One way you can tell things aren’t going well for AEW and Tony Khan: even Dave Meltzer has turned on Tony.
Meltzer, last week, made news with two bits of heavy-handed criticism for Khan and his recent booking of AEW, which, to be fair, has been all over the place on steroids.
The first is low-hanging fruit: “It’s just, like, many people over the age of 50 on this show, you know, and it’s like, I don’t think that should be the image of the company.”
I mean, totally accurate, that one. Meltzer was addressing, in this instance, specifically, the use of Rob Van Dam on last week’s “Dynamite” in Philadelphia, which he conceded made sense, because of RVD’s time in ECW, which was based in Philly, but still – there’s Van Dam, there’s Chris Jericho, there’s Jeff Jarrett, the Hardys, Dustin Rhodes, now Adam Copeland, all guys approaching or over 50.
Chris Graham: AEW News and Notes
The other is the sign that there are people behind the scenes at AEW who aren’t happy that they just re-upped.
Meltzer, on his Wrestling Observer Radio podcast, addressed the issue that “a lot of the stuff is being decided at much later periods than previous. Guys are getting their information on what they’re doing later and decisions are being made later. So that’s just how it is. I mean, there’s time on the day of the show when you don’t even know.
“They’re doing stuff, but they don’t really know a long-term direction,” Meltzer said. “So, they’re doing stuff, and they’re coming up with ideas, but when you don’t really know exactly the long-term direction, then you’re kind of like coming up with ideas week by week, too, but you don’t know where the ultimate thing is. And maybe the ultimate thing hasn’t even been decided. So that’s one of the reasons that the shows are like the shows last week,”
Calling out Tony Khan for having too many old guys on his show is an observational criticism from Meltzer.
Meltzer telling us that “a lot of stuff is being decided” late and that “they don’t really know a long-term direction” is something that is being planted with him.
Three guesses who might be planting him information.
Certain, shall we call them, EVPs have played Meltzer like a fiddle for years, and it’s worked out well for them – gotten them high-level jobs at the right hand of the son of a billionaire, taken out a rival who was making the company money, but was a threat to their personal bottom lines.
Dave Meltzer telling us that the talent is unhappy with booking decisions being made late and the lack of cohesive long-term direction tells us that the EVPs, who just a couple of months ago signed lucrative, long-term contract extensions, are unhappy.
Maybe they’re trying to get Tony fired now.
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