AEW President and CEO Tony Khan recently detailed the origins of the wrestling promotion during an interview with Going Ringside. Khan explained how he approached the President of TBS and TNT in 2018 to propose launching a new wrestling league, which eventually led to the creation of AEW.
Khan recalled,
“Well, I didn’t know those wrestlers, and I didn’t have that kind of connection to start this. When I launched it, I was in LA. I was at a cocktail party and I saw the president at the time of TBS and TNT, and I knew it, and I went up to him and said, ‘With the way wrestling TV rights are going, I think it would make a lot of sense for us to start a wrestling league.’ And I would put the shows on TBS and TNT. At the time, there was no wrestling on TBS or TNT, but there had been for many years. There’s a great history of wrestling from about 1971 to 2001 on TBS and from the mid-90s about 95 to 2001 on TNT. But neither network had hosted any wrestling for the — you know — for almost 20 years. When we started, and it was 2018 when I went to the president of TBS and TNT and said, ‘Let’s look at this,’ and he took it seriously.”
Tony Khan, AEW President and CEO
The Lengthy Process Leading to AEW’s Formation
Khan described an extensive period of negotiations and meetings spanning over a year before the project gained momentum. During this time, he began signing key wrestlers despite not yet having secured a television deal, trusting in the potential demand for a new wrestling promotion.
He explained,
“We had a lot of meetings. It was over a year before anything really happened, but it was a lot of meetings. And I started to realize there’s definitely a market for this. I began signing up the wrestlers. It was a major commitment, and it actually was a bit of a gamble because I started signing the wrestlers before I had the TV deal, because I could feel the TV deal was coming and that there was a market for what AEW was going to do. So, in January of 2019, we announced the launch of AEW. We announced that we had signed a bunch of star wrestlers. It was January 8th, like literally meters, like feet away from where I am right now in Jacksonville, right outside of my office, where it was actually the first ever AEW press conference.”
Tony Khan, AEW President and CEO
Launching the AEW Brand with a Celebration in Jacksonville
The official announcement of AEW took place in January 2019 with great fanfare, including a party and pyrotechnics in the parking lot outside Khan’s office in Jacksonville. This event marked the beginning of AEW’s entry into the wrestling industry spotlight.
Khan said,
“We announced the launch of the promotion. We had a party with the fans, and we had a great celebration. We set off pyro in the parking lot, and we launched AEW and put eyes of the wrestling world here in Jacksonville. And then we went and took our opportunity, and we did the very first AEW event, Double or Nothing, in 2019. We set up with our very first episode of Wednesday Night Dynamite in October. Like I said, the six-year anniversary of the first Dynamite is actually this week, this Wednesday on TBS at 8:00.”
Tony Khan, AEW President and CEO
The Significance of Tony Khan’s AEW Creation in Professional Wrestling
Tony Khan’s vision reignited wrestling on major cable networks after nearly two decades without wrestling content on TBS and TNT. By strategically securing contracts with prominent wrestlers before finalizing the TV deal, Khan took a significant risk that ultimately led to the successful launch of AEW, which has grown into a major competitor in the industry. The promotion’s establishment not only revived a long-standing tradition on these channels but also generated renewed excitement for wrestling fans nationally.
With the six-year anniversary of AEW’s flagship show Dynamite approaching, the company’s journey from a bold idea conceived at a cocktail party to a widely recognized wrestling league exemplifies the careful planning and commitment involved in changing the landscape of professional wrestling.
