10 Biggest AEW Scandals
4. Tony Khan Hires Amateurs
On two separate occasions - the first of which was almost so disastrous that you'd think he'd have learned his lesson - Tony Khan damaged AEW's reputation by failing to complete due diligence on persons he paid to complete a rather important job in a main event presentation.
This isn't a TK hit piece - his mostly awesome booking is put over in book form in my latest, Becoming All Elite, which is available to pre-order now - but he learned two valuable lessons in December 2019 and March 2021, respectively.
On the December 18 Dynamite, the Dark Order creepers were so clueless and or enterprising that they didn't know they were hired to actually sell for the top babyfaces before Evil Uno and Stu Grayson were to use the numbers advantage. They just started chinning f*ck out of Kenny Omega in what was a bush league scene. A certain naivety undermined the angle, which was hardly Mid-South heated in an ideal scenario, and indeed the promotion's glowing reputation.
Khan also suffered the inevitable folly of inexperience, at Revolution 2021, when he paid an external production company to supply the pyrotechnics without consulting Atsushi Onita's expertise.
AEW's two biggest mistakes thus far were born from naivety rather than pure incompetence, which is encouraging - but they were the source of much embarrassment and doomy forecasts.