10 Times Wrestlers Blatantly Lied To Your Face
8. Tony Khan Won’t Follow WCW’s Signing Policy
Is Tony Khan a wrestler? Meh, he's taken some bumps on TV, so let's roll with it and have some fun.
It's crazy to think that this was so long ago, but AEW boss Khan had everyone excited when he guested on Chris Jericho's 'Talk Is Jericho' podcast in February 2019 to lay out his long-term vision for the company. As a known wrestling history buff, Khan leaned on WCW as an example of everything that can go wrong with poor leadership and even more chaotic management. Meanwhile, Jericho nodded along.
According to Tony, WCW had an overabundance of talented people under contract that they barely even used (even when they were crushing the WWF in the ratings). He said that All Elite Wrestling wouldn't follow that strategy, because it'd be foolish not to learn from the past. His exact wording? "Let's not be guilty of the same thing we mock other people for".
That has not aged well.
Yes, AEW is very-much still in business today, but most critics and fans alike would agree that the promotion has an overabundance of talent they barely ever book in any meaningful fashion on television in 2025. In other words, Khan failed to learn from the history he was openly poking holes in. He's hoarded wrestlers like he's collecting action figures at times, and that has saturated his own product in a detrimental way.
The easiest way to explain this away is that Tony's thinking has changed as he's learned on the job as a promoter. Fair enough, but it's kinda embarrassing that he's gone from so dead set against what Ted Turner and Eric Bischoff did to stacking his AEW roster with quantity over quality.