5 Ways AEW's Tony Khan Is A Great Wrestling Booker (& 5 Ways He ISN'T)

1. IS - His Record Speaks For Itself

Much of this article is written from a qualitative perspective.

Some fans, and they are adamant about this online, feel no drop-off in quality. They still adore All Elite Wrestling. They'll point to something as incredible as the Hangman Page Vs. Swerve Strickland Texas Death Match as evidence: how is AEW bad or cold when the promotion remains capable of delivering brilliance to that stratospheric standard?

Strip away all of this - not one single person will share the exact same opinion as anybody else - and consider the more objective evidence.

Well over four years in, AEW Dynamite remains a huge TV hit, not that a huge TV hit means what it once did. As Jerry Seinfeld once said to Larry King, "there's a big difference to being cancelled and being number one" - and this very week's Dynamite defeated everything else on cable.

The gates reached alarming lows throughout 2023 as Collision failed to launch (or was sabotaged, depending on your perspective). Rampage performed poorly (albeit in a terrible slot).

But for a promotion that some predicted would die by early 2020, it's performing really rather well. Dynamite ratings are consistently excellent in context. Khan, at least for now, has expanded the PPV schedule without diluting interest: he revealed that WrestleDream, a new addition to a stacked PPV calendar, topped 100,000 buys. This indicates that AEW has established a very impressive base of fans who enjoy the product enough to pay for it. Four years in - longer than for example Eric Bischoff's run presiding over WCW Nitro - AEW has held onto its audience and delighted them with unmistakably loud matches.

Still, one could argue this either way - and for what it's worth, as far as the vibe and gut feeling goes...