Khan reiterated that he thinks the competition having a better product is a positive.
All Elite Wrestling presented their ‘Quake By The Lake’ edition of Dynamite from Minnesota on August 10th. Going into the event, company head Tony Khan made the media rounds and one of the outlets he spoke with was The Walkway to Fight Club podcast.
Khan further commented on the changes in wrestling, specifically the regime change in WWE. He feels that a better product from the competition is good for wrestling overall and added that he regularly tunes in and thinks WWE’s shows have been better recently.
The wrestling business is benefiting I think in a lot of ways from changes and for us, you ask about it with injuries. Well, we’ve responded pretty well to those and people that have been out for a variety of reasons are all starting to come back. There’s a lot of light at the end of that tunnel and we’re getting close to that tunnel in many ways and it’s a great time for us… Now, the competition changing, I think that’s a good thing in some ways. If you like good wrestling, you’re just more likely to wanna see it because our competitor has been doing better shows recently than they had been doing I think. I watch them pretty often and I think they’ve been better and it seems like that’s the consensus among people who watch them.
Following up on that, Khan was asked if seeing those improvements has made him want to work harder or is it business as usual. Khan thinks he’s been working his hardest this whole time, but watching the competition can spark good ideas.
I think I’ve been working as hard as I possibly can this whole time [Khan laughed], so I think it’s interesting [tuning into the competition] and it can give you good ideas for yourself or thoughts on how … but overall, I just try to follow what’s happening in wrestling and I love wrestling and just try to work on it as hard as I can every week.
The Interim AEW World Championship was defended at Quake By The Lake. Jon Moxley retained the title over Chris Jericho.
Khan said the idea for interim titles in AEW came from the UFC and thinks it’s been utilized really well.
Yeah, from the UFC is where I learned it [incorporating interim titles into the fold] and they’ve had great success with the interim championship because in wrestling and UFC, people get hurt and so, you know, you’ll see in AEW or UFC, there’s been a few occasions where we’ve had a champion that was out for extended periods of time so it makes sense to crown an interim champion and it sets up a big unification match as we’ve seen in AEW and as they’ve had great success as an industry leader in UFC. So I think — and like you said, in boxing, it’s a practice that’s been accepted also and for us, it’s worked before really well and I think right now is probably the most high-profile example of it in AEW’s history.
Following Moxley’s successful title defense, AEW World Champion CM Punk returned and fought off the Jericho Appreciation Society and ended up going face-to-face with Moxley.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit The Walkway to Fight Club podcast with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
