AEW President Tony Khan went on the defensive on Friday night at the ROH Final Battle press conference.
He hit out in particular at “bad faith posting” on X, formerly Twitter.
Khan added, “There’s a reason that every single person who stepped into my position until now has gone out of business.”
He said:
For AEW, and I think Ring of Honor because it falls under my ownership, to be AEW is to be under constant attack.
You do a great show and the next day somebody’s saying something negative. You do five great shows in a row. Somebody says something negative.
You break the ticket record for the most tickets ever sold for any wrestling show in the history of the world, and somebody has something bad to say about it. I just, at this point, I don’t worry about it. We just need to go out and do great shows week after week, like we did.
Khan defended the ratings performance of AEW, with a particular focus on Dynamite:
We were the number-one show on cable this week. On Wednesday, we beat every single show on TV on Wednesday out of hundreds and hundreds of shows across hundreds of networks. And we’ll continue doing it, and everybody who works here is gonna be in good position.
He then turned his attention to the domination of X in wrestling discourse:
I think it’s challenging because I’ve never seen anything quite like wrestling when it comes to such a large percentage of the business spending such a large percentage of their time on one platform, which is X, formerly Twitter.
It’s amazing how many people in the wrestling business are on Twitter all the time. And to be honest, I understand it because it’s a good reason; because it’s engagement; because there’s such a large percentage of the wrestling fans and you, the wrestling media, and opinion makers, and the wrestlers themselves — and the companies, so many people are on this one platform. It’s pretty unique, because in other sports, it’s more evenly distributed.
What I’ve seen is sometimes is a bit of an echo chamber. And also there’s a lot of bad faith. There’s a lot of bad faith posting on it. And you can have a great day in the business, like do the number one show and people try and tell you you didn’t do something great. Or you can break the world record for the most tickets ever sold to any wrestling show ever and have this massive, huge success on pay-per-view. And just hit a home run and the wrestling’s great and everything’s great. And still people are trying to tell you there’s some problem with it or something detrimental.
Khan spoke about leading the “fight” as head of the largest challenger brand in professional wrestling:
There’s a reason that every single person who stepped into my position until now has gone out of business.
I’m the only one left. Everybody who has stepped up and put millions of dollars into this and done it week after week, and there’s no off-season, you do it 52 weeks a year. It’s a fight, and that’s a credit to the fans.
I know what it is to be a wrestling fan 52 weeks a year, it’s hard. But it’s also the most rewarding thing. That’s why you can’t get away from it for too long. That’s why we always come back to it. We’re addicted. And it’s worth the fight, and I love the fight.
I’m never gonna stop fighting, no matter what happens. No matter how things change, it’s worth it. It’s the fight Jim Crockett fought and Verne Gagne and Ted Turner and so many other people that have tried. And God bless them all, and I’m doing this for all of you. And I know all of you are here in spirit, so thank you very much.
