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Tony Khan spoke about his idea for AEW in an interview for the Swerve City podcast “I happened to be someone who loved the wrestling business, but had worked in sports,” he said, as quoted by wrestlinginc. “And I was very fortunate my dad came over from Pakistan when he was 16 to go to college at the University of Illinois.
That’s where he met my mom, then I was born there in Illinois. He started a business and it took off, but he kind of came here with nothing. And he is the big success, he is the reason this all happened. He’s said it, we had a really ugly Christmas, 2018.
Because I had already frankly told Jericho and other people, ‘we are going to do this.’ “I pretty much had a bunch of people verbally ready to go, and a bunch of contracts were set to expire at the start of 2019.
I had a business plan ready to go, which is AEW now. He was like, ‘this isn’t going to work, we are going to lose millions, you have no guarantee.’ I had no TV deal at that point for it, and it was a huge gamble.
He has gone into Forbes, and a couple of times on the record, and said he was completely wrong”.
Khan on WCW
Tony Khan spoke about WCW and its impact on others. “There was nothing really since WCW went down that felt that way,” he said.
“Even at the end of WCW, they always had it. Until the day they actually pulled the plug, none of us believed that could ever happen. It was unthinkable when it happened. Since then, there’s Impact, which is great, but it’s like the zombie WCW.
“The guys that were leftover from WCW, some of them went and started another wrestling company. There’s Ring Of Honor kind of, in some ways came up from the skeleton of what was ECW. Those companies built legacies that ironically lasted longer than the original companies.