5 Ways AEW's Tony Khan Is A Great Wrestling Booker (& 5 Ways He ISN'T)
The Wrestling Observer Awards are in - but is Tony Khan REALLY worse than Triple H?
AEW is the most scrutinised and debated professional wrestling promotion of all-time.
That it was the first serious competitor to WWE in decades almost fated this to happen. WWE ultras, threatened and with no awareness that wrestling could be done in a different way, were always going to hate it (and vehemently). Similarly, anti-WWE rhetoric was so toxic, and the promotion's 2010s output so antagonistic, that AEW day one fans were always going to support the promotion through its defiance alone.
It was also a fascinating, totally unprecedented thing: a brand new arena-sized entity that dominated the pro wrestling discourse from the jump. There was no long, daunting history to tackle. It was all anybody wanted to talk about. The conditions were ideal - that is almost definitely the wrong word, but you get the idea - for everybody to become a subject matter expert.
AEW encouraged this with its bold, puffed-chest rhetoric. The promotion promised that it would be the anti-WWE: everything you've missed about wrestling throughout the 21st century, done right.
People were desperate to either believe - which scorned WWE fan didn't want to believe? - or to knock these smug braggarts off their perch. As part of this story, Tony Khan's credentials have been - in bad faith or otherwise - called into question over the last 1500 days and change.
This article seeks to determine the answer: is Tony Khan a good booker or not?