Tony Khan Compares AEW Using Daily’s Place To WWE’s ThunderDome

AEW carried on throughout 2020 and into 2021 as the pandemic continued as well while Tony Khan’s company took refuge in Daily’s Place. The company saw a lot of historic moments in the process. Of course, WWE had a different response to the ever-changing pandemic landscape with the ThunderDome.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic taking over the world back in 2020, the world of professional wrestling was severely affected. This included WWE, as they had to produce shows in the Performance Center. The company, later on, moved to the ThunderDome, a traveling virtual fan environment.

WWE held numerous shows and pay-per-views at the Amway Center and then they had to move to the Tropicana Field. The ThunderDome era ended back in July of last year as live audiences made their return to WWE programming.

AEW also employed their own measures for putting on shows during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. While speaking with Vegas Film Critic Jeffrey K. Howard, Tony Khan compared how AEW responded to the pandemic with WWE’s ThunderDome.

”Then people started to come back as we got deeper into the pandemic. Our competition through the pandemic, a few months later, they went to a fan wall. [It was a] virtual wall of fans like you saw in other sports, you know, TV screens. And I thought, let’s bring wrestling back with live fans safely. We did it.

We had no COVID transmissions by going into an outdoor amphitheater and spacing people out where a family or group of friends could sit in what we called a pod. [I thought] it would be like a drive-in movie. You had your own section of seats in this case. There’s no one near you, you’re outdoors, and it was great. It brought the fans back to pro wrestling. There was months and months where that was the only place you could watch pro wrestling anywhere in the world where the fans were cheering the matches.”

Both WWE and AEW suffered greatly due to the pandemic and it has only been a few months since live crowds have returned. It remains to be seen whether the companies will have to take drastic measures again, should the pandemic not subside.

h/t to SEScoops for the quotes