Tony Khan Doesn’t Want To Kill The Golden Goose In AEW Like WCW Did

AEW Dynamite made its debut in October 2019 and since then has worked hard to provide an alternate product to what fans see in WWE. For the most part, they have succeeded, but there is still a lot of room for improvement. It seems Tony Khan has also learned a lot from WCW’s mistakes.

For many, AEW was seen as a breath of fresh air and also that old school nostalgia as the company tried to balance both the modern and old school aspects of pro wrestling. While AEW still has a long way to go as far as being a solid product is concerned, it certainly shows promise so far.

There is no doubt that AEW has a very deep and diverse roster of talented in-ring performers from all over the world, incorporating various styles of pro wrestling. In fact, Tony Khan even previously compared the roster to WCW 1997.

While speaking with Monaco Streaming Film Festival, AEW President Tony Khan talked about his future plans for improving AEW’s current roster. Tony Khan explained how he doesn’t want to kill the golden goose in AEW, similar to what WCW did. WCW would eventually burn through all their talent, which didn’t help the company whatsoever.

”We have a great chance here to build an office, and keep gaining new fans, and one of the key things I’ve tried to do here with AEW is hold back a lot. When you’re in a position with a lot of talent and you can unload and do big matches, I think it’s very tempting to just unload the clip and start putting hot, big matches out there,” Tony said. “I am doing that but I’m not going to use them all up in one week or two weeks, and burn through all of the great stories that I feel could last for years here. So I am trying to be methodical in terms of not killing the golden goose.”

“… I think WCW built one of the greatest rosters ever in wrestling, and they were competing with WWF in the ’90s. And I thought one of the mistakes they made is they had so many exciting matches in WCW and it was like week, after week, after week they burned through them,” he added. “But not only did they burn through them, there were very unsatisfying conclusions. A lot of them ended in disqualification or something that wouldn’t make me that hungry to watch a rematch. Despite all of this, I can talk with the benefit of hindsight about the business mistakes WCW made. They also rose to incredible heights and proved that it’s possible for a wrestling company to do this.”

There is no doubt AEW will keep on striving to better their product so that fans remain happy for as long as possible. With Tony Khan at the helm, the company is going through a lot of changes over the past few months. We will have to see just how the company will change in the coming years.

h/t to Wrestling Inc for the quotes.

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