AEW owner Tony Khan on creative: ‘I will be the head booker going forward’

Critics of AEW head man Tony Khan would like to see him cede control of booking creative for his company’s weekly TV shows, which can tend toward the direction of, you know, lacking any sense of direction, and that’s putting it gently.

Khan, addressing the critics on a Thursday media call to promote this weekend’s “Double or Nothing,” made it clear that he won’t be giving up control of creative anytime soon.

“I will be the head booker going forward, as I have been for several years,” Khan said on the call, which is about as direct as he can be on that topic.

Khan’s critics point out that famously wears many hats, not only with his AEW start-up, but in his family’s other sports enterprises – the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars, where Khan is chief football strategy officer, and the EPL’s Fulham FC, where he is director of football operations.

On top of those time-consuming roles, Khan books AEW’s weekly “Dynamite” and “Rampage” shows, and soon will be adding “Collision,” which is set to debut on June 17, to that list of responsibilities.

That will be five hours of national TV that he will be booking each week – four hours of that broadcasting live.

Which would be a lot for somebody without jobs overseeing NFL and EPL teams, in addition to running the business operation of a billion-dollar sports entertainment company.

Khan talked up how he’s had “some new people come in that are helping, and I’m trying to build a bigger team and get more voices and more ideas,” citing the recent additions of Will Washington, a podcaster who is now AEW’s director of wrestling administration, and Sarah Stock, a former WWE talent, coach and producer, to the creative team, to work alongside his existing team that includes QT Marshall, Sonjay Dutt, Pat Buck, Jerry Lynn, Dean Malenko, BJ Whitmer and Madison Rayne.

Khan said he’s also been getting contributions in creative from top star Bryan Danielson, who Khan calls “one of the smartest people I’ve ever met.”

“The more different viewpoints and the more great thinkers that we have together, and we have some really great thinkers that have come into the room recently, I think it helps a lot,” Khan said.

But, bottom line, “at the end of the day, I have to decide what goes in the shows, and, you know, what ideas we will do and won’t do,” Khan said.

“I like the team we have. I like talking to them, and I can’t do every idea, and you know, even before when we had a smaller team, I couldn’t do every idea,” Khan said. “Now there’s more ideas, and there’s more TV time, so in some ways I can do more of the stuff and more ideas and utilize more different viewpoints. And on the other hand, if you bring more people in, and sometimes it’s more ideas that you need to put to the side, too. But overall, I’m just trying to find the right group, and, you know, get the best of the best from this great team we have, and I think you know, will only continue to get better there.”