All Elite Wrestling Owner Shad Khan was recently a guest on Yahoo! Finance’s All Markets Summit: Generational Opportunities, where he opened up about a number of topics related to All Elite Wrestling.
Shad Khan first talked about how All Elite Wrestling started, noting that it was all his son, Tony Khan’s idea as this is his passion and Tony was a lifelong wrestling fan.
This is what Shad Khan said:
“It all started with my son Tony. It was his idea, his passion, his drive as a lifelong wrestling fan — so I’ve supported him financially. “He kept talking about it, that we ought to do it, and here are the reasons why we should do it. I kept stress testing the idea, and then I struck a check to fund it because if you’re going to do it, it’s gotta be right. That was the most important thing. You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression, but his idea, his passion, and his drive, and it’s off to a great start.”
Shad Khan then talked about how All Elite Wrestling isn’t here to compete with WWE. Shad Khan also said that competition is good for everybody, but it is very important for AEW to do their own thing.
This is what Shad Khan said:
“WWE is a great company, but we are not here competing with them. “In the golden age of wrestling during the late ’90s, there were 10 million fans. Now It’s down to 2 million. So we’re tapping into fans who were not engaged and quite frankly the younger fan who never got quite into it. Competition is good for everybody, but it’s very important for AEW to do our own thing.”
Shad Khan then talked about the difference between the wrestling business and the football business. Shad Khan said that the difference is in the talent as in the wrestling business the talent is on the street, whereas in the football business the talent is already there.
This is what Shad Khan said:
“It’s quite different, and that’s the question I had for Tony.” His point to me was that the big difference here is there’s a huge amount of talent that’s on the street. Whereas in football and the NFL, the top talent is already there.”
