Tony Khan Admits What Mistakes AEW Has Made Ahead of AEW Dynamite's Premiere

All Elite Wrestling's first episode of weekly live television takes place Wednesday night when AEW [...]

By Connor Casey

All Elite Wrestling's first episode of weekly live television takes place Wednesday night when AEW Dynamite arrives at the sold-out Capital One Arena in Washington D.C. Leading up the the show AEW president Tony Khan gave an extensive interview with Pro Wrestling Torch's Wade Keller, breaking down all of the factors that helped build towards the company's creation as well as his interest in the wrestling business growing up. At one point Khan was asked to reflect on any of the mistakes the company has made since launching in January, and the multi-billionaire didn't hold back.

Some of the mistakes Khan listed were the Casino Battle Royale opening up Double or Nothing and having "Hangman" Adam Page's match with Kip Sabian's match at Fight for the Fallen go nearly a full 20 minutes. But then he addressed one of the more controversial topics, Cody Rhodes' unprotected chair shot from Shawn Spears at Fyter Fest.

"The Cody/Shawn Spears stuff we did on I, it was tremendous and, would they have built this amazing feud, which to me is one of the best feuds anyone has done all year, would it have been as big without the chair? I don't know," Khan said (h/t Fightful for transcription). "Could we have done the chair shot better? Yeah. And we were supposed to, and it didn't come off the way it was supposed to. It wasn't what I had signed up for."

Khan also addressed the criticism of AEW having too many comedy matches during their kickoff shows, which they've dubbed The Buy-In.

"It doesn't really make as much sense to have an undercard, especially on what is the free preview Buy In shows, to have that much comedy in the undercard when the main matches are so serious and if you're trying to show people what the tones of your show are," Khan said.

Rhodes discussed the infamous chair shot earlier this week when he and Brandi Rhodes appeared on Collider Live.

"The lip got me, the lip of the chair," Rhodes explained. "Tony went out and put out a statement properly, as he did. We went to great pains to 'take back' chair shots but soldering and ironing out a proper way to do it, and we just didn't get all of it."

"But I was totally okay in doing it, and here's why — Captain America is hitting people in the head with his shield and no one is screaming 'concussion!' No one is screaming 'CTE!' No one is making any of these references. If you're going to hold us to a certain standard at this point, in 2019 if we're talking to you as part of an entertainment brand, then you can't hold us to an older standard if that makes any sense," he continued. "So I wanted to take chair shots back for wrestling. However, I don't think that was a success. And I think maybe that was the last head shot in AEW with a chair."

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