AEW President Tony Khan was recently interviewed by The Wrap. During the interview, he discussed his thoughts on CM Punk coming back to AEW and pro wrestling in general, along with what AEW does to differentiate themselves from WWE. You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
On getting CM Punk to return to wrestling: “From the beginning, I really wanted CM Punk to return to pro wrestling. That was one of my goals and something I believed would really move the needle for AEW — and it has. But when we first launched, it was a start-up company, of course, and he had been out of it for a while, and he wanted to watch closely with a fairly skeptical eye — but a fair eye,” Khan told TheWrap. “He wanted to see what was to come, because he heard this before: that somebody was gonna start a wrestling company, somebody with a lot of financial resources, maybe even a great TV partner. And we put it all together, quicker and better than anybody else had in the past 20 years, but I think it was still a start-up (to Punk). He watched real closely and we stayed in touch, and it was very gratifying when I heard back from him that he really had enjoyed the shows and liked the direction we’d gone. The more we talked, the more I thought it might be possible. He sounds like somebody interested. He sounds like somebody that likes AEW. And I know we were building a good relationship and I like him very much,” Khan continued. “I just thought there was a good chance that maybe he would want to come back for us. Thankfully, when live touring resumed and we were able to pack arenas again around the country, he was interested in coming back. And it’s changed our business and helped us reach new heights.”
On how much they care about ratings and which one they pay attention to: “The (18-49) demo is the number that we are measured by, and that’s the chart that we receive from our partners at TNT. I have a meeting with TNT executives every week and we go through the ratings. We used to just go through the ratings for ‘Dynamite,’ but now we also go through the ratings for ‘Rampage’ and look at patterns. The main thing we tend to look at is 18-49. We’ll look at different splits, by gender and different demographics, but absolutely the 18-49 overall is the bread and butter number that we always look at at the start of the meeting.”
On how AEW avoids becoming WWE: “You avoid [becoming WWE] by only signing the best people. I believe we have the best roster in all of wrestling right now. I really do believe that.”