Tony Khan Reflects On What He Has Learned Producing AEW Dynamite
It's been over three years since AEW first launched in January of 2019, and since then, AEW Founder and CEO Tony Khan and a roster with the likes of CM Punk, Jon Moxley, Kenny Omega, Chris Jericho, Eddie Kingston, Bryan Danielson, The Young Bucks, AEW Women's World Champion Thunder Rosa, and countless others have helped to make the promotion the second-biggest in the US, behind only WWE. It's the type of accomplishment that could only happen by learning a whole lot over these past three years.
But what was the most important lesson Khan learned along the way? He revealed as such during his weekly pilgrimage to "Busted Open Radio" on Wednesday morning.
"We've done 145 episodes or so of Dynamite, and I believe this will be 50 episodes of Rampage. Fyter Fest on Friday for Rampage should be our 50th episode," Khan said. "In doing almost 200 episodes of those TV shows and all the other PPVs, [I've learned] countless, countless lessons. And I think the biggest one — and I'm sure there may be other things I might be forgetting as there are countless things we've learned along the way, but I think the biggest one is that you'll only get to do these things once. In doing these TV shows, you only get one shot of doing these, you only go around once. YOLO, as they say. I always see people saying, 'With AEW, you get to see dream matches on TV', and I try to make that the case. I try to put together dream matches and not miss the opportunities when they're there.
"But at the same time, [I] give people, across the week of wrestling, the chance to watch great pro wrestling on television. And I think, for so long, TBS and TNT were out of the wrestling business. It's something people really missed, watching wrestling on TBS and TNT. It's great to be able to bring them that every week. I think they give us a great opportunity not just here on Wednesdays, but also on Friday to connect with the fans. It's just right that there's wrestling on TBS and TNT ... I'm just very cognizant of that, and I think the biggest thing I've learned is what we need to do is be special every week."
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