Inside AEW's Creative Process | How It Works
Collision is (or was!) very much his show. Khan books it, but as reported by Voices of Wrestling - and as is abundantly clear to everybody else - he is very "hands-on". The WCW Saturday Night-inspired Collision can feel beautifully simple or boring, depending on your perspective, but it does benefit a lot from a single vision (see the heating up of Ricky Starks for evidence of that). It's clean. It doesn't feel like a million ideas are colliding at once, but certain philosophies do collide with Dynamite.
Khan has spent four years trying to establish that AEW is a fixtures-first promotion in which every match is announced in advance. Impromptu matches are happening quite often on Saturdays. This, in addition to other recent developments, begs the question: What does Tony Khan want AEW to look like? Didn't he hate the invisible camera, which has been insidiously introduced to AEW in recent months?
To borrow Khan's analogy, more cooks are back in the kitchen. There are more cooks now than there were when Khan initially identified this cliched analogy as an issue, which underscores the extent to which the original vision is fading.
On the Double Or Nothing '23 media call, Tony Khan revealed the complexion of his formal creative team, which does not include the top wrestlers, MJF et al., who dictate their own arcs. He listed QT Marshall, Sonjay Dutt, Bryan Danielson, Pat Buck, Jerry Lynn, Dean Malenko, Madison Rayne, Sarah Stock, BJ Whitmer (who has since been fired), and Will Washington. All are at the table. Matt Hardy revealed in August on his The Extreme Life podcast (h/t Fightful) that, where he would once liaise directly with Khan, he now as a "starting point" talks with QT or Sonjay Dutt. While it should be mentioned here that Matt himself referred to the process as working "more smoothly", Khan being at one remove can't be a good thing.
At his best, he is one of the best bookers in wrestling history. This is inference/speculation, but it's not a good omen that he, with a blasé attitude about the end result, is seemingly delegating what is hardly life-affirming material to staffers and bunging it on Rampage. Khan being directly present with just two hours of weekly TV was far better than what the AEW product has evolved into.
PWInsider noted in June that Dax Harwood has also contributed to the creative process. Dave Meltzer reported that Dutt and Marshall, echoing Hardy's comments, are "said to be" the two main voices below Khan. Is it any coincidence that Jeff Jarrett's heel stable and QTV are all over television?
Is mildly amusing midcard filler really a valuable use of TV time when scores of talents in their primes can't buy a match on Dynamite?
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