AEW's Next Big Thing (... Is The Last Thing YOU Want)

Tony Khan has won the Wrestling Observer Best Booker award every year since 2020.

Your mileage may vary in terms of valuing that recognition, but it is at least democratically decided upon. Readers of the newsletter cast the votes, and those readers in large majorities have named Khan as the best creative force for them for as long as AEW has been a 12-months-a-year television wrestling product.

The level of trust between the President and his core base is at this point extremely assured. Khan brought back trusting the process, brought back actually supporting three letters as much as any individual wrestlers, and stopped "let it play out" being a joke at the market leader's expense.

He's good at this, and even with his time and efforts stretched thinner than ever, he's still working towards maintaining a level way, way beyond the market leader. The weekly match, angle and promo bar in All Elite Wrestling is set substantially higher than WWE's, and that's even counting the version of the company currently simpatico with the needs of its core base.

That includes the treatment of legends. Sting (more on him later) has had a three-year run to rival just about any extended stint in his legendary career, and all following on from age and injuries rendering him previously retired. Khan has always understood AEW's right to steward wrestling history just as much as WWE, and has applied Paul Heyman's accentuate the positives/hide the negatives philosophy to every figure from the industry's past he's been able to get his hands on. It's a safer haven for the old pros than Vince McMahon's erratic mind palace ever was, and even he got a Goldberg right eventually.

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