW controversies was the Fingerpoke of Doom, which saw Hulk Hogan defeat Kevin Nash under polarizing circumstances during the January 4, 1999, episode of "WCW Nitro." With "AEW Dynamite" set to air on the same date next year, Khan was warned to not even think about doing something similar. "Well you know, you never know," Khan said with a laugh. 

However, the man behind AEW believes he knows why these comparisons continue to surface. For starters, they're the two wrestling promotions to air on both TBS and TNT. There's also the fact that AEW has hired talent from WCW's past, such as Sting, Tony Schiavone, and Jim Ross. 

That said, Khan stresses that there is one crucial difference between the two. "A lot of the reasons WCW would go away or go out of business just don't really exist and aren't really realistic business concerns for AEW," he continued. "It's not a company owned by a network or even really a media property. It's a family business, owned and operated and run by me. And I love wrestling, and I'm not going anywhere."