Tony Khan Shoots On AEW's 2019 Slump - "I Was Kicking Myself"
"I really didn't like the rating, and I felt like we could do better"
Tony Khan has spoken frankly about his frustrations on AEW's late-2019 creative slide as well as moves he had to make behind the scenes to address it.
Discussing the period on Marc Maron's WTF podcast, he said;
"I was already kind of overseeing the creative process but I really became a lot more hands on with it going into 2020. So it was Christmas 2019, I was kicking myself because I really didn't like the way the show went the week before, and I really didn't like the rating, and I felt like we could do better, and I just wanted to hold myself and everyone to account."
Khan's referring specifically to the universally-panned December 18th edition of Dynamite that concluded with The Dark Order destroying The Elite in a show-closing angle. Between the company's launch and a 2019 Christmas break, the company was booked by committee. Khan took sole control starting January 1st and noted the benefits, stating that;
"...there needed to be consistency to it, that there was continuity problems and there was a sense of things that it just needed to flow through one person and then that one person was gonna be you because that's where the buck stops."
Khan took total control of the book in 2020, and led the company through what many consider to be its creative highpoint before the onset of the global pandemic changed everything.
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