I'm Sorry...Tony Is Not The Savior Of Wrestling

 Since founding AEW back in 2019, Tony Khan has been labeled a savior of pro wrestling by many fans. With the recent news of Vince McMahon pulling his shareholder weight to return as chairman and facilitate a sale of the company. Now with rumors of prospective buyers running rampant including Tony Khan and his father Shahid Khan. I've seen several people online on social media and forums mention they wouldn't mind seeing Tony Khan buy WWE and are actually for it. My question to that would be why? Doing so would be no different than when WWE bought WCW and ECW and there was no viable competitor around for nearly 20 years to go against them. If in some reality that would to happen, what exactly would that accomplish?

That got me wondering while Vince's recent actions are showing he is the devil, why Tony is considered the savior? I know a good portion of it has to do with personal preferences on how wrestling should be presented. Since AEW has the entertainment factor but relies more on the sports aspect of wrestling, and has influence from the indies, New Japan, and several promotions from yesteryear. I respect Tony for being a wrestling fan (which is very apparent he is a huge fan) and using his vast amount of resources to start a new promotion to go against the 'E to put on a for the most part entertaining weekly programming.

As a promoter Tony is no different than a Jim Crockett, Paul Heyman, Eric Bischoff and Vince McMahon. He has his flaws and missteps in promoting AEW and running his organization. There are  issues like still not highlighting the Women's division properly, trying to prove he is different than Vince McMahon but overstuffing his roster with ex-WWE stars and really not utilizing them either. Trying to show off his different influences that he hasn't really focused on a clear vision on AEW of what type of promotion it's trying to be. Shameless plug check out a previous blog covering their identity crisis.

His twitter game definitely needs to be checked. He lost some respect from me when he publicly claimed he did not think Big Swole could wrestle, so that was the reason he didn't renew her contract. Despite your opinions of Swole as a wrestler, character, or what you know about her from a social media standpoint. Twitter was not the forum for that, he could have politely disputed her claims against AEW or do what a lot people in the social media world should do and just not respond. Sometimes not responding silently kills people.

Some of his bigger missteps of course have been the recent CM Punk/Elite backstage fight incident. Now hopefully he reevaluates the Elite's VP/wrestler position, when the company was founded he had the money but needed the stars and their connections. Coming off the successful All In show, the Elite had leverage and he needed something to persuade them to help start this company. So make them executives, I completely get it from that standpoint why they were made Executive VP's. 

Maybe now though, thing's should be switched up. I think the Cody leaving situation proved that the EVP/wrestler line can be very tricky. I know many disagree, and I don't know how hard he fought to try and convince Cody to stay. Letting Cody leave was a huge blow to AEW in my opinion, as he was the heart and soul of the company. 

He bought ROH saving their storied history, and while Honor Club is being relaunched within the next couple of months. His trying to cram ROH championships into AEW's programming has been a mixed bag. It's great to help keep the ROH brand alive and at the forefront of fan's minds. Sometimes it's done at the expense of the AEW roster and precious TV time. Many ROH wrestlers were bought back with really no explanation on who they are and what their goal's are. The expectation is people should know who they are.

Besides those missteps which will happen in any role a person is in at any job, He is still a relatively new promoter, and still has several kinks he needs to sort out before saving the entire wrestling world as many proclaim. I want AEW to succeed as it makes the wrestling landscape so much healthier, but Tony should focus on AEW, getting some help with writing shows to not spread himself thin and help tighten things up, in addition not try to live up to fan's proclamations and at times unreasonable expectations.